Richard Childress voices his displeasure over Kyle Busch radio after 11th place finish at Dover

Many have questioned if Busch should move on from RCR because of the lack of success. But in May, RCR announced that Busch will be with the team through the 2026 season, as he agreed to a contract extension.

“This has extended our contract out another year, and we’re really excited,” Childress said at the time. “You know, Kyle has been great to work with. Everybody had questions going in. I love a driver that (doesn’t) like to lose, and we’ve worked hard. We’ve got some exciting things coming up.

Richard Childress and Kyle Busch ‘don’t like to lose’

“He and I are both alike in one area that we don’t like to lose; we want to win races. I still think that Kyle will win him a championship, and we want it to happen at RCR and that’s our plans. We got a lot of new things coming. This car is a lot different. It’s so engineer-driven that we’re stepping our engineering up more, and I’m excited about the future.”

After agreeing to a new deal, Busch said, “I give a lot of credit to Richard and him believing in me and giving me the opportunity to be able to come over here and have a chance to drive his car. So for me, rewarding him with that and having the success on the race track is paramount. Being able to continue on when I first joined, I feel like there were some things that we were doing within the rules at that time that got us some extra speed, and then, there was definitely some things that came down that they didn’t like us doing.”

Kyle Busch, who has won two NASCAR Cup Series championships in his career, is currently 39 points below the playoff cut line with five races remaining in the regular season. Getting a win in the next five weeks would give RCR a major boost, but Childress knows that he needs to give Busch a better car to give him and the No. 8 team a chance to reach their goals.