On Tuesday, NASCAR announced its Hall of Fame Class of 2025. Carl Edwards and Ricky Rudd were elected to the Hall from the Modern Era ballot, and Ralph Moody was elected from the Pioneer ballot.
Rudd got 87 percent of the Modern Era votes, Edwards got 52 percent, while Harry Gant finished third, followed by Jeff Burton and Harry Hyde, according to NASCAR.com. Moody got 60 percent of the Pioneer votes, with Ray Hendrick finishing second. The results of the fan vote were Hendrick, Edwards and Gant.
Carl Edwards
Edwards was a fan favorite and best known for doing backflips off of the car after he won a race. He won 72 races across NASCAR’s three national series, including 28 Cup Series wins. While he won a championship in the Xfinity Series in 2007, he didn’t win a championship in the Cup Series, although he came close. He finished second in the Cup Series standings twice; one was in 2011, and that came down to a tiebreaker.
While Edwards is one of NASCAR’s 75 greatest drivers, he isn’t a Hall of Famer. While his performance on the track is good, it isn’t good enough to be in the Hall of Fame. In NASCAR, contributions to the sport, meaning how you help grow the sport and make it better, are a factor for going into the Hall of Fame. Edwards didn’t contribute to the sport; he just drove. No contributions to the sport and on-track performance that was good but not great means Edwards shouldn’t be in the Hall of Fame.
Ricky Rudd
Rudd was NASCAR’s Iron Man. He held the record for most consecutive starts in the Cup Series with 788 until Jeff Gordon broke it in 2015. In 16 straight years, he won at least one race, including races for Richard Childress, Rick Hendrick, and Bud Moore. He was Rookie of the Year in 1977, won 23 races, and had 194 top fives and 29 poles.
Like Edwards, Rudd was listed among NASCAR’s 75 greatest drivers. However, like Edwards, he was just a driver and never won a NASCAR championship. In my book, he didn’t do enough to earn the status of Hall of Famer.
Ralph Moody
What most NASCAR fans probably don’t know is that Moody started as a driver and won five Cup Series races in 1956. In addition to being known as a mechanical whiz, Moody was also a team owner. In 1957, he paired with John Holman to form Holman-Moody Racing, one of NASCAR's most dominant teams. Holman-Moody won 96 Cup Series races, including two Daytona 500s, 83 poles, and two Cup Series championships with David Pearson.
Moody is the only person elected into the Hall of Fame who deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. He fought in World War Two and then built a dominant, championship-winning team that had the biggest drivers of the sports drive for them.
The Landmark Award for Outstanding Contributions to NASCAR went to Dr. Dean Sicking, who helped create the SAFER (Steel and Foam Energy Reduction) barrier, which is used at all NASCAR tracks, helping advance safety in motorsports. The NASCAR Hall of Fame Class of 2025 will be inducted into the hall on January 7, 2025.
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