Ranking the 10 Best NASCAR Rivalries of the 2000s

Last week, we ranked what we believed to be the best NASCAR rivalries of all time.

Here, we rank the greatest rivalries in the sport from 2000 to the present.

Frankly, we had a harder time doing this ranking than the all-time one because there have been so many short- or long-term rivalries since the beginning of the new century 15 years ago.

We could easily have picked twice as many rivalries than the 10 we list here. We’re sure you can just as easily list your own top 10 rivalries that may not necessarily align with our picks.

There were some rivalries that merited being in the top 10, but they didn’t make the cut because another rivalry superseded it (for example, instead of Jack Roush vs. Toyota, we went with the more current rivalry of Penske Racing vs. Roush Fenway Racing).

Here’s what we came up. Let us know if you can think of better rivalries.

10. Matt Kenseth vs. Carl Edwards

Admittedly, this one was kind of short-lived, hitting its zenith at Martinsville in 2007 when Edwards almost came close to striking Kenseth.

Edwards tried to play down the incident, initially claiming he was only kidding or playing with Kenseth. But it’s pretty clear this was no game-playing between the two Roush Fenway Racing teammates.

The two had been feuding for nearly a year for a variety of reasons that were never really fully explained by the pair.

And no sooner did the feud explode at the southern Virginia short track, it then almost immediately dissipated.

If you think the rivalry is still going on, guess again. Edwards has now followed his former teammate to Joe Gibbs Racing, where they’re reunited again.

Kenseth even gave Edwards advice about what things are like at JGR before Cousin Carl made the decision to leave Roush Fenway Racing.

9. Denny Hamlin vs. Joey Logano

Even when they were teammates at Joe Gibbs Racing, we never got the impression that Denny Hamlin and Joey Logano were bosom buddies.

And once Logano left JGR for Penske Racing, our suspicions were proven correct when the pair had their run-in at Fontana in 2013.

Unfortunately for Hamlin, he couldn’t leave well enough alone.

Late in the race, he attempted to take out Logano, but he wound up taking himself out—not just of the race, but for the next four weeks after wrecking and sustaining a fractured vertebrae.

The pair didn’t let Hamlin’s absence from the race track impede their feud. They even reportedly exchanged, shall we say, less-than-friendly text messages during the time Hamlin was recovering.

“Nothing went that well,” Hamlin told USA Today at the time.

Because both drivers are still young, this is a rivalry that more than likely is going to reignite once again in the future, if not several more times.

8. Jimmy Spencer vs. Kurt Busch

When it comes to rivalries, it’s too bad Jimmy Spencer was closing in on the end of his Sprint Cup career at the same time Kurt Busch was just getting his own Cup career going.

If they had both continued competing against each other, this had all the earmarks of becoming one of the most prolific rivalries of all time.

The pair had been feuding for the better part of a year when Spencer had enough. He reached into Busch’s car in the garage area of Michigan International Speedway in August 2003 and promptly punched the elder Busch brother in the nose.

That incident was talked about for weeks, if not months—and still gets fans talking about even now.

7. Penske Racing vs. Roush Fenway Racing

Todd Warshaw/Getty Images

In just two seasons, Penske Racing has overtaken Roush Fenway Racing to become the most dominant Ford-powered organization in NASCAR Sprint Cup racing today.

It’s out with the old (the long-simmering Jack Roush vs. Toyota hatred) and in with the more recent battle for Ford supremacy in Sprint Cup.

Roush Fenway Racing had dominated things for Ford for the better part of a decade, including championships by Matt Kenseth in 2003 and Kurt Busch in 2004.

Penske, meanwhile, earned a championship in 2012 when Brad Keselowski drove Dodge to the title in the manufacturer’s final season in NASCAR.

When Penske switched to Fords in 2013, the change was quite apparent. And while RFR struggled mightily, it gave an opening for Penske Racing to assume the No. 1 performing team sporting the blue oval.

For example, Penske Racing won 11 races in 2014, nearly a third of the 36-race season. Only Hendrick Motorsports had more collective wins, capturing 13 checkered flags (four each by Jeff Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Jimmie Johnson and one by Kasey Kahne).

RFR, on the other hand, had just two wins, both by Carl Edwards, who left the team at season’s end to join former teammate Matt Kenseth at the Toyota-powered Joe Gibbs Racing for 2015.

Trevor Bayne has replaced Edwards in the 2015 RFR Sprint Cup lineup, along with holdovers Greg Biffle and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. (both winless in 2014).

Frankly, we expect Penske Racing to further solidify its place as the No. 1 Ford team, while things may actually be even worse for RFR in 2015. If there ever was a team in need of a complete overhaul and makeover, it’s RFR.

6. Juan Pablo Montoya vs. the Field

Mike Stobe/Getty Images

We don’t recall hearing about any going-away or bon-voyage parties for Juan Pablo Montoya after he announced he was leaving NASCAR after the 2013 season and headed back to the open-wheel IndyCar world.

Frankly, Montoya does not appear to be missed one iota by his former Cup peers. It would probably be easier to list the few drivers Montoya didn’t have a run-in with during his seven seasons in the Cup series than to list those whom he did have conflicts with.

JPM was a different type of driver. He tried to muscle his way around, but far too often he got into the path of fellow drivers. And when it came to placing blame, Montoya was almost always the one to lay fault with other drivers than to take the blame himself.

In kind of a way, it’s too bad. We miss JPM. Even though he had a mediocre overall performance record, he certainly made things more interesting and exciting.

5. Jeff Gordon vs. Clint Bowyer

Who can forget the big dust-up between Jeff Gordon and Clint Bowyer in the second-to-last Chase race of the 2012 season at Phoenix.

This was the culmination of a season-long, back-and-forth rivalry between the two drivers.

Gordon finally had enough at Phoenix and stalked Bowyer, eventually dumping him into the wall late in the race.

What followed was a post-race brawl that set a new standard for NASCAR in recent memory.

(Well…at least until the Gordon-Brad Keselowski fight at Texas this past November.)

The Phoenix wreck couldn’t have come at a worst time for Bowyer, as it effectively took him out of the running for the championship in the season-ending finale at Homestead the following week.

Surprisingly, Gordon and Bowyer both played nice in that Homestead race—NASCAR penalties after Phoenix have a way of doing that—which Gordon won, with Bowyer a close second.

4. Brad Keselowski vs. Carl Edwards

This was a battle that spanned both the Sprint Cup and Nationwide Series, where almost every race back in 2009 and 2010 seemed like the stage for yet another conflict between Brad Keselowski and Carl Edwards.

Who can forget Keselowski punting Edwards into the catchfence at Talladega in 2009?

Or, less than a year later, when Edwards took his wrecked race car back on the track at Atlanta with the sole purpose of extracting payback from Keselowski for an incident earlier in that same race.

Edwards got his revenge, flipping Keselowski several times in the process.

Since then, the two have calmed their rivalry quite a bit. Maybe it’s coincidence, but since they both were driving Fords the last two seasons, perhaps they were told to play nice with each other.

But with Edwards driving a Toyota in 2015, we can’t help but wonder if this rivalry is just waiting to be reignited.

3. Jimmie Johnson vs. Jeff Gordon

Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images

This is what we call a gentlemen’s rivalry—most of the time.

For the most part, Johnson and Gordon have been great teammates and friendly rivals.

But even friendly rivalries can sometimes spill over into less-than-friendly battles on the race track. For example, who can forget the October 2007 race at Martinsville, when Gordon and Johnson engaged in a serious fender banging battle to the finish.

And then there was another celebrated battle between the two at Talladega in Spring 2010, which prompted Gordon to say of Johnson, "He's been testing my patience, and it's about reached its boiling point."

I don’t know about you, but Gordon is technically Johnson’s boss (Gordon owns half of Johnson’s car along with Rick Hendrick). And it’s not always wise to take on the boss or try to show him up, especially in front of a national TV audience.

While Gordon and Johnson appear to have long patched up their differences and have gone back to being an optimal example of good teammates, we have to wonder if we’ll ever see them go at it again before Gordon eventually retires.

It would certainly make for great theater once again, if nothing else.

2. Kyle Busch vs. Kevin Harvick

Kevin Harvick and Kyle Busch don’t like each other. Not now, not ever.

They’ve had numerous battles over the years, perhaps the most notable being on pit road post-race at Darlington in 2011. Harvick attempted to do a Jimmy Spencer and tried to reach into Busch’s window to take a swing at him, much like Spencer did to Kyle’s older brother Kurt at Michigan in 2003.

But Harvick fell short of his target, and Busch escaped by pushing his attacker’s unattended car into the pit-road wall, narrowly missing striking several crew members.

Harvick and Busch have had a number of verbal exchanges—typically not with each other, but rather a “he said, he said” deal through the media.

Harvick finally one-upped Kyle in 2014. Not by words or fighting, but rather getting the one thing Busch has longed for for a decade now and still hasn’t achieved: a Sprint Cup championship.

1. Brad Keselowski vs. the Field

Brad Keselowski was born 30 years too late. He would have been right at home mixing it up with the likes of Cale Yarborough, David Pearson, Richard Petty and the like back in the 1970s or 1980s.

Keselowski is the same type of old-school driver as those who preceded him in the Cup series. But at the same time, he oftentimes seems like a man with very few friends out on the racetrack.

Well, maybe other than teammate Joey Logano, who HAS to be nice to Keselowski because that’s what teammates are supposed to do.

Keselowski has taken on the likes of Hendrick Motorsports, Roush Fenway Racing, Carl Edwards, Jeff Gordon, Matt Kenseth, Kevin Harvick and so many more.

He’s kind of replaced Juan Pablo Montoya as the guy in NASCAR who complains the most and accepts blame for incidents the least.

One would think that now, soon to be 31 (Feb. 12), Keselowski would start maturing and be less aggressive with both his driving and his mouth.

We’ve seen just that type of mellowing—finally—from Kyle “Not So Rowdy Anymore” Busch.

But it appears Keselowski is bound and determined to remain “Bad Brad” for as long as he can.

Some may think that Keselowski’s post-race brawl with Gordon at Texas in November was the culmination of his bad behavior.

As much as we hate to say it, we think it may just be the beginning of even more mayhem still to come.

Follow me on Twitter @JerryBonkowski