They say all good things must come to an end.
Every driver, no matter how accomplished, will eventually win their last race.
At the time, it looks like just another win to add to the list. Older now, sure, but just a driver doing what he’s done best for years. He might be in the midst of a multi-win season, taking his third or fourth for the year.
But one day, that trip to victory lane will mark the last interview with confetti stuck to his cheek. He’ll attend one final winner’s press conference, get home late to his family just like every other time. He’ll wake up the next morning and go to the shop to ring a bell or raise a banner or however his organization chooses to celebrate another win, and none of them will be any the wiser.
It happens to the best, but it’s rare that anyone sees it coming. When Jimmie Johnson won three of the first 13 races in 2017, he was the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion, and at 41, didn’t look like the end was anywhere near. His team had struggled in late 2016, but the title seemed to have righted the ship.
Are we seeing history repeat yet again with Kyle Busch?
Busch, 40, won three times in the first 15 races in 2023. The two-time champion hasn’t been back to victory lane since, and the last two seasons have been a struggle. He’s posted just six top fives since the beginning of the 2024 season and only 15 top 10s in that same span. Prior to 2024, those numbers would have been an off year for Busch, let alone what’s stretched to a year and a half with no reprieve in sight.
Can you blame the equipment? Maybe. Busch moved to Richard Childress Racing in 2023, to most observers a step down from Joe Gibbs Racing — where he had spent the bulk of his career, including both of his championships — and Hendrick Motorsports, where he began his Cup career.
A step down, sure. But Busch won in RCR equipment, and teammate Austin Dillon won last year. The team is capable of finding victory lane even if it’s less frequently than JGR and HMS. The organization isn’t so terrible that a driver with Busch’s talent can’t carry his cars, at least sometimes.
Busch opened 2025 with three top 10s in the first four races. There have been times, like his top-five effort at Circuit of the Americas earlier this year, when it seemed that with just a little luck on his side, Busch could be on the brink of that elusive next win.
But there have also been times when it has looked as though luck has completely deserted Busch. So many of the incidents he’s been involved in have not been of his making. There was a time when the incidents seemed to happen in Busch’s rearview, and more often than not, he’d wind up on the “checkers” side of checkers or wrecker. But lately, seeing the No. 8 limping to the pits has become more commonplace. Busch is simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and some of that comes from running closer to the middle of the pack than the front of it.
Though he’s mellowed somewhat with the birth of his children and age, it’s safe to say that nobody wants Busch to win more than Busch himself.
And if there’s any driver that can claw his way to victory lane on sheer willpower, Busch is that guy. As much as he’s struggled with the Next Gen car and as vocal as he’s been about it, Busch can wrangle it. He’s made moves that prove that. They just aren’t the winning moves.
Busch has a win in a handful of NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series races this year. His driving style is still do or die.
The question is, and maybe always has been, has NASCAR and the racecar and the weekly grind finally outpaced the driver also known as Rowdy? Have the cars gotten so far from the ones when he was at his best that he’s having trouble keeping pace?
He’s hardly the first driver that Father Time has caught up with. It’s simply a process that repeats itself, time and again. It’s just that it’s so much more visible with the great drivers. The crashes and the injuries eventually pile up, and Busch has suffered major injury in his career, breaking both his legs in a brutal NASCAR Xfinity Series wreck to open 2015, only to come back and win it all.
Of course, Busch could come out and win this week. Or next week, or the week after that.
That’s the thing with that last time — nobody knows when it will come. If Busch wins again, the countdown starts over. But the last win will come.
And funny enough, no matter how fans feel about a driver, when he’s in the twilight of his career, looking for just one more win, they find themselves rooting for him to get it.
For Busch, the cold truth is in the numbers — he hasn’t produced them this year. But like so many before him, it’s hard to look at the driver he’s been for all these years and say with any finality that it’s over… only that someday, it will be.
Amy is an 20-year veteran NASCAR writer and a six-time National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) writing award winner, including first place awards for both columns and race coverage. As well as serving as Photo Editor, Amy writes The Big 6 (Mondays) after every NASCAR Cup Series race. She can also be found working on her bi-weekly columns Holding A Pretty Wheel (Tuesdays) and Only Yesterday (Wednesdays). A New Hampshire native whose heart is in North Carolina, Amy’s work credits have extended everywhere from driver Kenny Wallace’s website to Athlon Sports. She can also be heard weekly as a panelist on the Hard Left Turn podcast that can be found on AccessWDUN.com's Around the Track page.
It happens with all of them. Jeff Gordon was winning one of every four races during his prime but near the end of his driving career, he couldn’t get out of his own way. Darrell Waltrip resorted to the past champions provisional to get into races for the last many years of his career. Look how many years Dale Earnhardt tried for that elusive 8th championship. Drivers get older, cars change, rules change, it happens.
Richard Petty won his last race (cheating engine) in 1984 and retired in 1992 at Atlanta. That a a long time to mess up his average win rate.
Age? Have you ever actually watched a NASCAR Cup race, I think not. Kyle is driving without a doubt the worst cars on the grid, by far. When that happens you have to overdrive the car to get any kind of results and things happen. Ask any local short track racer what happens when their car is way off. If your analysis is correct then every single week the youngest driver in the field would win and in fact they wouldn’t even need to have the race, they will all finish in order of age.
Rowdy had a tough year right now even though we struggled but its not over for the 8 team if rcr make some changes for 2026 or little bit this year they can win it
Yes, I would say that unfortunately, Kyle’s winning days are over. The majority of the problem is that the Childress cars can’t compete with the top teams, but even with that being said, he’s also making way to many stupid mistakes. He’s making way too many mistakes while racing and then, pit road speeding penalties are a big problem too. When one of the announcers mentioned that entering pit road, there are typically a lot of speeding penalties at Pocono, I knew that Kyle was doomed, and sure enough that’s what occurred. Busch must have the lead this year when it comes to pit road speeding penalties.
Bobby Allison and Harry Gant both won multiple races in their 50’s. Bobby won the Daytona 500 in his last year before injury took him out permanently and Gant won 4 in a row in 1991. I was fortunate enough to witness the 4th win at Martinsville. He’s also the oldest driver to win his first race at age 42. Pretty remarkable