Much has been made of the beef between Denny Hamlin and Kyle Busch, which started out when Hamlin made some relatively benign comments on his podcast about the state of Busch’s driving right now. Busch fired back.

Kyle Petty took the chance to weigh in on the whole thing this week on NASCAR Inside the Race. He believes both drivers were well within their rights to say what they did.

But ultimately, he thinks Hamlin nailed it. Until Busch is beating out his teammate on a consistent basis, it’s hard to side with him in the debate about whether he is at fault or the car is.

“If you can’t beat your teammate, keep your mouth shut,” Petty said. “That’s how simple it is. Because you’re getting beat internally. You’re getting beat at the shop. You’re just getting beat.”

Petty added that he didn’t think Denny Hamlin was out of bounds making the comments he did about Kyle Busch. In fact, he just voiced what many are thinking.

“I don’t think Denny bashed him,” Petty said. “I thought Denny was fair in his assessment. I thought everything Denny said was fair. It’s what everybody else is thinking, and Denny’s exactly right. Denny has a podcast. Now, if you have a podcast, you’re going to have to sack up and take some criticism every now and then, I will say that. But Denny has a podcast, and race fans are smart enough that you cannot BS them. They watch this 8 car run every week. They watch what it does. They understand what it’s out there doing.”

And what it’s not doing. Denny Hamlin pointed out what it’s not doing lately. That’s winning.

Barring a real change in fortune, it’s hard to see Kyle Busch getting back to victory lane any time soon. Certainly not with any regularity.

In the meantime, what Busch needs to show is that he can elevate the performance. If the car isn’t quite right, at least show you’re getting the most you can out of it.

“I think that’s what Denny was trying to say: Just put it on your back and beat your teammate,” Petty said. “Just get it somewhere, get it up there a little bit. So I think they’re both in the right on this in some way.”

Petty changed his tune a bit and offered a little bit of a new criticism on Kyle Busch, too. He went after the idea that the great drivers not only elevate their own performance on the track, but they make an entire organization better.

He hasn’t seen that from Busch. Not yet.

“Now what I am going to say about this, and this is I think, this is going to be a Kyle Petty criticism of Kyle Busch,” Petty said. “I think Kyle Busch, unlike his brother Kurt, who would go to any team and up their level of play and make them a better team, whether it was Furniture Row, whether it was Phoenix, James Finch Racing, it didn’t make any difference. He moved the needle on what that team was.

“I call those guys bus drivers. They go to a new team, they drive the bus, they tell them what needs to be fixed, they point them in the right direction and they work hard to get them there. I don’t believe Kyle Busch has shown himself to be that type of driver at RCR. He’s not the bus driver there. He’s not moving the needle and helping them to move forward.”

Can he get there? Maybe. But that’s where Hamlin’s comments come in. There don’t appear to be obvious signs it’s coming any time soon.

“We saw Jeff Gordon do that at Hendrick,” Petty said. “We’ve seen the other drivers in other places do that. But we’ve not seen Kyle Busch. So I think that’s a criticism of Kyle Busch, too. I just don’t think he moves the needle or makes the team move the needle.”