NASCAR Cup Series: Why Richard Petty’s 200 victories are overrated

By William Richard | Mar 8, 2019

Richard Petty, NASCAR (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images) /

With Kyle Busch sneaking towards the 200-win mark in NASCAR, much conversation surrounds Richard Petty. But Petty’s 200 wins are severely overrated.

The NASCAR weekend that took place at Las Vegas Motor Speedway was filled with none other than 2015 Cup Series champion, Kyle Busch. The hometown favorite in Sin City won two of NASCAR’s three sanctioned events at the high-banked 1.5-mile (2.414-kilometer) oval in Las Vegas, Nevada.

After dominating Friday night’s Truck Series race, the Strat 200, Busch found victory lane again after rallying from going one lap off the lead lap and controlling two overtime restarts in Saturday’s Xfinity Series race, the Boyd Gaming 300.

Sunday’s Cup Series race didn’t produce the same result, as Busch landed himself a speeding penalty near the halfway point of the Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube. He did, however, rally to finish in third place.

At this point, you are probably asking what any of this has to do with Richard Petty. Well, if you follow the sport closely, you know exactly what the connection is here. Busch is quickly approaching 200 career NASCAR wins.

Currently at 197 career NASCAR wins, the great debate among fans has become, “are Busch’s wins as impressive as Petty’s?”. With great debate from both sides of the conversation, there’s no doubt that when Busch finally reaches the 200-win mark at some point in the 2019 season, the NASCAR community will have much to talk about.

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I’m not here to discuss the topic today, but I will when Busch finally eclipses this historic mark. I have personal feelings about this conversation that I can’t wait to share, but good things come to those who wait! As for my topic today, I want to pin-point something I have believed for years.

Richard Petty’s 200 wins are overrated.

Before you lose your mind or decide to cut me off forever, I want to set a disclaimer. I have the utmost respect for “The King”, and I understand how important he was and still is to the sport of NASCAR. I’m not blind to the fact that for decades Petty was the face of the sport, and without him, NASCAR may never have reached the popularity that it has today.

With that in mind, I’d like to respectfully make the case for why Petty’s 200 wins are overly talked about and overly praised when they are compared to modern-day NASCAR wins earned by modern-day talent. Let’s get to it!

The biggest argument regarding Petty’s historic win mark is the fact that more races were run each season several decades ago. Between the years of 1966 and 1971, during which Petty earned 100 of his career wins, he averaged 45.33 starts per season. That’s more than nine more starts per season than races on the current Cup Series schedule.

To take a better look into this, let’s look at some percentages. During those six seasons, Petty competed in 272 races. Winning 100 of those events, he finished with a 36.76% win percentage. If we reduced the number of races to 36 races per year and used the same win percentage, he would have won 79 races instead of 100.

Do this through the early 1960s as well, and more of Petty’s wins are gone.

In addition to competing in more races, Petty competed against fewer cars than a typical Cup Series field features today. Let’s take Petty’s most successful season to date, 1967, when he won 27 of the 48 races in which he competed.

In those 48 races, Cup Series fields averaged roughly 30 cars per race. A few races during the season featured more than 40 cars, but the season also featured fields as small as 16 and 18 cars on multiple occasions. Fewer cars equaled fewer drivers to challenge Petty.

If you need another season to back up my claims, let’s look at 1971. Petty competed in 46 races, which averaged roughly 34 cars per race. This number may only be two to six cars fewer than the number of cars that compete in today’s Cup Series races, but at one point Cup Series races featured 43 cars every Sunday, which means that the fields against which Petty competed were nearly 25% smaller than some of the historic fields that the sport witnessed in the 1990s.

Another statistic to look at from this era is the number of cars that finished races. Not only did fewer cars compete, but a larger percentage of the field never saw the finish line.

Going back to 1967 when an average of roughly 30 cars showed up to the race track, only an average of 15 cars managed to finish the race, and many of those cars finishes these races multiple laps down and completely out of contention.

Though not Petty’s fault for the struggles that other teams faced, it was very common to have nearly half of the field face mechanical issues or be involved in crashes before races ended. Obviously the technology of today prevents much of this, which is another sign that today’s fields are much stronger than those of the 1960s and 1970s.

Overall, “The King” had an amazing career, but he didn’t face the level of competition that today’s drivers go up against week in and week out. Not only did he have some of the best equipment in the garage, but fields were smaller and had fewer cars finishing each event.

It’s simple math. More races plus fewer cars meant more success for Petty in the first few decades of his career. It’s not his fault, but it’s reality. Sports change; sometimes they get easier, sometimes they get harder.

In other leagues such as the NFL or NBA, it has become easier to score points. In NASCAR, the competition has gotten so close, that even the Trucks Series and Xfinity Series fields could rival Cup Series fields from decades ago.

I admire Petty and everything that he accomplished, but facts are facts. At the end of the day, we can still put him on the Mount Rushmore of NASCAR legends, but it is apparent that his 200 wins are vastly overrated.

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Thanks for reading! We’d love to get your thoughts on this controversial topic! I hope you enjoyed this past weekend at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. See you next time!

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