Double Duty: Are Sprint Cup Stars Hurting The Nationwide Series?

The Sprint Cup series was off for the Easter weekend, giving drivers in the Camping World Truck Series and Nationwide Series a moment in the spotlight.

Not that one would really be able to tell, though. Cup stars won both races this past weekend at Nashville. Kyle Busch won Friday night’s Nashville 200, while Kevin Harvick won the following afternoon in the Nashville 300.

Early weekend domination isn’t new to guys who race on Sundays. In a total of nine Camping World Truck and Nationwide Series races, seven have been won by established Sprint Cup stars. Harvick and Busch have combined for six of them. 

Busch, last year's Nationwide Series champion, has stated he doesn't plan on entering all of the races in the division this year. Harvick, who ran a partial schedule last year, remains undecided on whether or not he will compete for a series championship this season.

Regardless, both drivers have entered every series race so far this season. Carl Edwards, Brad Keselowski, and Paul Menard are Sprint Cup drivers who have confirmed they will enter every race in the lower series this season.

This brings us to an important question: are Sprint Cup stars entering too many Nationwide races, and if so, is it hurting the series itself?

It isn’t a new occurrence for drivers who race on Sundays to strap on their helmets and climb into a race car on a Saturday.

Between 1988 and 2006, Mark Martin racked up 52 wins in what was then called the Busch series, all while racing full time in Cup. Both Bobby and Terry Labonte, former cup champions, dipped down into the lesser ranks while racing full Cup schedules.

Even Jeff Gordon raced in several Nationwide series races during the 1999 and 2000 seasons.

What is new, though, are drivers who pull double duty and race full schedules in both series. Beginning with the 2006 season, when Harvick won his second Nationwide title, every champion in the series has been a full time driver at the Cup level.

In the 145 races since the beginning of the 2006 season, full-time Cup drivers have won 127 times. Of the 18 other races won by “Nationwide Regulars,” six were by Keselowski.

So again, here is the question: Is this bad for the Nationwide series?

In theory, one would think not. The familiar names of cup stars should be a draw to race attendees. The more drivers on the track who the NASCAR fan base recognizes, the more rear ends in the stands come race time, which means more money circulating its way into the pockets of track owners.

Not only should the presence of stars in the sport be a benefit to the fans and track owners, but it should also benefit young and up-and-coming drivers who are trying to make a name for themselves in NASCAR. Track experience gained by racing with the best of the best shouldn’t go underestimated. Beating Cup drivers can open up vital doors to the future.

But do things really work that way now?

Attendance has been down across the board, at all tracks, and in all series. The economy plays a major role in this. But is the economy poor enough to keep away 23,000 fans from Saturday’s race at Nashville Superspeedway, which had its capacity cut to 40,000 from 50,000 for the weekend.

That’s right; only 17,000 people attended Saturday’s Nashville 300.

While it may seem like a stretch, the competition in the Nationwide series, or lack thereof, may be doing its part to keep fans away.

In the past 40 races, three drivers – Busch, Edwards, and Keselowski – combined for 61 finishes in the top three positions. In mathematical terms, that means 1.5 of those three drivers have finished third or better since the beginning of the 2009 season. It’s easy to see why those three drivers finished atop the standings in ’09.

It's also easy to see how fans could possibly be growing tired of it.

Compare the stats of those drivers to the next three finishers in the standings, Jason Leffler, Mike Bliss, and Justin Allgaier. Combined, the three drivers have 54 top ten finishes and only 21 top fives over the same 40 races.

To further illustrate the three man dominance in the Nationwide series, 4^th place Leffler finished 824 points behind 3^rd place Keselowski, and 1,142 points behind series champion Busch.

This year, the tune hasn’t changed. Sprint Cup drivers make up seven of the top nine positions in the Nationwide Series standings. This includes Joey Logano and Greg Biffle, who have each missed a race this season.

How are the three men who dominated the series last year doing? Edwards, Keselowski, and Busch are 1^st, 2^nd, and 4^th respectively. Only Allgaier, who won at Bristol in March, seems to be a threat to the Cup guys. His presence may be what keeps people who are becoming disinterested in the series tuned in on their televisions, and more importantly, coming to the race track on Saturdays.

Allgaier, like Keselowski the two previous years, has been able to keep up with Cup guys so far this season and, also like his Penske teammate, seems poised to move up to the higher ranks after having made his name in the lower series.

While drivers like Biffle, Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Matt Kenseth all proved themselves in the lower series before moving up to the highest division in stock car racing, it is a path few drivers have recently taken.

The last year time a driver won rookie of the year in the Sprint Cup series a year after running a full schedule in the Nationwide series was Denny Hamlin in 2006. Since then, only one legitimate contender for the award, Paul Menard, had worked his way up through the Nationwide series.

The list of drivers gunning for the award during that time span is littered with former open wheel racers such as A.J. Allmendinger, Sam Hornish Jr., and Scott Speed. Out of those, only Juan Pablo Montoya has been consistently successful in his Sprint Cup career, which began with winning Rookie of the Year in 2007.

Regan Smith won the award in 2008, two years after his only full season in the Nationwide series.

Joey Logano, who was dubbed as a future star in the sport by Mark Martin at the age of 15, was last year’s Rookie of the Year. The 19-year-old hasn’t competed in a full schedule of any series since 2007, when he ran all thirteen races in the eastern division of the NASCAR K&N Pro Series.

The Nationwide series doesn’t play as integral a role as it used to in the maturation and experience of young drivers. The increased presence of Cup drivers in the series may have something to do with that.

Sponsors want big name drivers who can finish up front in the cars with their logo on it. It’s why Earnhardt and Danica Patrick were in his Nationwide cars at Daytona, while Kelly Bires sat out. Not that Patrick was up front often – or at all for that matter - but the publicity surrounding her was, to put it mildly, huge.

Despite this fact, should Sprint Cup drivers be racing in every Nationwide event, whether it’s for themselves or the sponsors, even when the two series are in completely different locations, forcing them to jet back and forth between different locations in the country?

And are they sacrificing their performance in the higher series by doing so?

Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer were able to finish in the top five in Sprint Cup points the same year they won their Nationwide titles. On the flip side, Carl Edwards was ranked ninth in Cup when he won his first Nationwide title.

Last season, Kyle Busch missed the Chase for the Cup and ended up 13^th in the Cup standings during his Nationwide title run. Edwards ended up 11^th.

The media, fans, and the drivers themselves can argue all day whether or not running a full schedule in a lesser series has any effects on a driver’s Cup efforts, but considering the facts, the answer seems obvious.

Would the Nationwide Series suffer if Cup guys entered any races? Sure, it likely would. Owners and teams need the money they bring in by attracting sponsors and winning races, and besides, Cup guys have been doing it since the 1990s, and even before.

But is a full-time effort by drivers in both Sprint Cup and Nationwide hurting stock car’s second highest level of racing, and by extent, the drivers themselves?

Empty grandstands, inconsistent Cup results, and a decreased influx of legitimate future talent into the series make it hard to argue no.