Kyle Busch has never been someone to shy away from sharing his opinion. His fellow competitors, media and the sanctioning body have all been in the crosshairs of the two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion at one time or another.
Now 40 years old — he celebrated his milestone birthday on May 2 — the Richard Childress Racing driver has mellowed. That comes with age, experience and kids.
But don’t mistake that for meaning he's not just as passionate about the sport and doesn’t have valid viewpoints on it. He does and fans saw that earlier this year when he worked in The CW booth at Las Vegas. The No. 8 driver was lauded for his knowledge, and more specifically, how he broke down the racing action and delivered it during the broadcast in an easy-to-digest manner for the television viewing audience.
You’d think that the insight and perspective of the driver, who will undoubtedly go down as one of the best-ever to strap behind the wheel, would be valuable to NASCAR.
Au contraire — at least as far as various committees are concerned.
And the winner of 63 career Cup races has admitted as much this season on several occasions. He first brought it up at Circuit of the Americas in March when asked about a new Playoff Committee, which was created to discuss ideas about potential changes to the playoff format for the 2026 season, and how members included multiple drivers — both current and past, including Hall of Famers. He was not one of them.
“Yeah, I guess there's five or six or eight or ten — I don't even know how many committees there are, but nobody calls me to be on any of them,” Busch suggested. ”So, I feel real honored with that and look forward to hearing what their changes are.”
A week ago at Talladega, when questioned about the feel of the car at the superspeedway, he subtly brought up the topic again.
“It's just the cadence of the race isn't very good,” he said. “That's not very fun. It's really hard to get runs or any sort of separation, especially with the fuel savings and all that sort of stuff. Shorter time on pit road is how you pass guys. Like that's no fun. So there's definitely an issue in that. I've made my suggestions and in one ear, out the other.”
On Saturday at Texas, he was asked about those previous remarks and what would it take for NASCAR to include him in helping shape the sport in the future.
“I have no clue,” he said. “I think you're asking the wrong person. Go ask all of those others that are in charge of those committees on why they don't want to have Kyle Busch be a part of it.”
Until that changes and he's included in some fashion, the 40-year-old will have to let his racing do the talking. His next chance to do that is on Sunday at TMS. Race coverage begins at 3:30 p.m. ET on FS1.
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