(Photo by Rusty Jarrett/Getty Images for NASCAR)
By capturing the checkered flag on his 24th birthday Saturday, Kyle Busch put his 15th career Cup win in the books, tying him for 45th on the all-time Cup win list (rank:30).
Moreover, that win was his 50th overall in NASCAR's top-three series, tying him with Greg Biffle for third amongst driver wins since the beginning of the Truck Series in 1995. The two drivers ahead of them—Jeff Gordon with 82 and Mark Martin with 60.
Much has been made about these numbers since the win. Primary among them, of course, is being the youngest driver ever to have accumulated 15 Cup wins, 50 overall wins, etc. And that doesn't count all the other records he has set along the way.
Since then, Busch has said his goal is to win 200 races across NASCAR's top three series, a goal he repeated during an interview on Tuesday's "NASCAR Now."
He made it clear that it's just a goal and not necessarily an expectation, and that he knew it would take quite a few more years (18 by his quick calculations) to get there given his average so far.
Busch and others have been careful to make it clear that if he were to do so it would not necessarily be comparable to Richard Petty's record of 200 Cup wins—a point of much contention between "old-school" and "new-school" fans.
Some, including Darryl Waltrip in his latest FoxSports.com column, believe that Busch is not only more talented, but that what he has accomplished—and what he hopes to accomplish—is more impressive than any of those who have come before him.
And DW is not the only one. Articles and opinion pieces abound around the net asking the question about whether or not counting wins outside of the Cup series should mean anything at all and if they do, what they should mean in comparison to wins accumulated by past drivers.
Most of the contention there comes up when discussing the "relative value" of a Nationwide or Truck series win today compared to at least some of the Cup wins racked up by others thirty or forty years ago.
Some argue that only Cup wins count and given that, no one will ever top "The King"—especially as the season contains so many fewer races today than it did back when Petty was winning races at a rate of up to 27 per year.
Others argue that the level of competition of many of those races pales in comparison to the level of competition today—especially given the parity amongst teams and manufacturers today across all three series.
Couple that increased level of competition with the versatility necessary to be able to run and win in three very different types of cars against drivers of all skill levels—often in the same weekend—and you have a strong argument that the difficulty of getting such wins today is at least on par with many of the "less competitive" wins of forty years ago.
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