Heading home to Las Vegas Motor Speedway, Kyle Busch is enjoying the fruits of the labor he and the Richard Childress Racing team around him have poured into their NASCAR Cup Series program.
A series of offseason additions and promotions have paid off handsomely through the opening stanza of 2025: John Klausmeier and Richard Boswell both joined in November from Stewart-Haas Racing, with Klausmeier the team’s new technical director and Boswell the new crew chief for Austin Dillon and the No. 3 Chevrolet. Keith Rodden was promoted to vice president of competition in November, and in February, Mike Verlander was promoted from the team’s chief operating officer to become the team’s new president, replacing Torrey Galida who, after 14 years in that role, shifted to that of vice chairman.
MORE: Las Vegas schedule | Cup standings
Busch is reaping the rewards of that reshuffling early in 2025. The two-time Cup champion — in the midst of a career-long 61-race winless streak — has notched three top 10s in the first four races of the new year. That includes a seventh-place finish at Atlanta after leading 13 laps, and more notably, a fifth-place result at Circuit of The Americas where he led a race-best 42 laps in run that was nearly victorious.
Those stats represent a crucially needed uptick in performance for Busch, who, in his 20th full-time season in 2024, posted career lows in top fives (five) and top 10s (10).
Ahead of last week’s race at Phoenix Raceway, Busch told NASCAR.com he would “love to be able to go there and race for a top 10.” He accomplished that mission with an eight-place finish and sits eighth in the season standings.
“Phoenix is the first true test of where we lie,” he said, “just because we’ve sort of struggled at the short tracks, and Phoenix has been one of those places that we’ve struggled mightily.”
Now comes another test at Las Vegas, the first 1.5-mile oval on the 2025 schedule. His 26th-place finish in last year’s spring doesn’t show it, but Busch was a contender in the spring race before pit-road woes — most notably a Lap 213 penalty for pitting outside the box — sent him to the rear of the field despite leading 18 laps and fighting eventual race winner Kyle Larson for the lead early.
A rocky start on pit road in 2024 brought change to its roster throughout the course of the season, but tire carrier Lamar Neal, rear changer Shiloh Windsor and fueler Justin White returned to their roles in 2025 while front changer Shayne Pipala and jackman Dylan Moser are new additions to the crew.
“I feel like last year at Vegas, we were really fast,” Busch said. “We were probably one of the only guys that passed Kyle Larson under green there. But unfortunately, we just had some pit-road issues and miscues that took us out of the running to be able to race for a win. But overall this year, I would say (I’m) real happy with the pit crew. They’ve done a great job, and real happy with our speed and how our cars have been at the race tracks these first three races.”
Early momentum can be hard to find, particularly on the heels of a 34th-place DNF in the Daytona 500, where Busch was in contention for victory before a late-race crash at the front of the field. But Busch and the No. 8 team currently have it, which is thanks in large part, he says, to the in-house reshuffling at RCR’s shop in Welcome, North Carolina, and the leadership from the team owner himself, Richard Childress.
“I really think that that comes down to those people and those guys and at the race shop, how everybody’s kind of gelling together, working together,” Busch said. “And I will say, I feel like there’s a lot of grit and there’s a lot of determination, and it starts from the top. It starts with Richard, but it then trickles down to everybody there that we’re a hard-working group, and I don’t think anybody’s gonna outwork us. It’s just a matter of making sure that we’re working as smart as we can work and making fast race cars when we get to the shop. So far so good with the first three weeks and we really want to see that continue.”
Despite being the winningest driver in NASCAR history, Busch has only one Vegas win in his long, illustrious Cup career — and that came way back in 2009, 16 years ago. He aims for a second in the Pennzoil 400 presented by Jiffy Lube on Sunday (3:30 p.m. ET, FS1, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).
