Kyle Busch Doesn’t Need His Record Padded!
Monday, July 18th, 2011Story and file photo by: Drew Hierwarter
After his win in the Nationwide Series race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on Saturday a lot of people were making a big deal about it being Kyle Busch’s 100th win in a major NASCAR series. Some were saying that this milestone puts him in the same class as David Pearson (105 wins) and “The King” Richard Petty (200 wins).
Wrong.
The only significance of Saturday’s win is that it was his 49th in the Nationwide Series placing him in a tie with Mark Martin for the most wins, all time, in that series, and that series only. You cannot mix the statistics.
Busch has “only” 22 wins in the same series that Petty and Pearson raced in. Those guys did not have the opportunity to race in the truck series and I don’t think Richard Petty ever raced in Busch Series (or the Sportsman Series, as it was known then) and Racing-Reference.info lists only 6 appearances by Pearson in the Nationwide Series. (He won once, at Rockingham)
As it stands today Kyle Busch is 28th on the all-time list for wins in the Cup Series, he’s tied for first all-time with Mark Martin in the Nationwide Series, and he is second all-time, behind Ron Hornaday in the Camping World Truck Series. (29 wins to Hornaday’s 48)
Now, none of the above is to say that Kyle Busch isn’t a great race car driver. The kid has more raw talent and can do more with a race car than a lot of drivers who are headed for a guaranteed spot in the NASCAR Hall-of-Fame. The fact that he’s only 26 years old also means that he has a lot more wins coming his way.
He needs 33 more wins in the Cup Series to surpass Lee Petty and move into the top ten all-time and there’s no reason to think he can’t do at least that before his career is over.
But let’s stop counting every race he wins, no matter what series it’s in, to make his record on a par with some of the greats just yet. If you’re going to do that why not also include all his wins in Legend Cars or Late Models on local tracks when he was coming up?
There’s no telling how many more records Kyle Busch will set or how far up the all-time list he can climb before he hangs up his helmet for the last time. So we shouldn’t start padding his numbers now by totaling up wins from different series.
It isn’t fair to the others on the all-time list and it isn’t fair to Kyle Busch. He will get the wins and make history all by himself without any help from statistical gymnastics. What we get out of all this is the fun of sitting back and watching him do it!