Kyle Petty would love to see Denny Hamlin reach the 60 wins threshold before the end of his NASCAR Cup Series tenure.
He’s only seven wins away, but you never know what could happen between now and that potential No. 60. Joining Eric Estepp’s Out of the Groove, Petty elaborated on why he’s rooting for Hamlin to make it to the mark moving forward.
“I do believe this, and I’ve said this, what we see with Denny Hamlin is phenomenal. Denny, listen, I’ve got my fingers crossed. I hope he gets to 60 wins. You know what I mean? I really want him to get to 60 wins. I do,” Petty stated. “Kyle Busch, gets to 60 wins.”
In addition to hoping Hamlin and his former teammate in Busch reach 60, Petty relented that the number may represent a greater mark than in the past, as we may never see something like Richard Petty’s 200, or even Jeff Gordon’s 93 ever again.
“These guys are out there. Will we see guys, starting today, even get close to 60 wins? Will 60, to some of these drivers, will that be the new 200? Will that be the new 200 victories that Richard Petty, or the 100 victories that Pearson put up, or the 90-something that Jeff Gordon put up. These are numbers that I don’t think we’re going to see, for multiple reasons,” Petty explained. “A, parity. If you look at it. B, listen, if I was the only Hendrick car, maybe I could win 12 races a year. But I’ve got three dang good teammates, that are going to take wins away from me. So the organization’s going to win races, but drivers aren’t going to win 10-12 races. As we see drivers start to change their attitudes, and move away from the sport in their late 30s, early 40s. Will that number skew down? Is 36 going to be the retirement age, in the next five or six years? There’s so many factors that’ll come into this.
“So how do you establish yourself as a superstar, when you can only wins two or three races a year? How do you establish yourself, and separate yourself from the pack, when you can only win four or five races a year? You’ve got to figure that out as a driver, and I think NASCAR and the teams have to figure that out, how to create superstars.”
Alas, it’s a fascinating conundrum for NASCAR, but 60 would be a huge accomplishment for Denny Hamlin. Kyle Petty and the rest of the NASCAR world will be waiting patiently to see if the No. 11 reaches that mark soon.
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