NASCAR: Kyle Busch sees massive 201-race streak end

Kyle Busch is set to compete in a NASCAR Cup Series race without a chance to win that season’s championship for the first time in six years.

Joe Gibbs Racing’s Kyle Busch missed out on competing in the NASCAR Cup Series Championship 4 the first year it was introduced back in 2014. But he has been a mainstay ever since.

Entering the 2020 season, only one driver had qualified for the Championship 4 for more than three years in a row at any point from 2014 through 2019. That one driver, Busch, had qualified for it for five consecutive seasons.

In his first Championship 4 appearance in 2015, Busch won the title, and he became a two-time champion last year following three consecutive seasons of Championship 4 disappointment, which netted him finishes of third, second and fourth place in the championship standings.

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But this season, Busch, who still has no wins to his name, won’t compete in the Championship 4. In fact, he failed to even qualify for the round of 8.

So when the 35-year-old Las Vegas, Nevada native competes at Kansas Speedway this weekend, he will do it without any chance to win this year’s title.

Busch hasn’t competed in a Cup Series race without any chance to win that season’s title in nearly six years.

Following his disappointing 2014 season, he missed the first 11 races of the 2015 season with injuries suffered in a hard crash in the Xfinity Series season opener at Daytona International Speedway.

But since then, he had entered 201 consecutive races with a chance to win the championship in that particular season, by far the longest streak among active drivers.

That streak is set to come to an end this afternoon at Kansas Speedway, leaving Stewart-Haas Racing’s Kevin Harvick and Joe Gibbs Racing’s Martin Truex Jr. atop that list.

Neither driver qualified for the Championship 4 in 2016 after doing so in 2015, so they have each been championship eligible for each of the 140 races that have been contested since the start of the 2017 season.

The only other driver riding a streak of more than 32 races is Joe Gibbs Racing’s Denny Hamlin, who qualified for last year’s Championship 4. His streak sits at 68.

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Harvick and Truex are set to be joined by Hamlin, Chip Ganassi Racing’s Kurt Busch, Team Penske teammates Joey Logano and Brad Keselowski and Hendrick Motorsports teammates Chase Elliott and Alex Bowman in this year’s round of 8, which is scheduled to begin this afternoon at Kansas Speedway, with live TV coverage provided by NBC beginning at 2:30 p.m. ET.

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