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Happy Hour: Your reaction to NASCAR's lower series rule

Kyle Busch has driven in 16 Xfinity races in 2016. He can drive in 10 in 2017. (Getty)
Kyle Busch has driven in 16 Xfinity races in 2016. He can drive in 10 in 2017. (Getty)

Welcome to Happy Hour. As always, you can tweet or email us your NASCAR thoughts 24/7 at the links below.

The topic of this week’s mailbag was pretty clear once NASCAR made its announcement Wednesday about limiting Sprint Cup veterans from the Xfinity and Camping World Truck Series. Few things get fans more riled up than Cup drivers in lower series.

But it is funny that the Cup Series is entering its final four races of the season and the third round of the Chase and the racing isn’t the dominant topic of the week heading to Martinsville. After the laser inspection hullabaloo at Chicago, numerous people were wishing that the racing would become the dominant topic as the Chase moved along.

Welp, here we are with a rule change that could have easily been announced in December. Let’s get to your comments.

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Ridiculous rule. No need for it. Just more confusion for fans. The complainers are at home on the couch not attending races. Absolutely no need for this. – Mark

How is limiting a Cup driver to 10 Xfinity Series races a year any more confusing than explaining how a Cup driver can’t compete for points in either the Xfinity or Camping World Truck Series? There’s nothing confusing about “A driver with 5 years experience in the Cup Series can drive 10 Xfinity races and 7 Truck Series races in a season.”

As far as the fans in the stands comment, the stands are pretty damn empty on Xfinity and Truck Series race days when the series are accompanying Cup races. If Cup drivers truly are a draw in either series, then in-person interest may be more putrid than we think.

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It’s about time Nascar woke up! I’ve been saying for years it was an unlevel playing field letting Cup drivers run the bottom 2 tiers. I feel they should be banned from them all together, but this is a good start. – Rick

This was a really good compromise given all the factors involved. Consider it like NASCAR gradually chopping downforce off of cars in the Sprint Cup Series in 2016 and 2017. You can’t make a sweeping rule change to swiftly eliminate an issue that built up over time. Well, you can. But it’s not the most prudent way of doing things.

By imposing a 17-race limit now, NASCAR can always make the limit fewer races in a few years if it needs to.

This is a sizeable variable to the rule, because a company like NOS can’t sponsor Kyle Busch in as many races as it has. But at the same time, it may not have much variance despite its importance.

This rule isn’t a blindside to any Xfinity Series sponsor, and it’s a single-digit reduction in races for any company sponsoring a Cup driver affected by this rule. If that’s a reduction that affects a company’s participation in a lower series, then there’s something seriously wrong with either the sponsor or the structure.

The financial side of NASCAR’s lower series still isn’t great. But this shouldn’t have much effect.

More standalone races would be great, but it’s also not a perfect solution. It would increase some logistical fees — it costs less to have two or three events at the same track than at multiple tracks.

But yes, both series (and Cup, really) would do better to add more short tracks to the schedule. But with NASCAR’s SAFER barrier and other safety requirements, immediately flipping the Truck Series switch back to 1998 isn’t feasible.

First, let’s address the outrage about the strategy of the Joe Gibbs Racing cars at Talladega (a group that included Busch). Nothing related to outrage surrounding Toyotas is ever surprising. Illogical, perhaps. But never surprising.

OK, on to Busch’s pursuit of 200. Busch is currently at 169 wins. He’s won 11 percent of his Cup Series starts, 41 percent of his Xfinity starts and 55 percent of his Truck Series starts since the start of 2013.

That’s approximately three wins a Cup season, four an Xfinity season (with 10 starts) and, at his rate of starts in the Truck Series these past two seasons, two wins a Truck season.

At that rate with the new limitations he’s going to hit 200 wins sometime in the middle of the 2020 season. If there was no 10-race Xfinity Series cap in place, it’s reasonable to assume that he’d have 2-3 more wins a season, meaning his timeline is probably pushed back a year or so with Wednesday’s rule.

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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!