NASCAR: Kyle Busch’s 197 victories are even more overrated

Richard Petty’s 200 career NASCAR Cup Series victories may be overrated, but Kyle Busch’s 197 career NASCAR victories are even more overrated.

With Kyle Busch nearing 200 career victories across NASCAR‘s top three series and with it seemingly being only a matter of time before he reaches that mark and ties Richard Petty’s all-time record before earning the 201st victory of his career and breaking it, there has been much debate regarding how Busch’s 200 victories should be valued against Petty’s.

Petty never competed in the Xfinity Series or the Truck Series. He earned all 200 of his victories in the Cup Series, and only one driver has a career Cup Series win total that is more than half of Petty’s. That lone driver is David Pearson, who earned 105 victories over the course of his career.

Busch, meanwhile, has earned 51 career Cup Series victories, an all-time record 93 career Xfinity Series victories and an all-time record 53 career Truck Series victories.

My colleague William Richard recently wrote about why he feels Petty’s 200 victories, despite the fact that they are all Cup Series victories, are overrated, and in many respects, he is right.

He made that case that Petty competed in more races per season than the average Cup Series drivers of today do as well as the fact that he competed against smaller and weaker fields than the fields of today’s Cup Series races, and on a regular basis.

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But even while his argument could not be clearer and more convincing, it is no secret that Busch’s 197 victories are even more overrated than Petty’s 200 victories.

Regardless of the competition that Petty faced, how many times he raced and how good the resources were that he had the opportunity to utilize, he was competing at the sport’s highest (and, during many of his seasons, only) level.

Different eras produce different levels of competition in many sports, and Petty dominated his by earning 200 victories competing at NASCAR’s highest level in 1,184 career starts, giving him a career NASCAR win percentage of 16.89%.

Busch has competed in 994 races across the Cup Series, the Xfinity Series and the Truck Series over the course of his NASCAR career. Since he began competing as a full-time Cup Series driver in the 2005 season, he has competed in 940 of these 994 races.

Entering the 2019 season, the 33-year-old Las Vegas, Nevada native had competed in 934 races across the Cup Series, the Xfinity Series and the Truck Series since the 2005 season began. In other words, he had competed in an average of roughly 67 races per season over the course of 14 seasons.

That total is an average of roughly 22 more races per season than Petty competed in from the 1966 season through the 1971 season. During this six-year span, he earned 100 of his 200 career NASCAR victories.

The fact that Busch is only 33 years old and already sits in 11th place on the all-time Cup Series wins list with 51 victories definitely puts him in the discussion as one of the sport’s top 10 if not top five drivers of all-time with a chance to continue to move up the list before he retires.

But his victories in the NASCAR equivalents of MLB’s Double-A and Triple-A do nothing to help his case when it comes to this argument, and these victories account for the overwhelming majority of his NASCAR victories.

Overall, Busch’s 197 victories in 994 career NASCAR starts gives him a career NASCAR win percentage of 19.82%, which is greater than Petty’s career NASCAR win percentage of 16.98%. But Busch’s 51 victories in 501 career Cup Series races give him a career Cup Series win percentage of 10.18%, which is barely half as large as his career NASCAR win percentage.

Busch has earned 146 of his 197 career NASCAR victories (74.11%) in the Xfinity Series or the Truck Series, meaning that he has earned only 25.89% of his NASCAR victories in the Cup Series. The Cup Series is the NASCAR series in which he has earned the smallest amount of victories in the highest amount of races.

Busch’s 93 victories in 346 career Xfinity Series races give him a career Xfinity Series win percentage of a whopping 26.88%, and his 53 victories in 147 career Truck Series races give him a career Truck Series win percentage of a whopping 36.05%.

The reason why Busch’s career NASCAR win percentage is bloated to nearly twice as large as his carer Cup Series win percentage could not be more clear.

Without Busch’s 146 Xfinity Series and Truck Series victories to get him close to 200 total NASCAR victories, no one would be comparing him to Petty right now. No one. Why should a bunch of victories in NASCAR’s feeder series elevate Busch to the level of the seven-time Cup Series champion who will undoubtedly forever hold the Cup Series wins record?

When Busch earns his 200th career NASCAR victory and then goes on to earn his 201st, it will undoubtedly be a major accomplishment that we are not likely to see another driver pull off.

The closest drivers (aside of Petty) to Busch’s current total of 197 career NASCAR victories are Pearson and Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick, who, like Busch, is still an active driver. Both drivers have 106 career NASCAR victories to their names.

But the fact that Busch’s career NASCAR win total is being compared to Petty’s 200 Cup Series victories makes it one of the most overrated statistics if not the most overrated statistic in sports.

Comparing two drivers who competed in different eras is one thing; Petty undoubtedly competed in a less competitive era than Busch has, so Busch has that over him. These comparisons are done all the time in sports, whether you are discussing the MLB, the NBA, the NFL or the NHL among other leagues.

But comparing two drivers and using a total of three different series, primarily two lesser series, to support the case of one of them over the other, the other being the one who competed in only the top series, is another.

This is especially the case considering the fact that the modern era alone has seen drivers such as seven-time Cup Series champion and 83-time Cup Series race winner Jimmie Johnson as well as four-time Cup Series champion and 93-time Cup Series race winner Jeff Gordon. They have both had far more success than Busch has had so far in his Cup Series career.

Why don’t these two drivers get compared to Petty more often when you consider the era in which Petty drove? Is it really because they don’t have the Xfinity Series and Truck Series resumes that Busch has?

You don’t see the college football or basketball careers of NFL or NBA players being used to justify them as the greatest NFL or NBA players of all-time, and if you do, I can guarantee you that the people making these comparisons are being laughed at, perhaps even endlessly.

Busch’s 197 career NASCAR victories are impressive. But they are also insanely overrated, and with him having a career Cup Series win total that is just 25.50% of Petty’s in 42.31% of the amount of starts that Petty made, they likely always will be.

Whose NASCAR victories are more overrated, Kyle Busch’s 197 or Richard Petty’s 200? How long will it take for Busch to earn his 200th career NASCAR victory to tie Petty’s all-time record, and how long will it take after that for him to earn his 201st career NASCAR victory to break Petty’s record?