At 39, Kyle Busch might be heading into the twilight years of his NASCAR career. With only four wins in the Next-Gen era, he’s not seen as an out-and-out title contender in recent years. Rather, he has hit new lows in his professional racing career with RCR this season. Celebrations have been few and far for the 2-time Cup Series Champion, but he did make history while competing in the Brickyard last Sunday.

Rowdy made his 700th Cup Series start driving the No. 8 Chevrolet at the iconic Indianapolis Motor Speedway. With this race, he tied with Buddy Baker to have reached 700 NASCAR Cup Series races. Only 19 drivers in the history of the Cup Series have managed to achieve this feat. Although this is a big deal for the RCR driver, going by the statistics and history, it seems like Busch won’t be able to relive his past success.

A thread on Reddit shared interesting data that highlighted how the drivers performed after hitting 700 starts in the Cup Series. This list included some of the greats, like Jeff Gordon, Richard Petty, and Rusty Wallace. Interestingly, only Petty managed to get double-digit wins after reaching the milestone. And surprisingly, none of them were able to win their 700th race.

Kyle Busch’s struggle in the Next-Gen era has been well documented. Therefore, after taking a look at this list, fans were convinced that Rowdy is past his prime years. Soon, they started to predict what the future holds for the driver in comparison to his past glory.

Will Rowdy Busch get back to winning ways? Fans have their say

2019 was the year when Rowdy last won the Cup Series championship with JGR. However, since the turn of the new decade, he’s grown to become a shadow of his former self. Perplexed by viewing the statistics, a fan chimed in stating, “We’re at the point where the next Busch win is probably his last. Those stats don’t inspire a lot of confidence that he can have another championship run.”

Busch was seen as NASCAR’s villain before Denny Hamlin took over that crown. Although his brash and unapologetic style of racing wasn’t revered by everyone, there’s no denying the fact that he’s one of the most successful NASCAR drivers of his generation. All-time highest number of wins (66) in the Truck Series, 63 Cup wins, and two championships. He’s destined to be a future NASCAR Hall of Famer. However, seeing Busch probably reaching his final few years of racing at the top level, a fan wrote, “I hope KB’s career lasts another 2-4 seasons.”

Although Rowdy might be the active winningest driver, the 2024 season has been nothing short of a nightmare for him. Therefore, taking a jibe about him reaching this milestone of 700 cup starts, a user added, “Him hitting 700 starts is probably the only thing to celebrate so far this year 😬.”

A few even predicted this downward trajectory for the former JGR star after making a switch to Richard Childress Racing. “To be fair the writing was on the wall for this last year. Kyles numbers as a whole were down compared to what everyone expects but the early wins masked it. After gateway last year that team was pretty bad the rest of the season and KB had a lot of wrecks and spins.”

However, this optimistic Kyle Busch fan thinks regardless of the statistics, the 39-year-old driver can still win races, “I don’t think it’s impossible he wins again, even if it’s after 700 starts. A lot of things would need to go right, but I do think he can. He and RCR would obviously need to get their stuff together, or he’d need to leave for somewhere else.”

After yet another disappointing finish of P25 at the Brickyard 400, Busch and his team will have a much-needed two-week break to reflect on their dismal run so far in 2024. With four regular-season races left to make the playoffs, they will need something huge to overturn their current misfortunes.