Apparently, the sponsorship issues at Joe Gibbs Racing for Kyle Busch were serious. More serious than most people thought. Busch has now revealed that the organization couldn’t find any sponsorship for him once Mars Inc. and M&M’s pulled out of NASCAR in 2022.
There was a proposed deal with Oracle, famous for sponsoring the Red Bull F1 team to the tune of $500,000,000. Joe Gibbs Racing was trying to reel them in after that deal was signed. Which meant Oracle spending even more money.
In a new interview with Jordan Bianchi of The Athletic, Kyle Busch talked about the Oracle deal, and JGR’s solution after it fell through. He saw the writing on the wall and warned his old organization that they had to look elsewhere.
They did not.
“Did JGR try hard enough to sell me? My answer to that is no,” Busch said to Bianchi.
He then went on to detail the Oracle debacle.
“So I’m like, ‘There’s no way they’re [Oracle] going to do a NASCAR deal. Not a chance.’ So I told those guys, ‘Look, you got to look elsewhere. You got to look outside,” Busch explained. “We got to call everybody else.’ … [Instead] they offered me a contract to race there and they weren’t going to have sponsorship on the car, but I didn’t feel like that was fair for the 15 years that I was there; I didn’t want Joe putting his own money into the program.”
That’s when RCR started to make more sense. Seeing what they did for Tyler Reddick and Austin Dillon, things made sense for Kyle Busch to go to Childress.
Now in year two, Busch keeps landing sponsorship and new partners with RCR.
Kyle Busch lands ‘anchor partner’ in zone nicotine pouches
For the 2024 season, Kyle Busch is going to have an all-new anchor partner. Brand new zone premium nicotine pouches will be the sponsor for a majority of Busch’s races this year. zone (yes, lowercase), will launch on February 5 across select markets in the United States.
Busch has landed partnerships with Rebel Bourbon, zone nicotine, and in the past was sponsored by 3CHI, a legal cannabis brand. 3CHI is still named on RCR’s partner list, but maybe that moves to Austin Dillon now that zone is involved?
It remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure – Kyle Busch is marketable. Last year’s deal with Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen worked so well, the restaurant chain is back for this year and beyond with Busch.
While things didn’t work out at JGR, it has gone very well at Richard Childress for Busch. He is marketable, he’s a championship-caliber driver, and he has a lot more left in the tank.
Kyle Busch is coming into the 2024 season with new sponsors and a new set of goals. He knows he can win with this team and is now focused on making a run for his third Cup Series championship.