Richard Petty. Dale Earnhardt Sr. Jeff Gordon. Jimmie Johnson. Arguably the four biggest superstars in the history of the NASCAR Cup Series, who dominated the series at the height of their careers and have a combined 25 championships to their names.
But in the modern day of the Cup Series, there isn’t exactly a dominant driver in the same vein as one of the aforementioned names. The Next Gen car, which NASCAR debuted in 2022, has brought parity to the sport, with racecars very closely resembling one another.
Kyle Petty, who raced alongside some of the greats in NASCAR history, doesn’t believe that parity serves the sport well. Appearing on Eric Estepp’s “Out of the Groove” podcast this week, Petty explained why the sport needs a dominant figure for everyone else to chase.
“I will never ever applaud parity. I hate it. I hate it,” Petty said. “I want somebody that I have to chase. I want everybody chasing me. I want Dale Earnhardt Sr. I want Richard Petty. I want Jeff Gordon. I want a guy out there that I got to chase that I can measure myself against. Right now, I measure myself against everybody. And everybody’s the same.”
Kyle Petty: NASCAR has ‘great drivers’ not ‘superstar drivers’
Gone are the days of drivers racking up double-digit victory seasons, as Kyle Larson did in 2021, though William Byron has established a nice pace for himself with three wins in eight races this season. Since the turn of the century, only Jimmie Johnson (2007) and Larson have accomplished the feat.
Petty believes that it’s hard on drivers, no matter how talented, to enter the superstar stratosphere when they’re only winning a handful of races each season.
“So, how do you establish yourself as a superstar when you can only win two or three races a year? How can you establish yourself, separate yourself from the pack when you can only win four or five races? You’ve got to figure that out as a driver. And I think NASCAR, or the teams have to figure that out, how to create superstars. We have a lot of phenomenal racecar drivers in our sport,” Petty said. “I’m telling you, and all of them aren’t running up front let me tell you that. A lot of them don’t get their due.
“They are great racecar drivers. But we don’t have superstar race car drivers, we just don’t. And we’ve not had a superstar racecar driver in a long time in this sport, the way I look at it. Somebody who just transcends the sport and can go do other things, away from the sport, that brings eyes to the sport. I just don’t see that.”
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