Has Ken Schrader ever won the iconic Daytona 500 race? All you need to know

Ken Schrader, who raced in 763 NASCAR Cup Series races, 116 Xfinity races, and 105 Truck Series races, has ended the Daytona 500 with top 10 finishes, 22 times. He began racing in 1971 and went on to have a successful, and elaborate career in NASCAR where he raced for 42 years, finally retiring on 27 October 2013.

Schrader's racing in the Daytona 500 began in 1984 when he made his debut at the speedway. From 1988 to 1990, he won the pole position three times, consecutively. He, however, has never won the Daytona 500 race.

Schrader did win the Busch Clash in both 1989 and 1990 and also became victorious in Daytona 500 qualifying races in 1987 and 1989. A heartbreaking and tragic incident that became a part of Schrader’s experience at the race was the crash of Dale Earnhardt during the 2001 race that led to his death.

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“What I saw in the car that day, that will stay with you,” Ken Schrader on Dale Earnhardt’s death

In a deeply emotional recollection, NASCAR driver Ken Schrader shared his experience of seeing Dale Earnhardt's fatal crash during the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500. In an interview conducted with LA Times just a month after, Schrader described the haunting image of finding his friend and fellow racer lifeless in his car—a memory that stayed with him. He said:

“What I saw in the car that day, that will stay with you,”

“I saw a friend in trouble. I didn’t know for certain [he was dead], but I would have bet. That sticks with you.”

The crash resulted from Earnhardt’s car making contact with Sterling Marlin’s car sending him crashing into the turn 4 wall. Schrader could not avoid the collision and struck Earnhardt’s car on the passenger side. Once the cars stopped, he ran to check on Earnhardt.

After the incident, Schrader informed Michael Waltrip, who had just won the Daytona 500, of the mishap. He did not at the moment, reveal information about Dale’s condition to the media, when he was being interviewed, having been of the view that it wasn’t his place to disclose the information. He said:

“I didn’t think it was my place to tell the world.”

“But anybody I’ve talked to before—and I’ve even got a lot of emails from fans who know me only from watching interviews—they said they knew it was serious from that interview.”

Following the incident, there had been rumors about Ken Schrader considering retirement from the sport, to which he answered by saying out of all the things he thought at the time of the crash, quitting wasn’t one of them.

“When I walked up to that car, I thought about a lot of things over the next couple of hours and quitting was never on the list.”

Mike Helton, the President of NASCAR at the time announced Earnhardt's death a few hours later, the cause of his death being a basilar skull fracture.