Hendrick Motorsports driver Kyle Larson won the Cup Series race at Kansas City last Sunday. It has become a rather underwhelming trend for a section of the fanbase to have a problem every time he reaches Victory Lane. The issue is that the same drivers winning races repetitively or dominating races completely makes NASCAR boring.
Advertisement
If anybody’s opinion has to be heard on such matters, it is that of Dale Earnhardt Jr. The popular icon broke this thought down on Dale Jr. Download recently and explained why the sport isn’t in that bad a spot as some are making it out to be.
To make his case, he used the example of the 2018 Cup Series season and the Big Three drivers.
That year, Kevin Harvick, Kyle Busch, and Martin Truex Jr. had combined to win 17 of the 26 regular-season races. This led to many widespread claims that there was a lack of talent in NASCAR.
Junior said, “We are nowhere near that. You still have the potential for new guys. There was a point during Sunday’s race. There were a ton of dudes in the top 10 who haven’t won a race.”
The fact that such winless drivers are able to run in the top 10 consistently speaks volumes for him. He further detailed that an issue can be declared if the same drivers were racing in the top 10 every week and if the same drivers ran in the top 3 every week.
Fortunately, that’s not the case yet. Although, there is a larger transition happening on a grander scale.
Junior believes that teams will replace drivers as the Big Three
Maybe there is still a considerable amount of chance for new drivers to win on Sundays. But the same cannot be said for new teams.
By far this year, only Wood Brothers Racing has secured a win apart from Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, and Team Penske. The win came as a courtesy of Josh Berry and his performance in Las Vegas.
Junior mentioned, based on this, that organisations have replaced drivers as dominant forces. What’s interesting to note in this is that even Wood Brothers Racing is in a technical alliance with Team Penske.
The rise of young drivers like Carson Hocevar inspires confidence that this situation might change and that other teams might win.
The saddest view of this topic of discussion is the seat that Richard Childress Racing has, or hasn’t. The team has fallen from grace embarrassingly and is far from being a regular contender for wins. It is up to other names like RFK Racing, Spire Motorsports, and 23XI Racing to try and break the streak of the Big Three.
