Nobody in NASCAR history knows the taste of victory better than Kyle Busch. The two-time Cup Series champion has visited Victory Lane 231 times across the sport’s three national series, with 63 of those wins coming at NASCAR’s highest level.
Nineteen consecutive seasons have resulted in at least one Cup Series win for Busch, dating back to 2005. But despite being within striking distance multiple times in 2024, Busch keeps leaving instead with the bitter taste of defeat, hungrier than when he arrived.
Such was the case after his most recent missed opportunity Sunday at Kansas Speedway, where his No. 8 Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet led 26 laps and appeared on the path to finally snapping a frustrating, career-long 50-race winless streak. Instead, Busch’s move to lap Chase Briscoe mucked up Busch’s handling, sending him into the wall, a skid and a disappointing 19th-place finish instead.
Make that 51.
“I’m numb,” Busch said afterward, clearly emotional and drained. “I don’t know what to do.”
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His Kansas outing felt emblematic of the struggles Busch has battled since his last victory, a June 2023 win at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway. Across those 51 races, Busch has tallied 11 top fives. Three of those were runner-up efforts. But consider that he has nearly triple the amount of DNFs, failing to finish eight races in that same span, including five in a seven-week span this season.
How quickly the narrative could have changed, too, had Busch been victorious in a thrilling photo finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway in February 2024. A three-wide dash to the stripe between Daniel Suárez, Ryan Blaney and Busch left Busch third by a mere 0.007 seconds. Or perhaps it changes at Daytona International Speedway if not for finishing second to Harrison Burton by a scant 0.047-second margin. What about the next week at Darlington Raceway, where instead of placing second to Briscoe by 0.361 seconds, it’s Busch claiming his second Southern 500 triumph?
The near-misses, the mistakes and the emotion show this clearly: It is difficult to win at the world’s top level of stock-car racing — even for the best of the best. Not doing so for an extended period of time is enough to leave one of the sport’s all-time greats almost without words.
But those are all what-ifs, leaving everyone pondering about what-could-have-beens rather than the reality that 2024 may mark the end of Busch’s tremendous win streak at 19 consecutive years — which is the longest streak in NASCAR history.
That brings us back to Kansas, where the streak’s continuation came into question all over again before that critical misstep with 32 laps between Busch and what could have been career win No. 64. Busch, the race leader, was running near the wall with a charging Ross Chastain in tow when the duo crept to the back bumper of Briscoe. The No. 14 Ford of Briscoe left just enough asphalt up high to give Busch a lane, but the shut-off of air to Busch’s left front effectively worked to disconnect Busch’s traction to the pavement.
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In that split second, Busch contacted the outside wall and fell behind on his steering, ultimately losing control and sliding out of the lead, out of race-winning contention and back into what-could-have-been.
What could have been a fight to the checkered flag suddenly became post-race pit-road interviews trying to make sense of another lost opportunity.
“Just running ten-tenths all the time,” Busch explained to NBC Sports. “Trying to make up speed and cover the 1 car (Chastain), make sure I could stay ahead of him. And the 14 turned down the hill in order to get clean air from the guy in front of him. So I went to his outside to plug the hole and just, air. For some reason, just felt nothing off the corner and hadn’t really had that like that the whole time. … Busted my butt.”
So rare for so long were mistakes from Kyle Busch, whose driving prowess defined stock-car racing’s best for much of the 2010s. From 2006-2019 — a span of 14 seasons — only 2011 and 2016 marked years in which Busch failed to finish as many as five races. On the contrary, Busch has now DNF’d at least five times in four of the past five seasons dating back to the 2020 campaign, including three seasons at Joe Gibbs Racing before joining RCR in 2023.
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What changed?
Busch revealed in a discussion with reporters in June at Iowa Speedway that a lack of practice time has hurt his ability to “dissect and dive into the car,” often leaving him searching for a feel he deems necessary to compete rather than finding speed immediately. And it’s in those efforts to pinch extra speed from his No. 8 Chevrolet that has ultimately cost Busch.
Kansas might be the most recent example, but incidents at Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Gateway harken similar memories. With leader Brad Keselowski low on fuel, Busch’s dive to Denny Hamlin’s left with two laps remaining in the Brickyard 400 while running sixth spun Busch, dashing a likely top-five finish off his stat sheet and replacing it with a 25th-place finish instead. At Gateway, Busch’s battle with Kyle Larson for seventh on the final lap of Stage 2 ended with Busch in the outside wall and, subsequently, the garage after Busch pinched Larson on entry to Turn 1.
Busch proved three times in 2023 that he can win both in the Next Gen car and with Richard Childress Racing. He was seemingly 32 laps away at Kansas from reminding everybody he is one of the best to ever climb behind the wheel of a NASCAR vehicle.
He still is, results be damned.
But right now, Busch is starving, trying to remember exactly what victory tastes like in the Cup Series. He has six more chances this year to remind himself.
