Winston Million Paid Only Twice and Defined NASCAR's Crown Jewel Races

In thirteen seasons of the Winston Million, a $1 million bonus for winning three of NASCAR's four biggest races in one year, only two drivers collected it, and both signed the cheque at the same place. Bill Elliott clinched it in the 1985 Southern 500 at Darlington and Jeff Gordon did the same in 1997. The bonus is gone, but the idea behind it, that a handful of races outrank the rest, has survived as the Crown Jewels.

What are NASCAR's Crown Jewel races?

Crown Jewel is the name for the historic, prestigious races on the NASCAR calendar. The Daytona 500, the Coca-Cola 600 and the Southern 500 are the three most commonly listed, and NASCAR also recognises the Brickyard 400. Some drivers and media members argue that the Bristol Night Race should be a fifth, and it has been discussed as a candidate in recent years.

For a time, the spring race at Talladega counted as well. From 1985 to 1997 the Winston 500 was a Crown Jewel because Winston offered a bonus for winning three of the four races, but most modern writers no longer treat it as one. Winning every Crown Jewel is sometimes called a Grand Slam. Nine drivers have done it, and Jeff Gordon and Bobby Allison have each managed it three times.

How the Winston Million created the list

In 1984, R. J. Reynolds announced two new events at the Waldorf Astoria in New York: the invitation-only all-star race known as The Winston, and a formal prize for winning the sport's four majors. Each of the four had a nickname. The Daytona 500 was the richest race, the Winston 500 at Talladega the fastest, the Coca-Cola 600 the longest and the Southern 500 the oldest superspeedway race.

Before 1985 nobody had won all four in one season. Only David Pearson in 1976 had taken three of the four, and LeeRoy Yarbrough had won three in 1969, before Talladega existed. The Winston Million paid $1 million to anyone who won three of the four in one calendar year, with a $100,000 consolation prize for the first driver to win two if nobody took the big one.

Elliott took the prize in the first year. He dominated the Daytona 500, won at Talladega at record speed after making up two laps lost to a broken oil fitting, had problems at Charlotte, then won at Darlington when Cale Yarborough lost his power steering. He became Million Dollar Bill and appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated on 9 September 1985. His success made people expect the bonus to be won often. It was not.

In 1989 Darrell Waltrip won Daytona and Charlotte but hit the wall in the Southern 500 and settled for the $100,000. In 1990 Dale Earnhardt cut a tyre while leading the Daytona 500 on the last lap, then won at Talladega and Darlington, which would have been enough. In 1992 rain cut the Southern 500 short and cost Davey Allison a shot at both the Million and a career Grand Slam, while Waltrip, leading when the race stopped on lap 293, finished off a career Grand Slam of his own. In 1996 Dale Jarrett won Daytona and Charlotte and lost Talladega by 0.22 seconds, then hit the wall at Darlington and finished 14th.

Gordon finally did it in 1997. He won the Daytona 500, was fifth at Talladega, won the Coca-Cola 600 to stay alive and then took the Southern 500 by holding off Jeff Burton on the final lap. The cars touched coming through Turn 4 and took the white flag side by side. It was the third of four consecutive Southern 500 wins for Gordon, a record for NASCAR majors, and a Brinks truck led him around on the victory lap.

The No Bull 5 and what came after

With only two winners in thirteen seasons, R. J. Reynolds revamped the prize in 1998 as the No Bull 5. It used the Daytona 500, Coca-Cola 600 and Southern 500 plus the Brickyard 400, and a Talladega race moved from spring to October. The top five finishers at one race became eligible to win $1 million at the next. Over five years and twenty-five races the bonus was paid thirteen times, four of them to Gordon. With his 1997 Million he took $5 million from the programmes in all.

Both Winston Million winners clinched the bonus in the Southern 500 at Darlington.

Southern 500, the oldest superspeedway race

The Southern 500, now officially the Cook Out Southern 500, is run at Darlington Raceway in South Carolina. Its first running in 1950 made it NASCAR's first 500-mile race, and nothing else matched the distance until the Daytona 500 started in 1959. The race covers 367 laps, or 501 miles (806 km), and is traditionally held on Labor Day weekend. Since 2020 it has usually opened the playoffs.

Darlington's reputation is half the race's character. The track is an unusual egg shape, asymmetrical, with rough pavement, and has long been called the Track Too Tough to Tame. Competitors and media have counted the Southern 500 among the toughest races on the calendar for decades.

The race that lost its weekend and won it back

Until 2003 the Southern 500 sat on Labor Day weekend, and before 1984 it ran on the Monday itself.

Then the schedule changed. In 2004 the race moved to November, partly for cooler weather and partly to be part of the new Chase for the Championship. A shareholder in the company that owned Texas Motor Speedway, Francis Ferko, sued NASCAR on antitrust grounds for refusing to give Texas a second race. The case was settled in his favour, and NASCAR had to take one of Darlington's dates. From 2005 the track had a single 500-mile race, held in May with the Southern 500 name dropped.

The name came back after 2008, and Bruton Smith, chief executive of Speedway Motorsports, even offered to buy the track to return it to Labor Day. In August 2014 NASCAR said the 2015 race would go back to the traditional slot for the first time since 2003, run on Sunday night under lights to avoid the heat. The weekend was themed NASCAR Throwback: 32 of the 43 cars wore throwback paint schemes, Ken Squier, Ned Jarrett and Dale Jarrett called a lap-by-lap hour on air, and NBC used its 1970s logos. The event was nominated for Sports Event of the Year, and the theme lasted from 2015 to 2020 before moving to the spring race.

Southern 500 races worth remembering

The first race lasted over six hours with multiple blown tyres, and Johnny Mantz won with a conservative drive. In 1960 three people were killed when Bobby Johns crashed in the pits, and Rex White was flagged the winner until a scoring review showed an extra lap had been credited to him, giving the win to Buck Baker. Richard Petty won his only Southern 500 in 1967. In 1970 Buddy Baker joined his father Buck as a winner, in a race where five of the top six drove Dodge Daytonas or Plymouth Superbirds, the only Darlington win for the winged Chryslers.

The late 1970s belonged to Pearson. In 1976 he won his first Southern 500 and his ninth race of a magic season, with Petty second for the 60th time they had finished one-two. Both Jimmy Carter and Bob Dole visited the race on the campaign trail. The next year a fight between Cale Yarborough and Waltrip ended in a crash. Yarborough told D. K. Ulrich that Waltrip, whom he called Jaws, had been the one to hit him, and the nickname stuck.

Coca-Cola 600, the longest night on the calendar

The Coca-Cola 600, originally the World 600, is a 600-mile (970 km) points race at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina, held on Memorial Day weekend. It is the longest race on the NASCAR schedule and a rare one in which the track changes underneath the cars. The start is around 6 pm in daylight. The middle third of the race runs through dusk, and the final third is under the lights.

It runs later on the same Sunday as the Indianapolis 500, and no driver has ever won both races, either on the same day or in a career.

The track that cost two million dollars

The speedway began as an idea in spring 1959, when Curtis Turner returned from seeing Daytona International Speedway and thought he could borrow enough for a $750,000 track with 45,000 permanent seats. A group led by Bruton Smith had the same plan, so the two joined forces and signed with NASCAR to run a 600-mile Memorial Day race. Granite lay under the topsoil. The first turn alone took $70,000 of dynamite, and costs ballooned to nearly two million dollars.

A snowstorm delayed the concrete in 1960, and two weeks before the first race the paving subcontractor threatened to quit over unpaid bills. Turner and a friend reportedly threatened him with a shotgun and a revolver to make him finish the backstretch. The first event at the new speedway took place in June 1960.

Day into night

The race began as NASCAR's attempt to stage a Memorial Day event to rival the Indianapolis 500. Because Indianapolis did not race on Sundays, the two did not go head to head until 1974. Lights arrived in 1992, fans asked for a later start to avoid the heat, and the start time crept back through the 1990s to 5:30 pm in 2001, with the aim of finishing by 10 pm in time for local news. The track is lit by parabolic reflectors that reduce glare, and the temperature drop at night changes how the cars handle.

The later start made Double Duty possible: racing at Indianapolis, then flying to Charlotte for the 600, roughly 1,100 miles of racing in a day. Experts have disagreed over whether anyone should be allowed to do it, but no governing body has set a rule against it. Kyle Larson tried in 2024, though rain stopped him racing in the 600.

Since 2017 the stage format has applied, and the 600 is the only race with four stages, of 100 laps each. A driver sweeping every stage and passing inspection can take 70 points, a total reached by Kyle Busch in 2018 and Larson in 2021. The military tribute includes "Amazing Grace" and "Taps", and all drivers shut off their engines after the second stage for a moment of silence.

Coca-Cola 600 races worth remembering

The inaugural race had a frightening crash in which Lenny Page was badly hurt, and reporter Chris Economaki applied CPR until safety crews arrived and was later credited with saving his life. In 1974 the fuel crisis shortened the race to 540 miles, and Pearson beat Petty in a race with 37 lead changes. Petty took his first 600 in 1975, the same race where Dale Earnhardt made his Cup debut and finished 21st, one place ahead of his future boss Richard Childress.

Waltrip won a record five 600s, in 1978, 1979, 1985, 1988 and 1989. His 1988 victory came during a tyre war between Goodyear and Hoosier, with Hoosier failures rampant. The 1979 race had a record 59 lead changes, and in 1980 Benny Parsons edged Waltrip by a car length after seven hours, 14 cautions and two red flags. The 1992 race was the last to run entirely in daylight, and rival teams said Earnhardt had broken the pit road speed limit. Gordon won his first Cup race here in 1994 by gambling on two tyres.

Brickyard 400, stock cars at the Brickyard

The Brickyard 400 is a NASCAR Cup Series race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in Speedway, Indiana. The first running in 1994 was the first race other than the Indianapolis 500 held there since 1916, and it drew over 250,000 spectators, NASCAR's biggest crowd at the time. Track officials received three to four times as many ticket requests as they could fill and had to use a lottery.

From 1994 to 2020 it ran 400 miles on the 2.5-mile oval. For three years from 2021 it gave way to the Verizon 200 at the Brickyard on the road course, and the oval race returned in 2024. During that gap NASCAR, the media and the drivers stopped calling it a Crown Jewel.

Why it took so long to arrive

The Speedway opened in 1909 and the Indianapolis 500 followed in 1911. A tradition grew that only the 500 would be run there, apart from a meet in 1916. Through the 1980s, speculation about a stock car race grew, helped by NASCAR's years at Ontario Motor Speedway, a replica of Indianapolis. Track management resisted. The old garage area, narrow pit lane and existing walls and fences were considered unsuitable for heavy stock cars, and president Joe Cloutier in particular wanted proof that a second race would out-draw the time trials for the 500.

Near-misses came and went. A 1969 proposal for a Tony Hulman Classic was declined, and in 1982 a handshake deal between Speedway president John Cooper and Bill France Sr. was vetoed by Mary F. Hulman.

Things changed after Tony George became president in December 1989. On 24 September 1991 A. J. Foyt, filming a commercial, took a Winston Cup car around the track, and George took a few laps too. That December George persuaded his board to plan a second major event. In March 1992 Dave Marcis, Jim Sauter and Dick Trickle tested IROC cars, with Trickle hand-timed at 246 km/h (153 mph), and in June nine top Winston Cup teams ran a Goodyear tyre test in front of about 10,000 spectators, an unofficial check that stock cars could compete there.

Building the track for NASCAR

After that test the Speedway replaced the outside retaining wall and catch fence with stronger ones for the 3,500 pound cars, widened the pit area with concrete stalls, and removed the apron to build a new warm-up lane. George and Bill France Jr. announced the inaugural race on 14 April 1993, for Saturday 6 August 1994. Thirty-five teams took part in an open test that August, where Richard Petty, retired the previous November, took four laps and donated his car to the Speedway museum.

Jeff Gordon won the first race and has won five in all, a record, along with three poles, the most laps completed and led and the most prize money. Hendrick Motorsports is the leading team with 11 wins and five poles. To avoid upstaging the Indianapolis 500, some bleachers were removed and infield general admission was not offered for the first several years. After a tyre controversy at the 2008 race, attendance sharply declined.

Coca-Cola 600, Southern 500 and Brickyard 400 compared

Where the Crown Jewels stand now

The Southern 500 is usually the first race of the playoffs, with Cook Out holding the naming rights since 2020 and Christopher Bell its latest winner, in 2026. The Coca-Cola 600 has Daniel Suarez as its defending winner, and the Brickyard 400, back on the oval since 2024, has Corey Heim as its defending winner. The Bristol Night Race remains the one candidate for a fifth Crown Jewel.