Who was the first African-American driver to win a NASCAR Cup Series race?

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Wendell Scott was the first African-American driver to win a NASCAR Cup Series race. He achieved the milestone at the 1963 Jacksonville 200 at Speedway Park in Jacksonville, Florida, a race listed in the 1964 Grand National Series season.

Scott was also a team owner and mechanic who entered NASCAR during an era of intense racial discrimination. He received his NASCAR license in 1954 and made his top-level series debut in 1961. As an independent competitor, he often raced with limited equipment against better-funded factory-backed teams.

Scott was not initially recognized as the winner in Jacksonville. Officials first announced Buck Baker as the victor, but later discovered that Scott had finished ahead by two laps. The official trophy was never recovered, although Scott's family received a replacement trophy decades later.

Bubba Wallace is sometimes confused with Scott because Wallace became the first African-American driver to win a NASCAR Cup Series pole in the modern era and later became a prominent Cup winner. Scott's historic victory, however, came more than five decades earlier.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Aug. 2026

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