The last time Kyle Busch took a trip to victory lane at Texas Motor Speedway, his number was still #18. Driving for Joe Gibbs Racing, Busch led a dominant 90 laps of the 2020 Cup Series race, finishing with a stellar rating of 127.4. However, since the Next Gen car arrived in 2022, Busch’s top-five charge has failed to see the light of day in sunny Texas.

Moving into the early stages of the 2024 season, Busch hasn’t shown great signs of resurgence as of yet. There’s no driver more in tune with the saying, “If you’re not first, you’re last” and for Kyle Busch, he’s been ‘last’ all season so far in the RCR Cup car. That said, the #8 garage received some strong words of encouragement from teammate Austin Dillon’s crew chief.

Justin Alexander has race-winning advice for the #8 RCR garage

As NASCAR moves away from short-track racing and toward intermediate tracks, RCR is aiming to leave behind its woes and focus on fine-tuning the Chevy Camaro ahead of the EchoPark Automotive 400. However, there are a few challenges that the #8 side of the three-garage Richard Childress Racing entry will need to overcome quickly. Last year around, Kyle Busch started 7th for the Texas race but his race ended in tragedy after he got caught up with the ongoing battles and dropped down to 34th by the end.

But Austin Dillon’s crew chief, Justin Alexander, believes that the #8 pit crew has it figured out under Randall Burnett’s leadership. Sympathizing with Busch’s tough luck in 2023, Burnett shared some thought-provoking advice: “You know, they’ve really had some good cars and some decent runs, they’ve just had some bad luck…(…)…but we’ve just gotta do bring the best cars that we can and just hope that we don’t get involved in other’s messes and get some consistency built up in the races, move back up in the points.”

Still, the #3 crew chief believed that Texas Motor Speedway was a rather ‘tough’ nut to crack. Describing the trickiness of turns one and two in comparison to the sheer speed of three and four, Alexander felt that the pressure was on the crew chief to make the right calls. With a plethora of alternative strategies available, picking the right one was crucial.

The same year that Kyle Busch had won the fall race at Texas, Austin Dillon had also secured a win for RCR. It had all come down to the pit strategy. Alexander shared his insights in a bid to help out the #8 garage: “You can stay out, there’s four tires, lot of different things you can do, lots of different strategies. And that’s how we won the race back in 2020, it was with the two-tire call, so just gotta be mindful of that and stay on top of that.”

After taking a look at the sound advice that Dillon’s crew chief had for Busch and Burnett, do you think they can combine the experience of winning at Texas twice to help out Busch?

Kyle Busch’s new crew chief isn’t one to back down from the Texas challenge

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Despite starting the season with a lackluster form, Kyle Busch has showcased he still has the potential to win races by bringing home the Truck Series win at Atlanta. So the pressure is now on crew chief Randall Burnett to figure out how to mimic that in the Cup Series this weekend. Fortunately, the team seemed to have found some stride at COTA right before switching to short tracks.

That said, Randall Burnett aims to build on their Martinsville finish of 16th, which was still an improvement over the 20th place at Richmond. He shared with Alan Cavanna, “The team’s been working really well together, we’ve talked about a lot of things and trying to uncover what kind of our Achilles’ Heel is at short track races. I think we learned a lot at Martinsville this weekend, kind of went a different direction from what we’ve had.”

During Martinsville, the #8 seemed to fare marginally better than the previous weekend, with better results in qualifying than their usual pace at Martinsville. Though many fans are all doom and gloom about Busch’s Texas campaign, the #8 crew chief has built up some major confidence despite placing outside the top 10. He concluded, “So it felt like we learned some stuff (at Martinsville). Were we where we needed to be? Probably not yet, but feel more confident in what we’re doing for sure.

Now that the RCR crew is leaving no stone unturned in preparing the #8 to the best of their ability, the pressure is on Kyle Busch to drive the RCR Camaro ZL1 to victory lane at Texas Motor Speedway.