Leading Laps Matters. Leading the Most Laps Doesn’t

People often cite leading laps as one requirement for a good driver. Laps led is one of the few stats that goes way back in terms of record keeping. Before loop data and transponders, races offered a limited number of things your could count. But who lead each lap was one of them.

Given the data-taking devices we have today, is the laps led metric really useful?

Leading Laps is Never Bad

I’m not suggesting that leading laps is a negative. But points are awarded only on three laps: The ends of stages 1 and 2, and the final lap. (Only the Coca Cola 600 has a four stages.) We award a champion based on points, not laps led.

Therefore, the argument that leading the most laps somehow gives a driver an edge on winning a race — or a championship —strikes me as odd. Let’s see if there’s any merit to those arguments.

I restrict the analysis to the stage-racing era (2017-present) in order to hold as much constant as possible. Leading at the the end of a stage became a priority that wasn’t present in seasons past.

I’m also ignoring the fact that, just as all lead changes are not equal, all laps led are not equal. It makes a difference if you inherited the lead and led laps because of that, or if you had a really fast car and made a green-flag pass for the lead.

Leading Laps and Winning Championships

I begin by looking for a relationship between leading laps and winning a championship. There ought to be more of a correlation in the stage racing era because there’s more of a premium put on being up front throughout the race.

I am not suggesting there’s anything suspicious or wrong if a champion didn’t also lead the most laps that year. I’m questioning whether laps led is really all that good an indication of a driver’s likelihood to win a championship.

The table below shows the champions for each year from 2017-2020, along with the number of laps they led and their rank in terms of laps led.

In only three of the nine seasons did the driver who won the most laps also win the championship.

• Martin Truex Jr. in 2017
• Kyle Busch in 2019
• Kyle Larson in 2021

But Larson also led the most laps in 2023 and 2024 without winning the championship. In fact, he placed sixth in 2024 after failing to make it to the final championship round. The 2024 champion, Joey Logano, ranked 8th in laps led. 2023 champion Ryan Blaney ranked seventh in laps led, with 562, which is about half the number as sixth-place Larson.

Kevin Harvick suffered much the same fate after leading the most laps in 2020 and finishing fifth overall. That year, the championship went to Chase Elliott, who led the second-most laps — 284 laps fewer than Harick. Harvick led the most laps in 2018, but finished third.

But do these results simply reflect the nature of the win-and-you’re-in championship format? To answer that question, we have to look at a race-by-race level.

Leading Laps and Winning Races

I performed a similar analysis for each race in each season, counting how many races were won by the driver who led the most laps. I included 2026, but we still have four races to go before we know who the champion is.

The table below shows the number of races that were won by the driver leading the most laps. I also included the number of times the driver leading the most laps didn’t finish the race.

In only one year — 2020 were more than half the races won by the driver who led the most laps. Over all nine seasons to date, the highest lap leader won only 41.4% of all races.

Even if you assume that the driver who led the most laps would have won had he or she finished the race, you’re still looking at a significant fraction of races that were not won by the driver who led the most laps.

What About All Those DNFs?

I debated the meaning of DNFs, especially in years like 2024, when there were a lot of DNFs. Let’s put these numbers in context.

Out of the 350 races in this dataset, the driver who led the most laps didn’t finish the race in just 26 of them, or 7.4%.

Out of those 26 races, 12 happened at Daytona and Talladega, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. Of the other 14 cases, two happened at Darlington, Homestead and Michigan. The rest of the tracks only had one case apiece: Sonoma, Indy, Richmond, Phoenix, Nashville, Chicago Street, Atlanta and Bristol.

So that’s a pretty clear indication that leading laps doesn’t really matter at Daytona and Talladega, which is due to high rate of DNFs at those tracks.

So if we revise our question to ‘How often does the driver who leads the most laps and doesn’t DNF win the race, we’re talking 145 races out of 324, or 44.8%.

What About the Driver Leading the Second-Most Laps?

The next logical question is: How many times did the driver who led the second-most laps win the race when the driver leading the most laps didn’t finish the race?

That turns out to be a relatively small number. The driver who led the second-most laps only won three of the races where the driver who led the most laps didn’t finish. That’s 11.5%.

If we count drivers who were among the top-five in laps led for the races where the top driver DNF’ed, they won 16 of the 26 races, or 61.5%. So leading laps does matter.

How Often Does the Winning Driver Lead Only One Lap?

In this dataset, from 2017-2026, there are 12 instances in which the winning driver led only a single lap. To be honest, that’s more than I expected (3.4%.) But the numbers start making send when you realize that

• Daytona accounts for seven of the 12 cases (58.3%)
• Talladega shows up three times (25%)
• Atlanta, in it’s high-banked, pack-racing configuration is responsible for one case
• The Bristol dirt race is the remaining case

If you’re thinking ‘what about Blaney at the Roval?’, so was I. But he led laps earlier in the race.

Tracks Where Leading the Most Laps is Most Likely to Lead to a Win

It’s unlikely for a driver to win a race by leading the most laps at Daytona and Talladega. But are there tracks where it’s more likely for drivers to win the race if they lead the most laps? The table below attempts to answer that question. I required at least three races at a track for it to be included.

Road Courses offer the highest likelihood that the driver leading the most laps will win the race. The Roval is the lowest percentage of cases, but it’s still at 50%.

From the perspective of the 2026 season, let’s make special note of the remaining races on the schedule:

• Phoenix: The leader of the most laps won the race 42.11% of the time.
• Talladega: Laps led has little correlation with likelihood of winning.
• Martinsville: In 52.63% of races, the leader of the most laps went on to win the race.
• Homestead: At this year’s finale track, the leader of the most laps won 2/3 of the races.

Is the Laps Led Metric Useful?

Leading laps is one of those metrics that mathematicians call ‘necessary, but not sufficient’. I think of it this way: Peanut butter is necessary, but not sufficient for a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. You must have peanut butter, but just peanut butter isn’t enough for a PBJ.

Drivers who lead laps tend to win races. But Blaney led the second-most laps this season (1049) and has three wins. Kyle Larson has led the most laps (1215) and won two races. Larson leads the points while Blaney is in fifth place.

The data show that a driver who doesn’t lead laps is unlikely to win races or championships. But leading the most laps doesn’t guarantee success.

Necessary, but definitely not sufficient.