It is not often that you have an active Cup Series driver who has an entire set of rules informally based on his name. Well, that is the case for Richard Childress Racing driver and two-time Cup champion Kyle Busch. The rule infamously has been known as the Kyle Busch rule. But what purpose does it solve? Why was it put in place, to begin with?
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Call it the Kyle Busch rule or a Bushwacker it doesn’t matter, but in a nutshell, these were a set of rules introduced by NASCAR to limit the participation of top-tier drivers from the Cup Series racing in the lower ranks such as Xfinity or Trucks Series.
What was the rule and why was it introduced in NASCAR?
The rule was introduced in late 2016 by NASCAR. The rule stated that any Cup Series driver who had more than five years of full-time racing experience in the top flight of stock car racing could only run a total of 10 Xfinity Series races, also limiting the Camping World Truck Series participation to just seven from the 2017 season onwards. Furthermore, drivers could also not run in the playoff races of those championships either.
As weird as this may sound, the rule came into effect after Busch notoriously was known to participate in a lot of multi-series racing back in the day. He would race Cup, Xfinity, and Trucks sometimes on the same weekend. He was not the only one to be regularly jumping around series’. In fact, Brad Keselowski was another driver to do the same.
Hence, the rule had to be put in place to allow younger drivers who run full-time in Xfinity or Trucks a chance to win and develop themselves. Interestingly, the rule got incrementally stricter after a while. First, the Xfinity limit was reduced to seven races and the Truck participation was down to five. Then in 2020, the rules were even tighter, as they mentioned that drivers with three years of experience in the Cup Series were forbidden to run more than five races in each category. Also barring them from special events or playoffs, and regular season finales.
What does Kyle Busch think of the rule?
When the rule was introduced several people dubbed it to be the ‘Kyle Busch rule’. However, the two-time Cup Series champion remained unfazed considering that this was the second time NASCAR had changed a rule because of him.
He even told the media while speaking at Martinsville back in 2016 – “I guess I should be flattered people are saying that. There’s already been a Kyle Busch Rule years ago when they made the rule (about 18 being the minimum age) when I was 16 and got booted out. So this is Kyle Busch 2.0.”
Pretty interesting to have NASCAR change their rules on two occasions because of one person. But ultimately, the main reason the ‘Kyle Busch rule’ had been introduced was to promote fairness for the junior ranks of stock car racing. Also to remove some aspect of the competition brought in by drivers from the Cup Series, who had far more experience than the full-timers in the junior ranks.
