Meet Kyle Busch

Meet Kyle Busch. In the past I have always been kind of mostly not interested in NASCAR at all. But for some reason, when it started this year I just want to watch it all the time. It's weird. So it would be fair to say that I am not completely of all the factors involved with what I am about to tell you, but this is my perception of the whole thing.

In NASCAR there are many different levels of races, much like in baseball there is major league, minor league, AAA, and so forth. The top two levels of NASCAR races are featured on television every weekend. The highest level is Sprint Cup racing, the next level is Nationwide Series racing. Nationwide races are not as long, and the winning purse is not as heavy as a Sprint Cup race; but usually they are at the same track every weekend. Nationwide drivers are allowed to enter in Sprint races, but they are not eligible to earn points toward the Sprint Cup, and Sprint Cup drivers are allowed to enter Nationwide races and again are not eligible for points toward earning the Nationwide title. Now I may be wrong about this next part, but again this is how I perceive this; the two series use different race cars. A Nationwide car cannot be entered into a Sprint race and vice versa.

Back to Kyle Busch. Kyle Busch is in fact a very good race driver. He is a top contender for the Sprint Cup victory this year and seemingly every year. He has a tendency to lead laps for most of the race and then win the race in almost every race this year. But he also enters every Nationwide race as well. He says he does it to try and get a feel for the track. This makes sense, he will be racing in a Sprint Cup race the next day and knowing the ins and outs of the racetrack could be very helpful. He also drives in the truck series, when the trucks are at the same track as Nationwide and Sprint Cup it is not unusual to see him race three days in a row. But he's a cocky jerk and here is why.

He owns his own race team. He has a couple years of Sprint Cup racing under his belt and has been successful at it, therefore he has a bit of money to use when building his race cars. It seems to me that for a guy who is ineligible to win the Nationwide title he has been winning a lot of Nationwide races! You might think, oh so what, the leading Nationwide driver still gets the points for the Nationwide series. However there is so much more involved with this. You see, the day after the race can you tell me who finished second? Third? Tenth? There are forty-two other drivers on the track that mostly will be forgotten to have been racing that day. The best thing to help you build a winning race car is money, the best way to get money is to have sponsorships. The best way to get sponsorships is to win races. It's sad to watch a Nationwide race and see so many plain cars! Drivers without sponsors! Barely making it from track to track on whatever the purse was for whatever position they finished in!

The other factor that comes immediately to mind is the winning purse. No driver that makes it into a NASCAR race goes home empty handed. Even the guy that finishes last gets a winnings purse. But the guy that wins gets a really big purse. The value steps down a little with each finishing position after that. Sprint Cup driver or not, if you win you get the big purse. There is no discrimination there. Nationwide drivers with no sponsors could really use that winning purse. A Sprint Cup purse is HUGE compared to a Nationwide purse. Kyle could do without the Nationwide winnings and still be able to fund his race team just fine.

Kyle Busch is a Sprint Cup driver, he has plenty of money and he gets victories in Sprint Cup races. I understand the value in running the track in a race the day before to be able to know how it will be when you are in a race that matters. But there is no reason to win a race that you aren't even eligible to take the series title with. Maybe if he would just focus on feeling out the track instead of winning he would have less stress in his life. This would make him more at ease the next day and he might get even more Sprint Cup victories! Not to mention saving wear and tear on his Nationwide car. The financial impact from that alone should negate the lack of Nationwide winnings by itself!

Now it's true, a Nationwide driver won the Daytona 500 this year. But at that point most of the big name Sprint Cup drivers had been taken out of the race due to crashes. Also, even though he has been driving in Sprint Cup races since that day, he has not come close to winning a single one of them. And really a Nationwide driver winning a Sprint Cup race is such a rare occurrence that it is negligible for the other side of this argument. Kyle Busch goes out and wins every time!

Anyway, enjoy the rest of the NASCAR season and have a good day today.

P.S. Kyle isn't the only Sprint Cup driver to crash the party, on average I notice the first eligible Nationwide driver doesn't usually cross the finish line until fifth or sixth place.