To put it nicely, it’s been a miserable season for Kyle Busch and the No. 8 Richard Childress Racing team. Consistently lacking speed, being a part of cautions and seemingly wholesale disarray have plagued the two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion.
Through eight races this season, Busch has yet to record a top 10 and has dropped anchor in several events. It’s early, but even with a new crew chief in Jim Pohlman — a championship-winning crew chief with Justin Allgaier in the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series two years ago — this team hasn’t turned a corner.
But has it gotten so bad that Busch and RCR may part ways before the checkered flag flies in Miami? Thomas Dunn and Christopher Hansen evaluate that this week on 2-Headed Monster.
Kyle Busch and Richard Childress Racing Are Barreling Towards a Messy Split
Kyle Busch and Richard Childress Racing. On paper it seemed like a match that had the potential to help a former title-contending team reestablish itself as a premier Cup Series organization. Bringing in one of the greatest drivers of the Modern Era in Busch, a two-time Cup Series champion and 63-race winner of NASCAR’s top division seemed like success would be guaranteed on a weekly basis.
For a brief period, Busch and RCR seemed to find their footing with Rowdy winning three of the first 15 races in 2023, still showing flashes of the polarizing driver we all became accustomed to seeing in his days driving for Joe Gibbs Racing.
Many had the expectation Busch would get back to his winning ways on a consistent basis, and bring RCR back to relevance in the Cup Series.
Eight races into the RCR-Busch pairing this season, there’s a greater disconnect between driver and team than I’ve seen in recent memory.
After suffering through back-to-back winless seasons in the 2024 and ‘25 campaigns, the two-time Cup champion is riding a career long 101-race winless streak following the series’ most recent race last weekend at Bristol Motor Speedway.
All weekend, Busch seemed like a shell of himself at a track where he dominated during his tenure at JGR, finishing a disappointing 25th while engaging in on-track antics with 23XI Racing’s Riley Herbst several times throughout the afternoon.
Eight races into this season, Busch is 24th in the point standings with zero wins, along with no top-five or top-10 finishes. Additionally, his average finish of 22nd is the lowest it’s been since his rookie season in the Cup Series, where he averaged a 21st-place finish across 36 races.
That’s a very troubling statistic for a driver of Busch’s caliber. Yes, it’s easy to point the finger at the driver, crew chief or team when things aren’t going as they should. However, it’s been same song, different year for Busch and the No. 8 team with the cars not having speed to start race weekends, forcing him to try and get more from the car on race day to make up for the lack of speed.
Since Busch’s first full season with the organization in 2023, he’s only managed to score 18 top-five and 37 top-10 finishes through 116 races for RCR (including the first eight of this year).
Between Busch’s three early victories in ‘23, paired with teammate Austin Dillon’s two Richmond triumphs in ‘24 and 2025, that’s a mediocre five wins for an organization that was once one of the top teams in the Cup Series garage.
The quote “time heals all wounds” never has been more true than in the case of Busch, whose 2026 season is already in jeopardy of being another lost season with weekly on track struggles with no immediate signs of improvement.
With Busch’s contract up at the end of the year, we could very well be on the cusp of Busch ending his time at RCR early if the overall performance continues. An early exit or ride swap isn’t unheard of (Justin Haley joined Spire Motorsports for the final seven races of 2024 to prep for 2025), and if it would benefit both Busch and RCR to get an early head start on their 2027 plans, it’s an option neither will rule out. – Christopher Hansen
For Better or Worse, Kyle Busch Is Finishing the Job This Year
To say 2026, and really the last two years and change, have been horrendous for Kyle Busch is an understatement. Similar to Jimmie Johnson at the end of his Hendrick Motorsports tenure, you just never know when the winning and the good times will stop.
As Christopher mentioned, those three wins in the first half of the 2023 season made me think RCR had both struck gold and illustrated that they meant business.
How wrong I was.
Despite all that, Busch has grown into someone that is unlikely to quit. I think back to his 2015 championship. Given what happened at Daytona International Speedway and his recovery through it all, Busch had every reason to ease back into the car at a comfortable time of his choosing.
As opposed to the KFB that departed Texas Motor Speedway in the early 2000s as a young buck, this version of Busch tends to roll with the punches, even through some of the more morbid media sessions.
In acknowledging that Richard Childress Racing has brought the equivalent of tug boats to the track, with Austin Dillon also not recording a top 10 to this point in the season, it’s fair to ask about why Busch and RCR should subject themselves to this any further. After all, he has talked about how the Next Gen car doesn’t necessarily suit some of his strengths over the years, and now you end up having a match made in hell after a nice honeymoon to start.
Unlike Formula 1, we haven’t seen many Cup Series guys pull the plug on a wretched season at some point through the season. There are the infinite amount of Red Bull Racing examples and even Hailie Deegan back in the 2024 O’Reilly season.
But you just don’t see that all too often at NASCAR’s highest level.
One of the other factors at play is the general lack of structure that the No. 8 team faces when they get on the back foot. We’ve mentioned Busch’s frustrations, but when the team is compounding off days with bad execution, it only stokes the fire that much more.
There have been several races from 2024 to the current day where the Las Vegas native has to fight tooth and nail just to finish in the mid 20s, nowhere close to what the standard should be. Even on days where things are going well, something just has to go wrong like at Kansas Speedway.
Truthfully, we don’t know how this relationship will take shape over the course of this season. When dealing with total inadequacy across the board in sports, usually you’ll hear a lot of back end murmuring about the future internally.
To this point, we have not heard anything beyond about what the relationship is like between Kyle Busch and Richard Childress Racing.
For me, it’s a matter of how much these two want to deal with bad trends and now what is shaping to be a rotten body of work for what should be a first ballot Hall of Famer. I think Busch finishes the year but if sports has taught me anything, things can change on a whim. – Thomas Dunn
Thomas is in his second year covering NASCAR at Frontstretch. A Bay Area NASCAR fan for over 15+ years, he found his love for the sport through Jeff Gordon. He helps manage the 2-Headed Monster Column.
Thomas has enjoyed several trips to Sonoma Raceway in his time and currently covers college athletics in the Bay Area, writing about the California Golden Bears and doing play by play broadcasting.
Wouldn’t surprise me to see Shrub out of the car before end of season, but I’d think this only happens if it’s a mutual decision. As the article notes, Kyle may be many things, but a quitter has never been one of them.
Are we seeing the death rattles of RCR? Poor performance despite one driver known to have talent, admissions their equipment is junk, and few top tier sponsors, all seem to point to an organization circling the drain.
KyBu’s primary sponsors this year are: Bank OZK, NICOKICK.COM, FICO, BETMGM, Cheddar’s, Rebel Root Beer Whiskey, Morgan and Morgan, and Lucas Oil.
While a few of those are moderately large names, just as many are brands and companies nobody has ever heard of. RCR has fallen a long way from the days of Goodwrench, Pennzoil, Budweiser, Lowe’s, and the like. Even worse, two of those lost giants have remained in NASCAR, but left for teams providing greener pastures. (Pennzoil to Penske, and ABInbev to Trackhouse, touting Busch beer since Budweiser marketing was moved slightly up market.)
Kyle may be many things, but a quitter has never been one of them.
Except for that time he jumped out of the wrecked race car and left the track, and Dale Jr got in it. But he’s a totally different person now.
I too thought things were getting better when he won the Daytona pole and went from 25th to 15th at the end. But its been more heartache this year, worse than last year. Since he’s softened a lot since getting married and having kids, maybe he needs that “bad boy” image and fire to be more competitive.
I can’t see Kyle jumping ship mid–season, but i seriously doubt the he’s in the 8 next year.