TALLADEGA, Ala. – Time is running out for Kyle Busch to stretch his remarkable winning streak to 20 consecutive NASCAR seasons with at least one victory.
There are only six races remaining on the year as Busch heads to Talladega Superspeedway, where he has won twice in his career. He has won just about everywhere since his 2005 rookie season, collecting 63 Cup Series victories and a pair of championships.
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But he lost his seat at Joe Gibbs Racing after the 2022 season because of sponsorship issues and his move to Richard Childress Racing has led to the longest losing streak of his career. Busch won in his second race with RCR last year, when he notched three victories and made the playoffs.
His last win, though, came at Gateway outside St. Louis in June 2023 and his losing streak is at a career-worst 51 races headed into Sunday. He didn't qualify for the playoffs, and now he is just trying to keep his season winning streak intact.
He has a pair of runner-up finishes this year and lost a three-wide race to the finish line by a mere 0.007 seconds at the start of the season in a trio of near misses. But it was last week's 19th-place finish at Kansas, where he started third and led 26 laps, that left the future Hall of Famer shell-shocked at how far things have fallen.
Busch's 19 consecutive years with at least one victory is a NASCAR record, and, across all three of the national series, he has notched 231 wins. He thought a win was within reach at Kansas until he spun while passing a lapped car to end his chance at victory.
“I’m numb,” Busch said on pit road at Kansas. “I don’t know what to do.”
Since his last win, Busch has only 11 top-five finishes, and as RCR has suffered a sharp decline this season, Busch tallied five DNFs in a seven-week span. He's had his chances: Busch finished second to Harrison Burton by 0.047 seconds at Daytona in August, then lost the next week to Chase Briscoe at Darlington Raceway by 0.361 seconds.
With those two wins, Burton and Briscoe claimed the final two spots in the playoff field and kept Busch out of championship contention.
Busch was hired by Richard Childress after Tyler Reddick shocked the organization by signing with 23XI Racing a full year before his contract expired. Childress had every intention of keeping Reddick in the No. 8 Chevrolet through 2023, but with Busch unable to put together a deal to stay with Gibbs and available, Childress released Reddick early and snagged Busch at a discounted rate.
Reddick thought that Busch — the closest driver in attitude to the late Dale Earnhardt — would be a perfect fit with Earnhardt's old team owner.
“I feel competition-wise, I wouldn't have seen the struggles coming,” said Reddick, who won NASCAR's regular-season title with 23XI. "I do remember, at times, we were hit or miss (at RCR). There were tracks we struggled at, there was work to do at tracks we struggled at.
“But it seems they've been struggling more times than not, which is not what you would expect out of that group, or out of Kyle Busch,” Reddick continued. “It's just that nothing has gone Kyle Busch's way this year. It's been really crazy to watch that unfold.”
Busch acknowledged earlier this year that NASCAR's cutback on practice time has hurt his ability to adapt to the Next Gen car and find the speed he's seeking and the comfortable feel he needs inside the car.
The Next Gen certainly has brought parity to the 40-car Cup field, and it's been more than a year since a driver has lodged back-to-back wins, done last August by Chris Buescher at Richmond and Michigan.
Reddick also believes that trying to learn the car with limited on-track practice time every weekend has stymied Busch.
“I wouldn't say he doesn't have it figured out, I think he knows what he's doing,” Reddick said. "He knows what he needs his car to do. This Next Gen racing is just quite a bit different than what it was when I came into it with the previous car. And it really doesn't take much to take a car that could win to running 15th.
“It's not like it used to be where you can get your way back up there with a good-handling car. The spread from first to 20th ... is really, really tight. Everyone is really close in a lot of ways and it is an unforgiving sport in that regard. You can't have mistakes. You can't get put in a bad spot. It's difficult to close these races out.”
Busch has six more chances starting Sunday to keep his streak intact.
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