The first ten weeks of the season have not gone the way that many expected it to go for Kyle Busch, especially the driver himself. Kevin Harvick has noticed the two-time NASCAR champion hasn’t performed up to snuff lately.
Ever since his rookie season in the Cup Series, Kyle Busch has had at least one win each season. 19 seasons of winning. He hasn’t known a winless season from 2005-2023. At this point in the year last season, he already had two wins.
In fact, if Busch doesn’t win at Dover this weekend, it would put this season among his worst. 2005, 2006, and 2020 are the only seasons in Busch’s career where he went winless through the first eleven races.
It’s concerning.
“I think that the wheels have fallen off of the 8 car,” Kevin Harvick said on his Happy Hour podcast. “He was frustrated again after the race this week. Just talking to him this week, he was really, he knew they needed to try to capitalize at Talladega because he hadn’t felt very good about where they were.”
In the last two weeks, Austin Dillon has outperformed Kyle Busch. Of course, Dillon’s season on the whole has still been worse than Busch’s. But is shows how far the No. 8 team has fallen.
“They definitely have some issues that they have to work through,” Harvick continued. “Austin Dillon has qualified and run better the last two weeks. Kyle qualified good this week. Obviously, you saw the quote from him as to what he thought about his race, but I don’t know. I think the first few weeks of the season I really looked at Kyle and I’m like, ‘Man they could have won, they could have won any of those races if things had gone well.’ Then all of a sudden the pit crew problems started and things have just completely unraveled.”
The difference between Kyle Busch who was P3 in that three-wide photo-finish at Atlanta and the one who finished P26 at Talladega is drastic. Right now, it’s hard to see Busch and Richard Childress Racing getting things back on track.
The fact that Rowdy has never had a winless season is a big deal as well. Busch is all about the accolades, looking for those small stats and accomplishments that separate him from the other all-time greats.
If Kyle Busch goes winless in 2024, I don’t think it will be good for RCR. At all. Busch will be on the warpath to figure out what went wrong, who was at fault, and how they fix it. At this point in his career, Busch wants to compete for championships and wins, he doesn’t have a ton of prime years ahead of him. Does he wait it out with RCR to get it right or find someone else who will?
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