I went on an international vacation thinking it was a good opportunity to relax before the NASCAR season got, well, seriously serious.
But my confidence was a bit premature. All that happened was Kyle Busch picked up his 200th and 201st wins in the three NASCAR National Series, tying and then breaking Richard Petty’s record. We also got some qualifying controversy, and a 2020 schedule that provided some much-needed shuffling and experimentation.
Controversy and debate ensued. I didn’t get to be a part of it. Except for my internal monologue. I’m taking medication to control that.
Anyways, we had races, and stats happened. Here’s my pick of the litter for last weekend.
Busch picks up 201
It was a record ready-made for controversy. Richard Petty had 200 National Series wins. They were all in the top-notch Cup level, however, many came in an era when the top drivers didn’t show up every week … with the exception of Petty, who picked up a multitude of wins against fields that he frankly outclassed.
Kyle Busch, on Saturday, picked up his 201st win. Only 26 percent of those came in that Cup Series. The rest came in the Xfinity and Truck series, where Busch had a leg up in terms of equipment and experience.
So, judge this how you will. My viewpoint is that both figures are impressive in entirely different eras of NASCAR. Busch’s 201 wins are nowhere near an end point, however. His wins pace has yet to slow.
Busch is winning an insane 58.3 percent of his starts across the three series this season (seven for 12). His previous highest mark for a season came in 2010, when he won 24 times across 81 starts (29.6 percent).
But that year, he won only three times in the Cup Series. He’s already one away from that mark.
Hot-dogging at Martinsville
After Busch won back-to-back races at Phoenix and California, it was Brad Keselowski playing spoiler with a dominating win at Martinsville. He led the final 127 laps of the race, and 446 of 500 for the day.
Since 2010, it was just the 11th Cup race in which the winner led at least 80 percent of the laps. It was the fourth-highest percentage of laps led by a winner in a race in that span, but not even Keselowski’s highest mark. Brad led 95.8 percent of laps in his September 2014 win at Richmond.
And it set a modern-era (since 1972) record for laps led in a Martinsville race, breaking the mark of 431 set by Jeff Gordon in April 1997.
Two-team Show
It doesn’t take a statistical savant to notice that we’ve had a trend with our winners this season.
Three from Joe Gibbs Racing, three from Team Penske.
That marks the first time there has been just two teams winning the first six races of the season since 1999, when Hendrick Motorsports (two wins by Jeff Gordon and one from Terry Labonte) and Roush Fenway Racing (two from Jeff Burton and one from Mark Martin) pulled off the feat.
Those teams couldn’t extend the streak to seven races, however. The seventh race that year, at Bristol, was won by Team Penske’s Rusty Wallace.
This could potentially be the first time in Cup Series history that the first seven races of the season were won by just two different teams.