INDIANAPOLIS — Two years after what Kyle Busch described as a “hard as hell year,” the former Cup champion endures what could be a called a hard as hell summer.
The result is that one of the greatest NASCAR drivers of his generation could go unnoticed today at one of auto racing’s most revered sites.
It’s quite a turn for the two-time Cup champion and two-time winner at Indianapolis Motor Speedway who, at age 39, remains in the prime of his driving career.
But little has gone well this season for Busch, who is mired in a career-long 42-race winless streak and has not reached the finish in five of the last seven races. Accidents and mechanical woes have conspired to sideline him in those events.
“It’s been so dismal and so heartbreaking that I have a hard time dealing with enough stuff in my life that every Sunday to keep adding to it is getting harder and harder to deal with,” Busch said earlier this month at Chicago.
This weekend hasn’t gone much better for Busch ahead of his 700th career Cup start — a total only 19 other drivers have reached in series history.
He said his car was too tight in Friday’s practice, which saw him 16th on the speed chart. The changes for Saturday’s qualifying left his car too free and saw him qualify 34th. Of the five cars he qualified better than, one car hit the wall and another is making just its sixth start of the season.
So continues the odd twists and turns he has experienced the past two seasons, starting with a deal not completed with Joe Gibbs Racing, which forced a move in 2023 to Richard Childress Racing, where he had early success, only to see that fade.
“It’s obviously not a fun thing to experience yourself, so you do look out and recognize that it’s probably not a lot of fun for him, too,” former Cup champion Brad Keselowski said of Busch. “The series and sports in general are always full of ebbs and flows.
“For the most part of his career, Kyle has done a fantastic job, at least in the Cup series, of avoiding those down years. The law of averages eventually hits you to some degree and he’s going through that now.”
Fifteen races remain entering today’s Brickyard 400 and the thought that Busch’s NASCAR record streak of 19 consecutive seasons with at least a win could be in jeopardy of ending seems possible. Eventually it will end one day, but with Busch it felt more likely that it would end when he quits running full-time in the series.
“I’m not ready to give up yet,” NBC Sports analyst Steve Letarte said on this week’s NASCAR on NBC podcast about Busch’s streak ending this season. “He’s won 19 (years) in a row. I think he’s earned the right to win 20. I think the racing Gods will bless him with some sort of fortune at some point.”
Busch acknowledged earlier this month that his best chance of winning in the regular season to make the playoffs would be at Daytona “as crazy as that sounds,” he said.
Busch’s lone Cup victory at Daytona came in July 2008. But that’s where things feel at this point. Richard Childress Racing hasn’t show the speed of Hendrick Motorsports or Joe Gibbs Racing at most tracks. Without such speed, a team has to be perfect with its setup, strategy and execution on the track and on pit road. That hasn’t been the case in many races this season.
Car owner Richard Childress told NBC Sports this month that he’s more involved “than I have been in several years” as he seeks to fix the woes not only for Busch’s team but also for Austin Dillon’s team.
Childress, though, conceded: “You can’t fix it in the middle of the year. … We’ve got a lot of stuff that we’re working on and hopefully we can get both of them running better.”
Childress wants to add to the team’s engineering department and the organization is looking at various other ways to make its cars better. RCR is going through a transition with long-time team executive Andy Petree announcing his retirement in late June and former crew chief Keith Rodden taking over as interim competition director.
Busch said he’s been involved in some of the conversations about potential changes at Richard Childress Racing.
“I’ve certainly heard of some names and some rumblings,” Busch said Saturday at Indianapolis. “I don’t know if any signatures have been put on paper or whatnot to get some of those people in. I know we lost one, meaning we did not get him.”
Meanwhile, Joe Gibbs Racing, Busch’s home from 2008-22, has had one of the strongest seasons, winning six of 21 races and having all four of its drivers in a playoff spot with five races left in the regular season.
It once seemed likely that Busch would end his career at Joe Gibbs Racing, but a series of events triggered by Mars, Inc., deciding that it would leave NASCAR after the 2022 season changed things dramatically.
With Busch’s contract set to expire after the 2022 season, the rush was on to find a sponsor. A sponsor deal fell through. Busch and Joe Gibbs Racing were unable to come to an agreement. That gave JGR the chance to move Ty Gibbs from Xfinity to Cup and take Busch’s spot in the organization.
Figuring out his future and that of his truck organization led Busch to say in August 2022 that it had been a “hard as hell” year.
“It’s been a lot of sleepless nights figuring out what your future is and all that sort of stuff,” he said at the time.
Among his key concerns as he examined his options was the ability to keep winning.
“You want to be able to go somewhere that you feel like you have a legit shot to race to win,” Busch said in August 2022. “Trust me, I don’t feel like it’s fair to me or my family or anything else if we’re going to have to spend less time together moving forward because we are gonna have to change our lifestyle. No question, there’s a big change coming.”
They did on Sept. 13, 2022, when Richard Childress Racing announced it had signed Busch.
His move there seemed to be a perfect pairing for the former combatants, who famously tussled after a Truck race in Kansas in 2011. Childress isn’t afraid to speak his mind and same for Busch. When they won three of the their first 15 races together, thoughts of Busch giving RCR its first Cup title since 1994 appeared realistic.
Now, there are only questions of what happened and what’s next.
Busch will be back at RCR next year but when asked last month at Iowa about social media buzz that he could maybe return to Joe Gibbs Racing, he said: “I would say anything’s possible, always. Certainly, if I was welcomed, I would go back. If Hendrick welcomed me back, I would go back, but right now I’m at RCR with my group of guys and the deal that I have right now in place, so we’re trying to work and build this program and make RCR great again.”
There are many ways to read those comments. Better results will make those comments fade away.
Tho words being pondered the most now are his comments Friday on “The Pat McAfee Show.”
Busch told the show’s host he had not responded to Corey LaJoie’s text and call to talk about their incident last weekend at Pocono Raceway. Busch blocked LaJoie on a restart and when LaJoie came back up the track, he hit Busch in the left rear of the car, sending it spinning. Busch’s car went up the track, triggering a multi-car crash.
Busch said Friday on the show that there is no need to talk to LaJoe because LaJoie is “just a liar’’ and that “payback is coming.” Busch said that LaJoie had changed his story on what happened.
LaJoie told The Athletic on Saturday that Busch calling him a liar “pisses me off.”
At this point, that’s likely the least of Busch’s worries.
He just needs to get through today’s race. Then the series is off for two weeks and his family is headed for a European vacation.
And maybe he can disconnect for a while, put the summer struggles away, relax and come back refreshed.
“That’d be nice,” he said Saturday, “but I’m sure there’s no complete disconnect. There’s going to be emails blowing through I’m sure. We’ll take what we can get and have a nice time.”