NASCAR: One stat shows why Kyle Busch is still a huge threat

Kyle Busch’s 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season has been abysmal, but only by his standards. One stat shows why he will be just as big of a threat this year as any other year.

“It’s still 2020.”

How many times have we heard Kyle Busch say or reference that throughout the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series season, in which he is still seeking his first win?

Busch has never started a season with 26 consecutive winless races, but that is exactly how his 2020 regular season went.

More from NASCAR Cup Series

He still hasn’t won a race since he won the 2019 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway to secure his second championship.

Even at that point, he hadn’t won a race in five and a half months. His win in that race is his lone win in the last 15 months (48 races). He is set to enter this year’s playoffs with just three playoff points. He won just one stage throughout the regular season (one playoff point) and finished in ninth place in the regular season point standings (two playoff points). As a result, he is set to enter the playoffs in 14th out of the 16 playoff drivers and below the round of 12 cut line.

By comparison, Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick leads all drivers with 57 playoff points and seven victories. Denny Hamlin, one of Busch’s teammates, was able to win six races and score 47 playoff points.

However, everybody knows that you cannot count Busch out.

Yes, even his 2020 performance shows that.

One statistic in particular illustrates that he should be just as big of a threat this year as he has been every other year.

This stat shows that while Busch hasn’t had the speed needed contend for wins at a lot of tracks where he is used to contending, he is close enough to at least give himself a chance to win the title in the season finale.

Harvick and Hamlin have combined to win half of the season’s 26 races so far this season. Busch hasn’t won any.

But under the current Championship 4 format, there will be four championship-eligible drivers entering the season finale. It won’t simply be Harvick vs. Hamlin.

Busch recorded 11 top five finishes throughout the regular season.

Here you go: that ranked behind only Harvick (17) and Hamlin (15).

So as down of a year as Busch has had, he is still running toward the front regularly (42.3% top five rate, just shy of his 47.2% rate from his championship-winning 2019 campaign, which ranked second behind Hamlin) — and notably more than anybody other than Harvick and Hamlin.

That consistency opens up a whole new ballgame.

Even if he doesn’t break through with a huge win streak later this year, he is going to be tough to stop from stringing together solid point-scoring results and advancing his way through the first three rounds of the playoffs.

And at Phoenix Raceway in the Championship 4, all you need to do is finish higher than your three championship rivals.

Sure, that has taken a victory in each of the first six editions of the Championship 4, and it will likely do so again. But regardless of that fact, everything from the first 35 races of the season goes out the window in this race. It’s all or nothing in that single event.

Busch could have zero wins and Harvick and Hamlin could have 10 each entering the finale, but he would be the champion by winning when it matters most, just like he did last year despite riding a lengthy 21-race win drought.

Looking at Busch’s history at Phoenix Raceway, do you really want to have to beat him there to be crowned champion?

Busch, who hasn’t missed a Championship 4 since 2014 despite having endured two win droughts of longer than 26 races since then, finished in third place there back in March, and he did it without leading any laps.

That third place finish was his worst — his worst — in the last five races at the four-turn, 1.022-mile (1.645-kilometer) oval in Avondale, Arizona, a span during which his average finish is 1.80.

He has finished in fourth place or better in nine of the last 10 races at the track, and his only non-top four finish is a seventh place effort in November of 2017. His average finish during this span is 2.90.

He has led at least 69 laps in seven of the last nine races there, and he led at least 114 laps at the track in four of the five races there from March of 2017 to March of 2019. He won twice during that span.

While Busch sits 54 points behind Harvick to enter the playoffs for the lead of the standings because of the small amount of playoff points he accrued throughout the regular season, the current Championship 4 cut line sits just 19 points ahead of him, right under Team Penske’s Joey Logano.

Getting to the Championship 4 without winning a race may be difficult, but it is more than doable, especially for a driver whose “down year” features him running inside the top five as much as he has.

Next. Top 10 NASCAR drivers of all-time. dark

The Cook Out Southern 500 is scheduled to kick off the 2020 NASCAR Cup Series playoffs this Sunday, September 6 at Darlington Raceway, where Busch led 118 laps last September en route to a third place finish and finished in second back in May. This race, which he won in 2008, is set to be broadcast live on NBC Sports Network beginning at 6:00 p.m. ET.

Home/NASCAR Cup Series