A deeper dive into Richard Petty's 200 career wins

                                                          (Photo Courtesy of Reddit)

Kyle Busch is the winningest driver in the history of NASCAR.

That's a fact, whether you love it or hate it. The 33-year old Las Vegas native earned that honor when took home the checkered flag in last weekend's Gander Outdoor Truck Series race at Martinsville. The win---Busch's 201st of his career broke a tie with "The King" Richard Petty, who finished his career with 200 career wins.

Now there are obviously a bunch of differences between Petty's 200 wins and Busch's 201. For one, Petty achieved all 200 of his victories in NASCAR's top level, while Busch racked up his checkered flags in the Cup, Xfinity and Truck Series. It does not take away from the dominance Busch has displayed at times over the past decade, but it has left many fans to put an asterisk beside his 201 wins.

There have been multiple narratives over the course of this season comparing or contrasting Busch's career wins to Petty's.

The most common has been "Well Petty won all of his at the highest level and Kyle Busch only has 53 cup wins."

That statement is true, 75-percent of Busch's career wins have come against drivers who undoubtedly have inferior talent or equipment than him. However, the same could be said for the majority of Richard Petty's 200 career cup wins.

If we put an asterisk next to Busch's 201 wins, then we should probably do the same to Petty's.

Lets dive into this.

1. The Era

The first thing you have to look at anytime you're debating or questioning something in sports is the era in which it happened. Right, wrong or indifferent, the era in which something happened usually plays a large role in determining the accomplishment's value. This is why it's silly to debate whether Petty, Dale Earnhardt or Jimmie Johnson is the greatest driver of all time. They all raced in different eras and most likely would not have found the same success in any other era. However, this is not a GOAT debate, but rather a dive into Petty's 200 wins. So....

Petty racked up a majority of the wins in an era where NASCAR was still trying to find it's feet. The sport's corporate image was light-years away and the perception around NASCAR was that it was a sport full of bootleggers. That may or may not have been the case, but it is what it is.

During this era, NASCAR simply lacked the star-power that it has now. Most of these guys had full-time jobs outside of racing and did not rely on racing as their main source of income. There was no ARCA, K&N or NASCAR Next programs, just dudes putting together stock cars and racing. 

There weren't any young hot-shots like Jeff Gordon, Chase Elliott, Ryan Blaney or Joey Logano who dedicated their entire lives to racing and competing in NASCAR.

Now don't get me wrong, the cars that Petty drove in the early days of NASCAR were probably way more difficult to handle than anything we've seen in decades, but that is not what this is about and I find it hard to believe someone like him would shine jumping into a car as technologically advanced as the ones they drive today and the fact he went win-less for the last seven-and-a-half years of his career supports that theory. 

2. Lots of races=Lots of Opportunities for wins

Richard Petty started his engine 1,185 times, the most in NASCAR history and 279 more than the second most (Ricky Rudd) and more starts than the next two winningest drivers, David Pearson and Cale Yarborough made combined. 

Kudos to Petty on being able to make that many starts, but making that many starts in an era where competition was not as deep as it is now really is not much different than Kyle Busch's success in the Xfinity & Truck series.

Let me explain.

• Petty had 11 seasons where he ran 39 or more races. David Pearson did it five times, Cale Yarborough only did it three times and no other driver in the top ten of the all-time wins list ever made more than 39 starts in a season.
• From 1967 to 1971, Richard Petty made 243 starts and won 92 races or 37 percent of the races during that span. The 92 wins nearly accounts for half of his career wins. It's undoubtedly an impressive feat, but maybe not even the most impressive five year span in the history of NASCAR when you look at the fact that Jeff Gordon won 47 races from 1995 to 1999 in nearly 100 less races and against much deeper talent or that from 2006 to 2010, Jimmie Johnson won 35 of the 180 races and five championships. Petty won just two championships from 1967 to 1971, but let's dive closer into that span. 

 1967-Petty made 48 starts, two more than anyone else. Only 10 drivers ran at least 40 races. During this season Petty won 27 races. Only two of the other nine drivers to make 40+ starts win a race. 12 different drivers won a race, but only six won more than one.

 1968-Petty won 16 races in 49 starts, 13 other drivers made at least 40+ starts, but only three of them; Petty, David Pearson and Bobby Isaac won a race. Petty and Pearson each won 16 races, combining for two-thirds of the checkered flags. 10 different drivers won a race, but only six claimed more than one victory

1969-Petty won 10 races in 50 starts. 16 other drivers made at least 40+ starts but only Petty, Pearson and Bobby Isaac made 40+ starts and won races. Isaac won 17 and Pearson won 11. Only eight drivers claimed a checkered flag, six of whom won at least two races

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1970-Petty won 18 races in 40 starts, 12 other drivers made at least 40 starts, of those only Petty, Bobby Isaac, James Hylton and Bobby Allison claimed a victory. 12 different drivers won a race, seven won more than one. 

1971-Petty won 21 of the 46 races. Only 10 other drivers made at least 40 starts, of those Bobby Allison, who won 11 races is the only other driver with at least 40 starts to win a race. 12 different drivers won a race, only six won at least two races and only four drivers won at least three races.

As you can see, the competition was not overly deep nor consistent during this time. Many drivers did not run 40 races and the majority of those who did were not threats to win. 

To help measure Petty's 200 career wins, I made a statistic called "Races per Win". This is a simple stat, you simply divide the amount of starts by the amount of wins. Here is the top ten. 

David Pearson	5.47
Richard Petty	5.92
Cale Yarborough	6.75
Jimmie Johnson	7.43
Lee Petty	7.91
Bobby Allison	8.55
Jeff Gordon	8.66
Dale Earnhardt	8.89
Darrell Waltrip	9.63
Kyle Busch (Cup Only)	9.80

Now the argument from Petty faithful will be that Petty was win-less from July 1984 until his career ended in 1992, a win-less-streak of 241-races, so I also adjusted the "Races per Win" metric to subtract each drivers longest drought from their race totals, here's what I got. Each drivers longest drought is in parentheses

Richard Petty (241)	4.72
David Pearson (61)	4.89
Cale Yarborough (77)	5.82
Jimmie Johnson (65)	6.65
Darrell Waltrip (243)	6.74
Lee Petty (45)	7.07
Bobby Allison (67)	7.75
Jeff Gordon (66)	7.95
Dale Earnhardt (59)	8.12
Kyle Busch (36)	9.10

So if you subtract Petty's 241 race drought, his "Races per Win" Rating improves by just over one race, only Darrell Waltrip (who had a 243 race win-less streak of his own to end his career) had a larger difference between his hard and adjusted "Race Per Wins" rating. 

3. How many races would other drivers have won if they made as many starts as Petty?

This is a question that I've always been curious the answer to. So I decided to figure this out. I took 1,184 (the number of starts Petty made) and divided it by each drivers "Races Per Win". Here is the top ten. The number of actual wins a driver has is in parentheses. 

David Pearson (105)	217
Cale Yarborough (83)	175
Jimmie Johnson (83)	159
Lee Petty (54)	150
Bobby Allison (84)	139
Jeff Gordon (93)	137
Dale Earnhardt (76)	133
Darrell Waltrip (84)	123
Kyle Busch (51)	121
Brad Keselowski (28)	97

Do I dare say that Richard Petty might not have even been the greatest driver of his generation, yet alone of all-time?