Off to its worst start in decades, perhaps ever, Richard Childress Racing is desperately in need of a change.
Both Austin Dillon and Kyle Busch failed to score a top 10 in the first nine races, and they sit 24th and 27th in Cup Series points, respectively. Busch’s pairing with O’Reilly Series championship-winning crew chief Jim Pohlman started off with a Daytona 500 pole but has been nothing short of a disappointment since.
A 10th-place finish for Busch at Talladega was a nice reprieve from a disastrous season, and it marked Pohlman’s first top 10 as a Cup crew chief since 2011. But even that wasn’t enough to keep the pairing going, as Pohlman heads to a competition role within RCR after just 10 races atop the No. 8 pit box.
Pohlman’s replacement? RCR Performance Director Andy Street.
If that name sounds familiar, he’s been around the block before. Street has 11 O’Reilly wins as a crew chief at RCR, 10 of which came with Austin Hill between 2022 and 2024. He’s served as the crew chief for RCR’s part-time Cup and O’Reilly operations since 2025, including Jesse Love’s start in the No. 33 Cup car at Talladega this past weekend.
Most importantly, Street has prior experience working with Busch as his interim crew chief for the final five races of 2025 following Randall Burnett’s early departure.
How did Busch do during that span? Not half bad.
After a turn 1, lap 1 crash at the Charlotte Motor Speedway ROVAL marred their first race together, Street’s second race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway saw Busch start outside the top 30 and roar up to a top-10 result, all the while coming back from a lap down.
Race three saw Busch lead 26 laps at Talladega in a 19th-place effort, and the pair ended the season with a 13th-place finish at Martinsville Speedway and a top five in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway by staying out during the final caution.
Busch didn’t score any stage points in the final five races, but the finishes were solid and the team showed some flashes at the end of the year, which is all one can hope for. With that familiarity in place, Busch and Street will have a notebook and won’t be starting from square zero when they reprise their roles this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.
That said, don’t expect changes for Busch right out of the gate. But as long as the team can make subtle gains here and there each week, bringing its performance out of the gutter it’s currently in, the pairing could be successful by season’s end. It’s going to take time to rebuild the No. 8 team back into a contender as the issues run company wide.
The problem, however, is that a rebuild is going to take time RCR doesn’t have. Busch’s contract expires at the end of 2026, and with how disappointing the pairing has been for the last three years, he will undoubtably be exploring all options. Even if the team sees an uptick in performance in the coming weeks and months, it might not be enough to prevent Busch from walking.
So in many ways, this crew chief change represents the absolute last chance RCR has to make things right. Something has to give, and RCR has to try and make something out of almost nothing to keep Busch in the fold. If not, Busch will leave for the most attractive offer on the market — if a market even exists at this point.
Stephen Stumpf is the NASCAR Content Director for Frontstretch and is a three-year veteran of the site. His weekly column is “Stat Sheet,” and he formerly wrote "4 Burning Questions" for three years. He also writes commentaries, contributes to podcasts, edits articles and is frequently at the track for on-site coverage.
Find Stephen on Twitter @stephen_stumpf
The $50,000 question: Is it the crew chief, the cars, or the driver?
I refuse to believe it has anything to do with the driver!