“Not Very Good”: Kyle Busch’s Honest Self-Assessment Should Worry His Fans

The Richard Childress Racing chapter in the already distinguished career of Kyle Busch has been off to a pretty good start. He has three wins to his name and he is currently in the playoffs, fighting for his third Cup championship. However, ever since the playoffs began, his luck has taken a big hit.

An 11th place finish at Darlington, 7th at Kansas, 20th at Bristol, and more recently a finish of 34th at Texas has more or less rung the alarm bells in the #8 team’s garage. And Busch is well aware of that.

In fact, after the race at Texas in which the RCR driver suffered a spin which ended his day prematurely, he didn’t hold back on where he thinks he stands in his quest for the championship.

Kyle Busch laments early exit at Texas

In an interview after his early exit at Texas, Kyle Busch slammed himself for not delivering the results he should be delivering. He said, “A complete let down to my team right now, not being able to get the results that we need.”

“Every time I try, I crash and now it’s like the less I try the more I ride around, the better day we have.”

When asked about what he thinks of his chances of ‘getting lucky’ at Talladega next week, the racetrack where he won earlier this year, Busch answered, “Not very good.” Yet that hasn’t hampered his optimism for the race, especially considering the big advantage he has with his organization.

Kyle Busch says he is letting his team down. What he said about that and how he feels about Talladega, a place where he said he needed some luck to win at earlier this year. pic.twitter.com/GwsXN3NEbw

— Bob Pockrass (@bobpockrass) September 25, 2023

“We’re gonna go there and fight as hard as we can and run hard. RCR has a strong restrictor plate program so that’s all we can do,” Busch added.

Kyle Busch didn’t expect instant success at RCR

After the dismal season at JGR last year, Busch hit the ground pretty much instantly this year with RCR. This success took back most of his doubters but it has also taken him back too.

“I would not have expected as good as we fired off — almost winning the Clash, almost winning the Daytona 500, and winning Fontana (Auto Club Speedway). I felt like that was a really, really good kick in the pants,” Busch said as per Speedsport.

He added that a lot of people predicted him exiting the Round of 16. But he made it through. Now in the Round of 12, Busch is aware there are going to be more voices that predict his exit from this round.

And even though his Round of 12 hasn’t gone off to the best of starts, Busch still has two more shots to qualify for the Round of 8 with Talladega and ROVAL.