1,000 Greatest Drivers: Kurt Busch

Although another drunk-driving arrest recently captured the headlines, Busch's successes still overshadow his myriad of controversies.

This took a while to pare down because obviously his career was so “eventful”, but I think I managed to hit all the high points and low points here. Many years ago, I remember looking up who had the largest improvement in the points standings between two full-time seasons and I remember that Busch had a greater championship position difference between 2001 and 2002 than any other driver between two consecutive full-time seasons, but I haven’t checked whether that’s still true. Obviously, I’m excluding things like Kyle Larson losing his ride after four races in 2020 and then winning the title, but I know that the modern playoff formats are more likely to lead to unrepresentative points finishes, so it’s possible this is no longer true. I think this is still correct, but let me know if I’ve forgotten a season that had a greater positional improvement. Busch being the only driver to win Cup races for all four 21st-century manufacturers is still true although it’s possible someone else will beat that. I suppose you could argue the Busch brothers aren’t the best brothers if you choose to combine what Richard and Maurice Petty did (since Maurice did make some Cup starts) or Bobby and Donnie Allison, but both of those feel wrong to me since I think “best pair of brothers” should be judged by the worse brother, not the stronger one. And the Busches have more wins than the Allisons anyway even after Bobby Allison finally received credit for his 85th win…