The following is part 3 in a NASCAR Crossover series. Part 1 (F1 drivers in NASCAR) can be found here and Part 2 (NASCAR drivers in the Stadium Super Trucks) can be found here.
The Red Bull Global RallyCross Championship has been running races since 2011 with a diverse roster of drivers, ranging from World Rally Championship veterans to skateboarders to drift stars. In its five-year history, it has also seen drivers from the world of NASCAR make starts.
In its inaugural season, no drivers with experience in NASCAR’s top three series made a start, though Travis Pastrana, X Games star and Rally America champ, would start competing in NASCAR one year later. He ran the season-ending GRC race in Los Angeles for Subaru Rally Team USA, finishing 4th. Pastrana remained the lone driver with NASCAR experience in 2012, winning at Loudon.
2013 saw the arrival of four drivers from NASCAR, in addition to Pastrana, who was running a full schedule in the Nationwide Series. Pastrana, former IndyCar and one-time NASCAR Truck Series driver Buddy Rice, JR Motorsports’ Steve Arpin, and Cup Series racer Scott Speed competed in the season-opening X Games South America round in Foz do Iguaçu. Speed finished the best of the four with a race win, followed by Arpin (4th), Pastrana (7th) and Rice (10th). Truck Series race winner Nelson Piquet Jr., who was also competing full-time in the Nationwide Series that year, failed to qualify for the X Games’ feature race after finishing 3rd in the Last Chance Qualifier. Speed and Arpin contested the full GRC schedule, Speed winning again at Charlotte.
Speed, Piquet and Arpin ran full-time in 2014, Speed performing the best of the trio with three wins, including an X Games Austin gold medal. The X Games also saw the GRC debut of Craftsman Truck driver Ricky Johnson, who finished 9th, while Pastrana came back for three races and recording a best finish of 6th at the Port of Los Angeles race. Piquet also ran in the GRC Lites division over the course of the season, while Austin Cindric, son of Team Penske president Tim, won bronze in his GRC Lites debut at the X Games.
The trio of Speed, Piquet and Arpin returned to race the full schedule for 2015. Speed swept the Los Angeles rounds, won X Games gold and finished on the podium in all but four races en route to the championship. Piquet won the Washington DC round, while Arpin, despite not winning a race, won X Games silver and recorded a 3rd place finish in the second Daytona race. Former NASCAR road ringer Victor Gonzalez Jr. ran the season opener in Fort Lauderdale, finishing 8th, while Pastrana ran three races with a best finish of 6th at the second Los Angeles race. Motocross champ and ex-NASCAR feeder series driver Jeff Ward made his GRC debut at Daytona, running three races that year with a best finish of 4th at the second Daytona race. K&N Pro Series West driver Brian Wong raced in LA, finishing 12th in both rounds. In GRC Lites, Cindric, who made his NASCAR Truck Series debut in October for Penske driver Brad Keselowski, finished 2nd in the title battle, while Wong drove in Detroit with a best finish of 5th. Nur Ali, who ran a Nationwide race in 2012, ran the full Lites schedule and finished 7th in points.
Speed and Arpin, now series mainstays, continued their GRC careers with full-time schedules in 2016. As of the Atlantic City round, Speed and Tanner Foust have battled for the championship, the former currently holding a 9-point lead. Arpin, now driving for Chip Ganassi Racing, recorded his first GRC win at Daytona’s first round and sits 3rd in points. Ward ran the first six races and has a best finish of 5th at Daytona #1. Piquet has made two starts in 2016 (at Washington and Atlantic City). In the Lites division, Cindric left the series to focus on the Pirelli World Challenge, while Ali ran the Dallas race, finishing 12th. Colin Braun, a former Roush Fenway driver and current competitor in the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, finished 3rd in his GRC Lites debut at Daytona. In four starts, he has two podiums after recording another 3rd-place finish at Atlantic City.
Overall, there have been 12 NASCAR drivers who have made at least one start in GRC or GRC Lites, 7 of whom having run in GRC. Of the 10, only Piquet and Speed (both former F1 drivers) have won a NASCAR race. All 12 drivers have attempted at least one NASCAR national series (Cup, Xfinity, Truck) race, though Ward is the only driver to not make a national series start as he failed to qualify in his lone attempt at the 1998 Phoenix Cup race.
Featured image courtesy of Aaron Bridgman
