NASCAR Trivia
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116 free NASCAR trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
67 free NASCAR trivia questions with answers. NASCAR started in a hotel bar in Daytona Beach in 1947 and grew into the biggest spectator sport in the American South. This quiz covers the whole run: the founding and the first Strictly Stock race, the legends (Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt, Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson, Cale Yarborough, David Pearson), the tracks (Daytona, Talladega, Bristol, Darlington, Martinsville), the rules that changed the racing (restrictor plates, the Chase, the Next Gen car) and the modern stars from Kyle Larson to Ross Chastain. It opens with the easy stuff, like Earnhardt's car number and the longest race on the schedule, and works up to questions for people who know who won the first Southern 500 and why Darlington is shaped like an egg. If you host a race-week trivia night, the whole set is free to lift, and it works just as well as a solo test. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia and primary sources such as the tracks' own histories, and each question shows its source underneath. No recycled listicle errors.
30 of 116 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the first 'A' in NASCAR stand for?
Association
Association: the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing was formed in 1948 because shady promoters kept leaving with the prize money before drivers were paid.
Q 02The 1947 meetings that formed NASCAR were held in the rooftop bar of which Art Deco hotel in Daytona Beach?
Streamline
Streamline: after a 2014 sale the hotel was gutted to its bare walls in a $6 million renovation and reopened in 2017.
Q 03Who founded NASCAR?
Bill France Sr.
Bill France Sr. ran a repair shop in Washington, D.C., moved to Daytona in the 1930s, raced on its beach course and then took over promoting the races there.
Q 04The first driver across the line in NASCAR's first top-division race in 1949 was disqualified for what?
Illegal rear springs
Illegal rear springs, a bootlegger's trick for better handling, cost Glenn Dunaway the win, which went to Jim Roper, a Kansan who had finished three laps behind.
Q 05What was NASCAR's top division called in its first season, 1949?
Strictly Stock
Strictly Stock meant showroom cars with modifications banned, so one future champion borrowed a neighbor's Buick for the first race, drove it there and rolled it.
Q 06From 1971 to 2003, NASCAR's top series carried the name of which cigarette brand?
Winston
Winston became the title sponsor just as cigarette ads were banned from American TV and radio, so R. J. Reynolds moved its advertising money into racing.
Q 07Which drinks brand was the Cup Series title sponsor from 2017 to 2019?
Monster
Monster offered to extend the deal, but NASCAR turned it down and dropped title sponsors altogether, so since 2020 it has simply been the NASCAR Cup Series.
Q 08Beginning in 2026, NASCAR's second-tier national series took the name of which sponsor?
O'Reilly
The series had been the Busch Series, the Nationwide Series and, from 2015 to 2025, the Xfinity Series.
Q 09Which tool brand, the first title sponsor of NASCAR's Truck Series, returned to the series name in 2023?
Craftsman
Craftsman backed the trucks from their first season in 1995 until 2008, and came back in 2023 after Stanley Black & Decker bought the brand from Sears.
Q 10Where is the NASCAR Hall of Fame, opened in 2010?
Charlotte
It sits in uptown Charlotte, a short drive from the race shops of most Cup teams, and its inaugural class was inducted the day after the 2010 All-Star Race.
Q 11Which NASCAR pioneer, credited with discovering drafting at the 1960 Daytona 500, got a Reagan pardon for moonshining?
Junior Johnson
Junior Johnson was never caught hauling liquor: he was jailed for about a year in Ohio over an illegal still, and the pardon came in 1986, two decades after he quit driving.
Q 12Who became the first Black driver to win at NASCAR's top level, at Jacksonville in December 1963?
Wendell Scott
Wendell Scott was not announced as the winner: officials flagged another driver and admitted the mistake only hours later, and his family did not get the trophy until 2021.
Q 13Greased Lightning, the biopic of NASCAR's first Black race winner, starred which comedian?
Richard Pryor
Q 21How many Cup Series races did 'the King', Richard Petty, win in his career?
200
Nobody else has reached 110; the total includes seven Daytona 500s and seven championships, and his final start was the 1992 season finale at Atlanta.
Q 22Richard Petty's famous red-and-blue paint scheme began as a 1972 compromise with which sponsor?
STP
STP wanted the car all in its own red, Petty refused to give up his family's blue, and after an all-night negotiation they settled on both.
Q 23In Pixar's Cars, Richard Petty voices Strip 'The King' Weathers, modeled on which Plymouth that he raced in 1970?
Superbird
Superbird: Plymouth is said to have built the high-winged car partly to win Petty back after he left for Ford in 1969, and the King wears his blue and his No. 43.
Richard Pryor played the Danville, Virginia, mechanic, who ran moonshine before he raced and kept his own unsponsored team going for 13 seasons.
Q 14Who was named winner of the inaugural 1959 Daytona 500, three days after the photo finish?
Lee Petty
Lee Petty was declared the winner three days later, once photographs and newsreel film had been studied; Johnny Beauchamp had already celebrated in victory lane.
Q 15The Daytona 500 winner receives a trophy named after which General Motors design chief?
Harley J. Earl
Harley J. Earl, NASCAR's second commissioner, was a friend of its founder, who named the trophy for him, and the car on it is his turbine-powered Firebird I concept.
Q 16Which network aired the 1979 Daytona 500, the first 500-mile race shown live flag-to-flag?
CBS
CBS got lucky: a snowstorm kept much of the East Coast indoors that Sunday, so millions watched a last-lap crash turn into a fistfight on live TV.
Q 17Which family took the first father-son one-two finish in Daytona 500 history in 1988?
The Allisons
The Allisons finished father ahead of son, but a crash four months later ended the father's career and wiped his memory of the win.
Q 18Which driver got his first Cup win, in his 463rd start, at the 2001 Daytona 500?
Michael Waltrip
Michael Waltrip had gone 462 Cup races without a win, and his celebration ended with the news that his car owner, Dale Earnhardt, had died in a last-lap crash.
Q 19Who won the 2011 Daytona 500 the day after his 20th birthday, becoming the race's youngest winner?
Trevor Bayne
Trevor Bayne was making only his second Cup start, and the upset stayed the only win of his 187-race Cup career.
Q 20Who won the 2022 Daytona 500, the first points race for the Next Gen car?
Austin Cindric
Austin Cindric was a rookie making just his eighth Cup start, and he won it on team owner Roger Penske's 85th birthday.
Q 24Dale Earnhardt's black Chevrolet for Richard Childress Racing carried which number?
3
The No. 3 in black GM Goodwrench paint became so tied to him that after his death fans held three fingers aloft on the third lap of races.
Q 25Dale Earnhardt won the 1998 Daytona 500 with what glued to his dash?
Penny
A penny: Wessa Miller, a young Make-A-Wish fan, gave it to him before the race, and he glued it to the dash and won on his 20th attempt.
Q 26Which safety measure, resisted by Dale Earnhardt himself, did NASCAR make mandatory in October 2001?
HANS device
The HANS device, a head-and-neck restraint Earnhardt had called 'that damn noose', became mandatory eight months after a skull fracture killed him at Daytona.
Q 27Dale Earnhardt was born in which North Carolina town?
Kannapolis
Kannapolis renamed its minor-league baseball team the Intimidators in 2001 after he bought a share, and a nine-foot bronze statue of him stands in the town.
Q 28Who took over Dale Earnhardt's seat and won at Atlanta three weeks later by 0.006 seconds?
Kevin Harvick
Kevin Harvick was handed the car, renumbered 29, a week after the crash, and the photo-finish win came in only his third Cup start.
Q 29Jeff Gordon's rainbow-liveried DuPont Chevrolet carried which number?
24
The No. 24 won the 1997 all-star race in a one-off Jurassic Park paint scheme, and NASCAR banned the car afterwards.
Q 30Which home-improvement chain was the main sponsor of Jimmie Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet until 2018?
Lowe's
Lowe's backed the No. 48 through all 83 of his Cup wins, while arch-rival Home Depot spent years sponsoring a Joe Gibbs Racing car in the same races.