Kyle Busch has been everywhere this week, and it’s not because he’s once again a NASCAR Cup Series winner. Quite the opposite, in fact!
The two-time Cup Series champ is in the news again because of his inability to win. That’s right. The guy who has won over 60 Cup races, and holds the record for most wins across all three series (233), can’t buy a win lately.
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For those who missed it, Busch and former JGR teammate Denny Hamlin had beef last weekend after Hamlin essentially called Busch a scrub on his podcast. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but he called him out for not having won a Cup race in three years, which was fair.
Busch then went on Sean Hannity’s new podcast and … didn’t hold back. He hit on everything.
Drivers he hated.
Drivers he liked.
How he wanted to “beat guys into the ground.”
You know, the normal stuff you’d expect from Rowdy.
But he didn’t stop there. Busch also talked about his last Cup win, which came in 2023. He won three times that season — his first with RCR — and then things got weird.
“After the third race that we won at Gateway, we got our hands smacked for some of the stuff that we were doing to the race car that NASCAR didn’t like and said ‘don’t bring that back,'” Busch told Hannity.
“It wasn’t anything, like, against the rules. It was just, you always exploit the gray area. So we exploited a gray area and we found something and we had an advantage.”
The entire interview is worth the watch, but that specific part begins at the 1:07:44 mark for those who want to watch it.
This doesn’t look great on paper for NASCAR. Let’s just call it like it is. Not the best look when your future Hall of Fame driver is saying, essentially, that the fellas who make the rules stepped in after you won three races and told you to quit doing certain things to your car.
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But, as Busch notes, it’s what NASCAR has been doing for 70 years now. He’s not the first driver to receive a slap on the wrist, and he won’t be the last.
It’s “cheating without cheating,” Busch added.
“We exploited a gray area and we found something, and we had an advantage,” he continued.
How? Busch didn’t exactly say (smart man!), but he did give fans a glimpse into how teams try to get an advantage. Shockingly, it’s all about making the car faster.
Stunning, I know.
“You want more downforce,” Busch said. “You want to make it lighter. So, you go and you try to figure out ways of making more downforce than everybody else. Getting your car lower to the ground, lower CG, making it go around the corners faster.”
Again, it’s how NASCAR teams have operated for decades now. Since the days of Big Bill France, really. It’s the game within the game.
The problem fans are going to have with this, and I don’t blame them, is NASCAR stepping in after Kyle Busch won three races at the start of 2023, and basically telling them to stop whatever it is they were doing — even if it wasn’t against the rules.
That seems unfair. To me, at least.
It’s also going to make people bring this conversation back to the present day of NASCAR, where Tyler Reddick has won five of the first nine races this season. He’s quite literally putting up prime Dale Earnhardt numbers.
I’ve got news for you — Tyler Reddick ain’t prime Dale Earnhardt.
People will start asking questions. Fans will get suspicious. Frankly, they already are.
And this little bombshell from Kyle Busch won’t help.
