This week we dedicate to the G.O.A.T. Across a wide range of sports, we will debate and remember the Greatest Of All Time, and look ahead to who’s next. Follow along here.

The King, The Intimidator or Superman?

If you had to narrow down the best NASCAR drivers for a GOAT debate, you’re unquestionably left with these three: Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Jimmie Johnson. They stand alone in a three-way tie for a NASCAR-Cup-Series record seven championships.

Sure, Jeff Gordon was a prodigy, Darrell Waltrip and David Pearson dominated, Cale Yarborough is a legend and Kyle Busch is pushing his way into the conversation. But between Petty’s, Earnhardt’s and Johnson’s championships and how high they rank on the all-time wins list, they’re the only ones who belong in the GOAT debate — for now, at least.

And at the moment, Johnson has the lead for the NASCAR GOAT.

“I used to say Dad [was the GOAT], hands down,” Dale Earnhardt Jr. recently told For The Win. “But it’s harder for me since Jimmie won those five in a row, and now he’s got seven total and equals my father.”

Not only is Dale Jr. analyzing NASCAR for a living now, but between his father and being good friends with Johnson, his bias might actually lend more credibility to his opinion rather than diminish it. And he said, in his mind, Johnson’s five consecutive titles between 2006 and 2010 forced him to reconsider his opinion.

Those consecutive titles — he won the other two in 2013 and 2016 — are what separate Johnson from the other legendary seven-time champions. Five in a row was unprecedented.

Setting aside recency bias and looking at Petty’s, Earnhardt’s and Johnson’s careers, the challenge is finding a method for comparing the seven-time title trio because they competed in different eras, making it difficult to compare the levels of competition.

“It’s so hard to know for sure because the cars were so vastly different each decade,” Dale Jr. said. “That makes it difficult for me to really compare my dad to Richard Petty or my dad to Jimmie Johnson or Jimmie Johnson to Richard Petty.”

Petty owned the 1960s and ’70s, Earnhardt had control in the ’80s and early ’90s and Johnson has been the most dominant driver of the 21st century. On paper, Petty looks like the easy GOAT. But with context, Johnson gets the edge.

Stats are the only real way to compare the three, but they also come with extensive footnotes. But — with a massive assist from NASCAR’s Racing Reference database — we’ll give it a shot anyway.

Richard Petty

Total races: 1,184 between 1958 and 1992

Career wins: 200, No. 1 all-time wins list

Daytona 500 wins: 1964, 1966, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1979, 1981

Winningest season: 1967, 27 wins in 48 races

Championship years: 1964, 1967, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1979

Dale Earnhardt Sr.

Total races: 676 between 1975 and 2001*

Career wins: 76, No. 8 all-time wins list

Daytona 500 wins: 1998

Winningest season: 1987, 11 wins in 29 races

Championship years: 1980, 1986, 1987, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994

*He tragically died on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500, the season-opener.

Jimmie Johnson

Total races: 615 between 2001 and 2018*

Career wins: 83, T-No. 6 on the all-time wins list

Daytona 500 wins: 2006, 2013

Winningest season: 2007, 10 wins in 36 races

Championship years: 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2016

*Although 2019 isn’t close to his best season, it’s not over yet, so we’re not counting it here.

At first, Petty’s 200 wins in the Cup Series jump out on these brief resumes — along with a record seven Daytona 500s. The number of total wins is impossible to ignore. He has almost twice as many as anyone else, and because of the changes in NASCAR’s format between early stock car racing and the modern era, it’s all but guaranteed that he’ll stand alone with 200 forever.

(Busch hit 200 earlier this year, but that was across NASCAR’s three national series.)

Related Why Jimmie Johnson fights back when fans tell him not to run the Boston Marathon

But the other eye-catching detail is, of course, Johnson’s consistency in the 2000s.

“Jimmie Johnson won five championships in a row — that’s just bonkers,” Dale Jr. said.

“When I look at that on a sheet of paper, it’s still hard to believe that that happened. That, to me, is one of the greatest accomplishments of our industry, right next to the 200 wins from Richard Petty [and] seven championships from Jimmie, Dad, and Richard. But five in a row? It’s just insane. … That’s crazy. It’s just impossible to do, and he did it.”

What’s also noticeable when comparing Petty’s, Earnhardt’s and Johnson’s best seasons is the level of competition dramatically increases over time — like with any sport. One way to identify that shift is to look at the races they won and then compare the number of drivers who finished those races on the lead lap and by how many laps the next-highest finishers were down.

With each of their careers spanning multiple decades, let’s continue examining their best seasons and some averages for the races they won.

Richard Petty: 1967

Wins/Races: 27/48 (56.25 percent)

Average finishing on the lead lap: 1.37 cars

Average laps the first car off the lead is down by: 2.85 laps

Dale Earnhardt Sr.: 1987

Wins/Races: 11/29 (37.93 percent)

Average finishing on the lead lap: 5.91 cars

Average laps the first car off the lead is down by: 1.27

Jimmie Johnson: 2007

Wins/Races: 10/36 (27.77 percent)

Average finishing on the lead lap: 20 cars

Average laps the first car off the lead is down by: 1

More often than not, Petty was the only one on the lead lap when he won those 27 races, and the number of drivers he was competing against back then was inconsistent and sometimes didn’t break 20 in a race. The competition got noticeably stiffer for Earnhardt, especially in his later years. However, neither he nor Petty faced the high-level feats of engineering Johnson has gone up against.

That’s not to take away from Petty’s or Earnhardt’s accomplishments. They’re both icons in their own right, and that will never change.

But Johnson currently has enough advantages to give him the edge in the GOAT debate. His seven championships span across four different postseason systems, and he and his team adapted to win throughout multiple evolutionary changes to NASCAR’s uniform cars. Plus the five consecutive titles. That’s GOAT-ness.

There’s little doubt Kyle Busch will find himself comfortably in this debate one day. And if Johnson wins his coveted eighth title, this discussion will officially be over.

But for now, we’re left with arguments over an impossible comparison that may never have an undisputed winner. And that’s OK.

“It’s a really challenging question that I don’t know if I’ll ever have an answer for,” Dale Jr. said.