In an already busy week in news surrounding Kyle Busch in which he has been punched by two generations of Ricky Stenhouse before loudly proclaiming that he sucks, came something that fell a little under the radar.
Busch was announced to be driving for Richard Childress Racing in a one-race cameo in the NASCAR Xfinity Series this upcoming weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Busch, who “retired” from the series after win no. 100 came in 2021, is returning for his fifth start since then. After jumping from Joe Gibbs Racing for RCR after 2022, Busch made four starts in the series for RCR customer team Kaulig Racing in 2023. This will be his first start with RCR in Xfinity Series competition.
There’s a decent reason for Busch to come back to the series this season. Not so much for any of the reasons he named in the above video — RCR driver Austin Hill is leading the points. The NXS shop on the RCR campus is not in dire need of a Cup driver to come in and help them figure things out.
No, the real reason can be found in the numbers. With Busch’s self-admitted struggles this season, getting more track time and helping build his confidence up even a little bit could — and does — help him on Sundays.
The simple reality is that Busch is almost always a better driver for the Cup race when he’s pulling double duty on the weekend in either NXS or the Craftsman Truck Series.
That may seem like a bold claim. But it’s true, and the numbers can back me up on this.
In 2020, after four NASCAR point races, something called COVID-19 forced a dramatic shift in both the schedule that season and how NASCAR has conducted race weekends ever since. In 2020 and 2021, very few Cup weekends had practice or qualifying, in 2021 more to save money as teams prepared for a new car model the next year.
Then, since the start of 2022, NASCAR has severely limited practice time for the vast majority of races. All of this means that Busch has had less track time than ever before in his NASCAR career, a career in which he was usually full-time in NXS too before rules stopped even that.
So, with that in mind, I compiled all of Busch’s Cup results in all NASCAR points races since May 2020 to the end of last year and looked at three specific indicators.
The first is average finish, the second is average number of points scored in a race (which is a max of 60 and helps account for stage points), and the last is average driver rating….
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