Hendrick and JGR drivers are dominating the 2024 season while other teams’ drivers are lagging in the background. As Joe Gibbs Racing keeps winning, one of its former stellar drivers is in a slump. Ever since Kyle Busch joined Richard Childress Racing in 2023, his fortunes have taken a downward spiral.

After collecting three wins last season, the winningest driver entered a long drought continuing till this moment. In 2024, Kyle Busch finds himself fumbling with pit crew woes, short-track package issues, and other technical nitty-gritty. In last weekend’s Martinsville race, Busch faltered again and shared a piece of his mind over the radio.

Kyle Busch goes through a cynical outburst

After William Byron cruised to victory in Martinsville, NBC interviewed all drivers about their views. When they got to the RCR’s No. 8 team, Kyle Busch seemed optimistic about the performance. After finishing 3rd place in Atlanta, short tracks have not treated Rowdy well. His 16th-place finish on the Virginia track marked a slight improvement.

Kyle Busch detailed why this was the case. “We made an improvement this weekend from how we ran last year at Martinsville Speedway. The first run of the race the Lucas Oil Chevrolet got looser as went…We made the car better by the end of the race and we were able to get a decent finish, but we still have work to do to get to where we want to be.”

Yet after Fox recently released the Cook Out 400 race highlights on Twitter, we got a different picture. Soon after Denny Hamlin’s Stage 2 win, Christopher Bell spun in turn 4 on lap 203, due to a loose lug nut. His COTA rival was not having a good time either, as Kyle Busch fumed over the radio. “We f**king suck, we’re going backwards. It’s terrible. Throw it all back. Start over.”

Busch himself gave a little bit of perspective about this fiasco in the post-race interview. The pit problems evidently came back to haunt Kyle Busch’s No. 8 team. “We pitted for tires and adjustments and the next run we were a little free everywhere but tight at the three-quarter mark of Turns 3 and 4. At the end of Stage 2 we pitted again but the adjustments didn’t seem to work, and we lost track positions.”

This scenario is a stark contrast to Kyle Busch’s Martinsville outings in the past. He has two Cup wins on this track in consecutive years 2016 and 2017. The 2016 victory was particularly iconic, as he rubbed it in his haters by snagging both the Truck and Cup titles.

Busch dominated Martinsville in a single weekend

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The grandfather clock prize evaded Busch’s grasp this year. But when he received the prize earlier, he grabbed not one, but two of them. In 2016, Kyle Busch swept up two Martinsville victories in a Cup race as well as a Craftsman Truck race. After the second win, he asked his team: “What time is it?” Then he hilariously answered his own rhetorical question: “Time to tell the haters to shut up!”

In contrast to his present-day discord with the RCR team, Busch had showered praises on his then-JGR team. “I can’t say enough about this whole JGR team. The (No. 18) M&M’s Camry was awesome in practice. We had a really good car through practice, and (crew chief) Adam (Stevens) made some really good adjustments overnight to keep us where we needed to be, running up front all day.”

Even though the past seems golden, Kyle Busch needs to dwell in the present and fix RCR’s ongoing issues to get back to the winning game.

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