When you bring a driver like Kyle Busch into your race team, you expect to be competing for a NASCAR Cup Series championship year in and year out.
In his first season with Richard Childress Racing (RCR), Busch has certainly delivered, qualifying for the Cup Series playoffs after driving his No. 8 Chevy into victory lane three times in 2023. Work, however, remains — or is just beginning — for the two-time Cup Series champion to finish the job. For Busch, that starts with this Sunday’s Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington Raceway, the first race of the Cup Series playoffs.
“I think I’ve enjoyed it,” Busch said during Media Day Thursday, via Motorsport. “Moving teams is always kind of scary, like going to a new school or whatever. It’s kind of unnerving. But it’s been really good. Randall [crew chief Randall Burnett] has made it super easy. Everybody at RCR has been great. My thing now is just to try and reward them with the skill and everything that I know. I have to be able to go out there and perform at the best of what I know.
“To bring home a championship, but more importantly, just make that final four. The potential is there. The stuff is there. The team is there. We just need to execute and that starts with me. That starts with Randall, and snowballs from there.”
Kyle Busch coming off solid run at Daytona ahead of playoffs
Busch enters the postseason coming off a P7 finish in last Saturday’s Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona International Speedway. The top-10 finish was just his second in his last seven races dating back to the Crayon 301 at New Hampshire Motor Speedway on July 17.
With the margin of error thin this time of the season, Busch knows things must get buttoned up if he’s going to have a shot at championship No. 3.
“It would be phenomenal,” Busch said. “It would be awesome. That’s what we all strive for. I don’t care what team I’m at, I’m going to go try and win a championship. But to have the history and legacy of RCR and everything that they’ve done over the years with [Dale] Earnhardt and with the other drivers that have been there. Yeah, it’s been a little quiet lately but that would be nice to shake that up.
“I feel like when you’re in the final four, it’s like a championship season. You just gotta go out and execute in that last race and there’s so many things that can go against you in that last race to not let you win a championship. But that’s a title season. That’s where we want to get to and I feel like we can and we’ll work Phoenix once that time comes.”