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Following the conclusion of the 2023 NASCAR season, voting for the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) Most Popular Driver Award across the three National Series is now open.
The poll for the Most Popular Driver for the Cup, Xfinity, and the Truck Series presented by Hooters opened on November 7, at noon ET and will run until Wednesday, November 29.
Fans can vote for a single driver once daily until the poll closes at the end of the month. To register your vote for your favorite driver, head to NASCAR.com or the mobile app.
The results of the 2023 NMPA Most Popular Driver for the three series will be announced during the NASCAR Awards Ceremony scheduled on Thursday, November 30. The event will be held in Nashville, Tennessee at the Music City Center, where the champions for the current season will be formally honored.
The event will be telecasted at 7 PM ET, Sunday, December 3 on Peacock. MRN radio broadcast will be streamed on its website and on SiriusXM.
Curtis Turner was the first recipient of the Most popular award back in 1949. The prize has been presented annually since 1983 and is the only NASCAR award solely determined by the fans.
Only 20 drivers have won the award with the Elliotts and Dale Earnhardt Jr. sweeping the awards for the past decades. Bill Elliott has won a record 16 awards - 1984-88, 1991-2000, and 2002. Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the award between 2003-2017.
Chase Elliott, son of 'Awesome Bill from Dawsonville', is the reigning award winner for the past five seasons, since Earnhardt Jr's retirement. Last year, Noah Gragson won the award in the Xfinity Series and Hailie Deegan won the honor in the Truck Series.
Tony Stewart draws a parallel between NASCAR driver crew-chief relationship and marriage
3x NASCAR Cup Series champion Tony Stewart compared the relationship between a driver and his crew chief to a married couple. The Stewart Haas Racing team co-owner made the parallelism in a recent video titled Mentor & Mentee.
Stewart was advising his #14 Ford driver Chase Briscoe on the importance of communication between a crew chief and driver over the course of a race weekend.
"I think it’s a lot like a marriage. Because no matter how it’s going during that race, for the time that you’re in that car with that crew chief, is your crew chief for the entire race," Stewart said.
The NASCAR veteran concluded that effective and clear communication from a driver can help a crew chief make the right setup choices before and during the race.
"Whether it’s going good going bad, whether you’re frustrated with him or he’s frustrated with you, you have to communicate. You have to keep that communication going. But I think one of the biggest keys is understanding each other’s language," he said.
