When the Next Gen car arrived in 2022, it turned the competitive order on its head. Drivers who had ruled the roost suddenly found the ground shifting under their feet, while a younger surge seized the moment. Kyle Busch landed squarely in the group hit hardest by the overhaul, a veteran whose mastery of the old formula no longer translated to the new era.
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The car’s symmetry alone sent a shock through the garage. NASCAR stripped away the skew and right-side side force that had defined Cup handling for years, erasing the skill of leaning on the right-rear tire, a work some drivers had mastered to perfection. Mechanical grip replaced aerodynamic crutches. The ride height changed.
A new splitter, a flat underbody, a rear diffuser that forced half the field to learn a new vocabulary word, and a shorter rear deck reshaped airflow. The roofline dropped. The dimensions widened.
The H-pattern shifter gave way to a sequential five-speed, and independent rear suspension entered the Cup garage for the first time. The sport overall rewrote the playbook. And beyond that, NASCAR even shortened the practice time.
Those changes demanded drivers reinvent the way they attacked a lap, and Busch has felt that strain more than most. When he was asked recently which drivers have flourished and which have floundered under the new demands, he didn’t sugarcoat it.
“It’s not all driver. It’s the crew chief, engineering, the shop. It’s everything,” Busch said, before pointing out that Ryan Blaney and William Byron have gained the most ground. He argued that Denny Hamlin and Christopher Bell have managed to maintain their form. But as for those hurt the most, he placed himself at the top of that list.
Busch noted that practice, or the lack of it, has played a major role. In his final season with crew chief Adam Stevens at Joe Gibbs Racing, COVID protocols eliminated all practice sessions. Teams rolled straight into races blind, and Busch snagged only one win in that stretch. They were forced to rely entirely on what rolled unloaded from the shop, a pattern that echoes what he faces today.
He said they struggled early in races and typically came alive only in the final stage, with Texas being the lone exception, where he sealed a win.
Busch‘s stats in the Generation 6 era show why the contrast stings. From 2012 to 2021, Busch won two championships, posted three additional seasons finishing between second and fourth, and slipped outside the top ten in points only once. But after Gen 7 arrived, the results nosedived as he finished P13 and P14 in 2022 and 2023, then missed the playoffs entirely in both 2024 and 2025.
Brad Keselowski has ridden a similar drive. During the Gen 6 years, he won the 2012 championship, finished runner-up in 2017, made the playoffs every season from 2012 through 2021, and reached either the Round of 8 or the Championship 4 in each of his final five seasons in that era.
Since the Next Gen rollout, Keselowski has managed only one win in 2024 and has finished P24, P8, P13, and, most recently, P20 in 2025.
The Next Gen platform undoubtedly opened the door for rising stars. But it has also exposed the veterans who built their reputations on an entirely different style of racing, and those who haven’t adapted quickly enough have paid the steepest price.
