Fans Xfinity Series Issues are Driven by Bias and Misconceptions
Kyle Busch won another Xfinity Series race Saturday, again in dominating fashion. Social media seemed especially annoyed with this week’s win, Busch’s third in a row. Does NASCAR’s second series have a Kyle Busch problem, a Joe Gibbs Racing problem, or is it something else?
Before talking about the current state of the Xfinity Series, I think a little history lesson is in order.
In 1982, NASCAR created the Budweiser Late Model Sportsman Series to help curb the rising costs Late Model racers were facing and to give drivers and teams a chance to race on bigger tracks. (It became the “Busch Grand National Series” in 1994.) Do you know who won the very first not-yet-the-Busch Series* race in 1982? Dale Earnhardt. 1980 Winston Cup Series champion Dale Earnhardt. So right from Day 1 NASCAR established that Cup stars – champions – winning was perfectly OK by them. Later that season, other Cup stars like Geoff Bodine and Harry Gant would win races in the series. When the series went to Rockingham, three-time series champion and 105-race winner David Pearson was the winner. At the Charlotte fall race, defending (and about to become back-to-back) Winston Cup champion Darrell Waltrip was the winner.
(*For simplicity’s sake, I’m just going to keep calling it the Busch Series from now on, even though “Budweiser Late Model Sportsman Series” and “Busch Grand National Series” sure are word count-friendly.)
However, in 1982 only eight of the 29 Busch Series races were run as the companion race to a Winston Cup race, and the majority of the races were won by drivers who were not running at the Cup level.
When people talk about the “good old days” of the Busch Series, when are they talking about? Thirty years ago? Do you know who tied for the lead in the Busch Series in wins in 1986? Dale Earnhardt, with five wins. Darrell Waltrip, by then a three-time Cup champion, won four races. Morgan Shepherd, a full-time Cup driver with a win by that point (so think…I don’t know…Paul Menard? A.J. Allmendinger?) won four races. Tim Richmond won a race. That’s 14 combined wins among four Cup drivers out of 27 total races on the season. That’s over half the races! And these are the “good old days”!
Are people talking about 20 years ago? Who led the Busch Series in wins in 1996? Mark Martin, who was on a seven-year streak of winning Cup races and finishing in the top-six in the Winston Cup points. It couldn’t have been ten years ago, because in 2006 Kevin Harvick won nine races, and non-Cup drivers won a total of ONE race out of 35.
Basically, when Cup drivers are in an Xfinity Series race, they win. As they should, since they are, by definition, the best drivers. And that is the way it has been since the first race the series ever had.
Now, nobody likes repeated domination, although even with that context matters (see Kevin Harvick winning at Phoenix – again – but with major style points for the finish which meant my Twitter feed was overflowing with positivity.) But is it a Kyle Busch problem? If – say – Dale Earnhardt Jr. was the one crushing fools week after week in one of his Xfinity cars (which have been quietly awesome so far in 2016 thanks to Joe Gibbs Racing’s excellence) I can’t imagine we would be living with Junior Fatigue. And if Kyle Busch wasn’t the one winning these races, but Erik Jones or Daniel Suarez were, we would just be complaining that JGR was stinking up the show and probably cheating.
More racing: NASCAR: Kyle Busch Is A Legend Whether You Like It Or Not
So is it a JGR problem? Maybe. It is hard to argue it is not with consecutive 1-2-3 finishes for the team, especially with Erik Jones’ repeated attempts to give away good finishes early in the season. However, the 18 is only seven points ahead of the 88 in the owner’s standings, and with one bad race the 18 could easily drop as low as eighth in the standings.
Maybe the answer is “small sample size” and over the next four races the field will start to equalize, and by midseason other teams (looking at you, Team Penske) will have shaken up the Xfinity Series from its current JGR-sized shadow. After all, nobody ever dominates NASCAR for too long.