How Fast Do NASCAR Cars Go? Top & Average Speeds Over The Years

Red Byron won the first NASCAR race on Feb. 15, 1948, on the sandy road course at Daytona Beach, Florida. The mechanic for Byron's souped-up number 22 1939 Ford V8 Standard Coupe was Louis Jerome "Red" Vogt (yes, another man named red), who originally came up the name NASCAR. In June of the following year, the first "Strictly Stock" (the current NASCAR Cup Series) race was held at Charlotte Fairgrounds Speedway and won by Jim Roper driving a Lincoln.

The '39 Ford V8 was the first widely mass-produced V8 engine, but it only kicked out 85 horsepower — roughly 10% of the power that NASCAR's current Next Gen cars produce — and had a top speed of about 120 mph. It was also the first year Ford used hydraulic brakes, making it a fast vehicle capable of stopping quickly, a combination that many stock car racers (some of which were moonshiners) gravitated towards. While technical data for that first Daytona race wasn't kept, estimates have pegged the average speed somewhere around 70 miles per hour. That's a far cry from today's sleek, high-tech rides (introduced in 2022) that can hit speeds of nearly 220 mph, depending on the track they're racing around.

In March 1970, during an officially timed test session at the Talladega Superspeedway, Buddy Baker was driving a Dodge when he barely broke the 200 mph barrier (at 200.096 mph). However, the first official qualifying which resulted in a pole-winning run above 200 didn't occur until Benny Parsons did so (at 200.176 mph) while driving a Pontiac for the 1982 Winston 500 at the same Superspeedway.

In May of 1987, Bill Elliott achieved the fastest official closed-course timed lap driving a Ford Thunderbird with an average speed of 212.809 mph, again at Talladega. Close on his heels was Bobby Allison in a Buick LeSabre that completed a lap at 211.797 mph. Davey Allison (in another Thunderbird), Darrell Waltrip (in a Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS that Chevy eventually discontinued), and defending Winston Cup champion Dale Earnhardt (in a Chevy) all hit speeds over 210 mph. Davey Allison — Bobby's son — would go on to win that race.

While one might think the name of the game is speed, that's not actually the case with NASCAR, which for several years now has been more keen on keeping its drivers safe than pushing the speedometer needle as high as it can go. During that record-breaking Winston 500 race in '87, where racers were reaching speeds of over 210 miles per hour, the right rear tire on Bobby Allison's car blew out, sending it into a slide that spun it backward. Aerodynamics lifted the vehicle up and into the catch fence that separated the track from the throngs of spectators in the stands.

The catch fence worked as intended and kept Allison's car from careening into the stands. Allison walked away uninjured from the catastrophic wreck, and none of the fans were seriously injured. In 1988, NASCAR implemented restrictor plates on vehicles racing at Daytona International Speedway and Talladega, the 2.5-mile long Superspeedways, where such incredibly high speeds were the norm. Allison's accident is one of many crashes that spurred changes within NASCAR.

Restrictor plates restrict airflow into the engine, reducing total horsepower output and, thus, a car's overall speed. In 2019, restrictor plates were replaced by tapered spacers with holes that do the same thing. While these plates kept speeds down at the Superspeedways, that was not the case for the host of 1.5-mile-long intermediate tracks on the circuit in Chicago, Charlotte, Texas, and Atlanta.

In 1997, Geoff Bodine set the all-time fastest lap at the newly reconfigured (and repaved) intermediate track at Atlanta Motor Speedway with an average speed of 197.478 mph. That record stood for two decades until Kevin Harvick ran an average speed of 198.405 mph while qualifying for a race at the freshly repaved track at Texas Motor Speedway in 2017. Not to be outdone, though, Kurt Busch topped the 200 barrier (at 200.915) while qualifying for a different race at the same track in the fall of the same year — a record that still stands.

The average speed of a NASCAR Xfinity Series car is between 150 and 180 mph, but as we mentioned, top speeds vary based on the tracks. For instance, the average speed at the road course at Sonoma Raceway in Northern California is "only" 90-100 mph, while average speeds at the short .533-mile track at Bristol are around 125 mph. However, at the .526-mile short track at Martinsville, speeds are far less, at approximately 80-90 mph. Meanwhile, on the other end of the speedometer, average speeds of 190-200 mph can easily be reached on the 2-mile track at the Michigan International Speedway.