Sportscasting | Pure Sports
Home / NASCAR / NASCAR Community Mourns Passing Of Beloved Team Owner Bill Davis

NASCAR Community Mourns Passing Of Beloved Team Owner Bill Davis

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
Updated –
We publish independently audited content meeting strict editorial standards. Ads on our site are served by Google AdSense and are not controlled or influenced by our editorial team.
Bill Davis

Former NASCAR Cup Series team owner Bill Davis, a staple of the sport for more than 20 years, passed away over the weekend. He was 74.

Davis, who fielded entries in each of NASCAR’s three national stock car series at different times between 1988 and 2008, may be best known for winning the 2002 Daytona 500 with Virginia’s Ward Burton.

Together, Davis and Burton went to Victory Lane together five times in NASCAR’s premier division.

Although Davis never scored a Cup Series win with another driver, the Fayetteville, Arkansas native was no stranger to success in NASCAR.

Bill Davis Had Some Great Moments In All 3 Of NASCAR’s National Stock Car Series

As a team owner in the NASCAR Xfinity Series, Bill Davis celebrated 11 victories from 1988-2004 to go along with a career-best third-place points finish in 2002 with driver Scott Wimmer.

Davis also collected three Xfinity Series race-winning trophies with a young Jeff Gordon, who spent the 1991 and 1992 seasons with Davis in NASCAR’s No. 2 division before going full-time Cup racing for Hendrick Motorsports in 1993. Gordon, now a NASCAR Hall of Famer, of course went on to record four Cup Series championships and 93 Cup wins.

Davis found his greatest success in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series, where he captured the 2008 championship with Johnny Benson and his drivers notched 24 wins over a short five-year run from 2004-2008.

Bill Davis Racing ceased operations after the 2008 season, with the company’s namesake keeping a pretty low profile in the years following his exit from the sport.

All told, Davis played the role of team owner for multiple NASCAR Hall of Fame drivers. Along with Gordon, they include 2000 Cup Series champion Bobby Labonte and five-time Cup Series championship runner-up Mark Martin.

Davis retired from NASCAR with 40 wins across the three national stock car divisions.

How The NASCAR World Reacted To The News Of Bill Davis’ Death

Naturally, many throughout the sport of NASCAR and NASCAR itself have offered tributes since learning that Bill Davis has passed away.

“A championship-winning leader and owner, Bill Davis made a lasting mark on our sport through his passion and unwavering belief in the people around him,” NASCAR said in a statement, which you can read in full below. “His teams celebrated some of NASCAR’s most prestigious victories, including the Daytona 500 and the Southern 500. Bill was more than a competitor — he was a friend to all in the garage, respected for his kindness, generosity, and genuine love for racing.”

Ward Burton, the driver probably most closely associated with Davis, paired condolences with a Victory Lane photo of himself, Davis and crew chief Tommy Baldwin at the 2002 Daytona 500.

Speaking of Baldwin, the winning crew chief for four of Burton’s five career Cup Series wins also shared his heartfelt thoughts on Davis.

NASCAR executive Chip Wile, who formerly served as a PR representative for Bill Davis Racing, called his old boss “a steady influence on so many people’s lives.”

Here’s the full statement from Wile, which is broken up into a post and two replies from Wile to his original post on social media platform X.

Longtime FOX NASCAR lead announcer Mike Joy also opened up about what Davis meant to him.

Jared Turner Written by Sports EditorJared Turner
Jared Turner is a motorsports writer who has covered NASCAR for 20 years. He has interviewed over 20 NASCAR Hall of Famers and around 100 drivers, crew chiefs, and team owners, both past and present. He has also covered the sport for FOX Sports (where he was a two-time recipient of the FOX “X” Award for “Xtraordinary” job performance), NASCAR.com, Sporting News, NASCAR Pole Position Magazine, the SPEED network, and plenty of other online and print-only publications throughout his career. Notably, Jared has penned dozens of articles for NASCAR souvenir programs, including several featured prominently in Daytona 500 keepsakes. A Virginia Press Association award winner and former member of the National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA), Jared has racked up accolades both for his writing and his academic work. He studied both Communication and Psychology at Virginia Tech, where he was permanently enshrined in Phi Beta Kappa — the nation’s oldest and most prestigious academic honor society. Jared excels at feature writing and opinion writing, much of which stems from his dedication to all levels of racing.
All posts by Jared Turner
Other News