The 2021 NASCAR Cup Series season yielded three first-time winners, the first of them going to Victory Lane in the season’s first race when series veteran Michael McDowell shocked the world at the Daytona 500.
The following weekend’s race on the Daytona road course produced yet another first-timer when second-year Joe Gibbs Racing driver Christopher Bell scored the win. Then, much later in the season, 23XI Racing driver Bubba Wallace prevailed in a rain-shortened event at Talladega where he became the first African American driver to notch a victory in NASCAR’s premier series since Wendell Scott in 1963.
Who will be this year’s first-time winners? Tyler Reddick, Ross Chastain, Austin Cindric, Harrison Burton and Chase Briscoe are just a few of the drivers who could pop the Cup Series winner’s champagne for the first time.