There are some athletes who are so great that their names become the barometer to measure greatness in other sports as well. Tiger Woods is one such athlete. In the realm of NASCAR, this leads to an interesting question: Who is the Tiger Woods of stock car racing? Several names would come to mind, and in 2019, one fan was even convinced that it is Kyle Busch.
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However, Kyle Petty, a veteran of the sport and an analyst, didn’t buy that idea when a fan made the argument for Kyle Busch being the Tiger Woods of NASCAR, which Petty understood but didn’t agree with.
“That’s a valid point if we look at wins if we look at what he does on the racetracks, what Kyle Busch does on the racetracks. Yes, he has those numbers. Tiger Woods won his 5th Masters, his 15th major, you look at that, and you look at what Kyle Busch has done at a relatively young age, Tiger Woods did the same thing at a young age,” Petty described.
“The problem is and the difference is, Tiger Woods has the entire sport of golf on his shoulders. It grows, it falls, it goes to the left, it goes to the right, everything that Tiger does, every fan that follows golf is watching. Whether you like Tiger Woods or not, Kyle Busch doesn’t have that.”
Petty claimed that Busch doesn’t have that connection with fans for one reason or the other. In fact, the former driver believed that at that point, there wasn’t a personality in the sport who could be put into that bracket.
Steve Letarte seconds Petty’s point on Kyle Busch about Tiger Woods
Further continuing on his point, Kyle Petty mentioned how Busch doesn’t move the needle, in the sense that the 2x Cup champion moves the needle for someone within NASCAR, but outside of it, he doesn’t. This point was further elaborated by Petty’s fellow analyst Steve Letarte, who claimed that someone like Tiger Woods not only moves the golf needle, but one outside of it as well.
“There are very few people in every sport that transcend their sport. Tiger Woods is one of them. Jeff Gordon was on Saturday Night Live. He was outside of NASCAR,” Letarte explained.
The former Hendrick crew chief then put forward the name of a current driver who could potentially one day be able to do that as he said, “You have to take someone like Chase Elliott, someone who has the opportunity and the image and the ability, but then Chase Elliott has to deliver numbers we’ve never seen before like Tiger Woods did.”
Having said that though, Kyle Petty added that this can’t be manufactured, that Chase Elliott cannot be made into that guy, that it has to be organic, which so far, hasn’t happened.
