NASCAR prepares to celebrate the Hall of Fame Class of 2025
Today at 12:48 PM
Tenacity, innovation and backflips. Sustained success at NASCAR‘s highest levels. Those are some of the defining qualities the 2025 NASCAR Hall of Fame class possess. And on Friday night in downtown Charlotte, former NASCAR Cup Series competitors Ricky Rudd and Carl Edwards will formally be inducted into the sport‘s famous Hall, joined by Pioneer ballot recipient Ralph Moody.
Dr. Dean Sicking will also be honored as the Landmark Award winner for his Outstanding Contributions to NASCAR.
Rudd and Edwards were chosen to the Hall out of the Modern Day Ballot of 10 nominees with Rudd receiving 87 percent of the vote and Edwards receiving 52 percent of the vote — the only two on the ballot to meet the threshold in this round of voting and both among the list of NASCAR‘s 75 Greatest Drivers.
Rudd, 68, of Chesapeake, Va. is the 1997 Brickyard 400 winner, the 1977 Rookie of the Year and at one time was the youngest Daytona 500 pole-winner in history when he claimed the top starting position in the Great American Race as a 24-year old in 1981. He won the 1992 IROC championship in his first year in that series — a year after finishing a career best runner-up in the NASCAR Cup Series championship.
But the popular competitor, who earned 23 career NASCAR Cup Series victories and last raced in 2007, is best known for an incredible mark of 16 consecutive years (1983-98) with a victory in NASCAR‘s highest level of competition and a remarkable 788-race string of consecutive starts — a record that lasted in the sport until 2015. His 905 total starts in a career that spanned four decades, is second only to fellow Hall of Famer, seven-time NASCAR champion Richard Petty (1,185 starts).
He earned the first team victory for both the NASCAR Hall of Famer Richard Childress’ legendary team and also drag racing great Kenny Bernstein‘s NASCAR Cup Series team and would go on to drive for some of the biggest names in the sport from Bud Moore to the Wood Brothers to Rick Hendrick before becoming one of the most successful owner-drivers in NASCAR.
Edwards, 45, of Columbia, Missouri, gained his entrance onto the NASCAR stage with both uncommon persistence and great drive – literally. He came to Charlotte and worked as a substitute teacher while going to shop after shop handing out business cards as he tried to land a job driving in one of NASCAR‘s premier series.
Once given the opportunity, it didn‘t take long to see his special talent. Known for performing a backflip off his car to celebrate victories, Edwards got a lot of exercise, ultimately earning 72 wins in the three top-level NASCAR series.
In addition to six NASCAR CRAFTSMAN Truck Series victories through five seasons, he competed fulltime in both the NASCAR Cup and Xfinity Series in 2005 — turning heads when he won both series races on the same weekend in Atlanta that year. Edwards finished first or second in the NASCAR Xfinity Series championship for five consecutive years capturing the season title in 2007.
In a 13-year career in the NASCAR Cup Series — 11 seasons with owner Jack Roush and two with Joe Gibbs – Edwards celebrated 28 wins, hoisting trophies in major races such as the Southern 500 in Darlington, S.C. and the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte. That victory pace made him an annual championship favorite and he finished champion runner-up twice (in 2008 and 2011) — losing out on the 2011 title in a tiebreaker to fellow NASCAR Hall of Famer, three-time series champion Tony Stewart.
"I have to say the longer I go along in life the more I realize, God just blessed me with these amazing opportunities and people and so many things, I just got to show up and enjoy it, so I‘m the most grateful person you could meet today,” Edwards told SiriusXM NASCAR Radio after finding out he would be inducted.
Although Moody, a World War II veteran who drove tanks under General George Patton‘s command, returned from service to win five NASCAR Cup Series races in 1956-57, it was the late Massachusetts-native‘s talent working on cars that established him as one of the sport‘s greats. His mechanical acumen combined with John Holman‘s business-sense led to one of the most celebrated partnerships in racing history — Holman-Moody Racing.
The Holman-Moody team won back-to-back NASCAR Cup Series championships fielding cars for NASCAR Hall of Famer David Pearson in 1968-69 and famously won the 1967 Daytona 500 with the legendary driver Mario Andretti. In all the Holman-Moody team won 96 races and 82 pole positions from 1957-73 with a wide assortment of Hall of Fame drivers from Pearson to Fred Lorenzen, Fireball Roberts and Bobby Allison.
Certainly, with his engineering prowess, Moody would be among those to appreciate the work of the Landmark Award winner, Sicking. The college professor‘s work developing the SAFER (Steel And Foam Energy Reduction) barrier, now implemented at all NASCAR national series race venues, has been an absolute game-changer in the sport‘s safety.
Not only did he design the SAFER barriers, but working with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the Midwest Roadside Safety Facility he‘s continued to study and advise how to improve track safety overall, limiting danger whenever possible. For his decades of important efforts, Sicking has already been given the 2003 Bill France Award of Excellence and in 2005 awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by then United States President George W. Bush.
The NASCAR Hall of Fame induction ceremony will air live on the Tubi NASCAR Channel at 8 p.m. ET and will simultaneously be broadcast on the Motor Racing Network (MRN). Before the show, NASCAR.com and NASCAR‘s YouTube platform will host a Red Carpet live stream, starting at 4:30 p.m. ET.
— NASCAR Wire Service —
