Technical alliances are an open secret in NASCAR. From Joe Gibbs Racing and 23XI Racing’s Toyotas alliance to Team Penske and Wood Brothers Racing with Ford. Each smaller team has a larger organization to lean on for data, equipment, and strategy. However, not all teams make the most of what they have. WBR only last week notched up their 3rd win in 8 years, despite being linked to Penske, the team that has won the last three championships, for a decade now. However, the Chevrolet faction seems to be working smooth as butter lately, and Kyle Busch opened up on the help he receives from his former team!

Kyle Busch entered the sport under Rick Hendrick’s wing at Hendrick Motorsports. Starting his career in a Chevrolet, Busch notched up 2 wins in his rookie year, and then finished top-10 in the drivers standings for the next two, before making the switch to Joe Gibbs Racing in 2008. The move to Toyota was one that changed his career. Busch won eight of his first 22 races in a Toyota, and over his 15-year partnership with JGR, he notched up two championships and countless wins.

However, a switch back to Chevrolet with Richard Childress Racing proved to be tough, as Busch went winless for the first time in his career in 2024. In a recent conversation with Kevin Harvick, Busch opened up on how RCR is aiming to strengthen their core using help from Hendrick Motorsports, and how Busch has tried to adapt to the Next-Gen car.

The Chevy Advantage

Kyle Busch is not a fan of the Next-gen car, and he has been vocal about his struggles with it. “This car is worse in traffic than the previous car. They drive good by themselves in clean air, but if we were striving to do was to better cars in traffic, we did NOT do that,” Busch said in 2022 after his introduction to the Gen 7 car. His first year in it saw him finish outside the top 10 in the standings for the first time in 10 years. In conversation with Kevin Harvick on the Happy Hour podcast, Busch revealed the drivers who he admires in the Next-Gen car, and how he learns from them.

“Well, I mean, the cream of the crop is Kyle [Larson] or William [Byron], I would say, with this [NextGen] car…Those two are the guys that are most competitive each and every week, so we try to rely on them a lot,” Busch said. Larson has won the most races in the Next-Gen era with 13 and trailing him is William Byron with 12 wins. Both are Hendrick Motorsports drivers, so it’s no surprise that Busch leans on them for help to improve his own driving. RCR and HMS have had an alliance since 2021 and, while the results have been far from comparable, the improvement is visible. But it’s not just the guys on the track, Busch has fostered connections behind the scenes, that give him a deeper insight into the workings of HMS.

Kyle Busch also emphasized the importance of the support of HMS engineers who have been instrumental in improving the performance of the RCR team, as they help each other improve their race cars, setups, and strategies. “Randall [Burnett] got a really good relationship with the engineer on the 24 [William Byron], they went to school together I’ve got a really good relationship with Rudy [Fugle] he worked at KBM [Kyle Busch Motorsports] for 10 years,” Busch said, explaining the extensive relationship between the two Chevy teams.

Randall Burnett is Busch’s crew chief and having a connection with the engineer of a back-to-back Daytona 500 winner must have certainly helped Busch during his near top-5 run at Daytona until he got wrecked. Along with this, Kyle Busch Motorsports was another stepping stone for many current drivers like Christopher Bell, and William Byron. Byron’s crew chief, Randy Fugle, is close to Busch too because of this. This may give us some insight into Busch being consistently running amongst the top-5, as the RCR driver has three top-5 finishes in 5 races so far, and Byron leads the standings despite winning just one race along with three top-five finishes himself.

Evidently, Busch is learning a lot and getting closer to where he aspires to be: in victory lane. However, it is the 2020 Cup Series Champion from HMS who has helped him the most to end his Next-Gen woes.

Busch expanded on his good relationship with another one of his Chevy teammates, Chase Elliott, “I’ve had some long conversations with Chase Elliott because we grew up the same way like racing super late models across the country… And I’m like, man, have you found this thing to just be a beast, like a challenge? And he’s like yeah I’ve had to change my driving style just like what you just said. And I’m like I don’t know how to do that.” Despite being the elder statesman, Busch knows when to ask for help from his younger peers, and Elliott is empathetic of his cause. The HMS man also saw a slump following a great first season in the Next-Gen car. 

Elliott won five races in 2022 and reached Championship 4 as well. However, over the next two seasons, the HMS #9 won just one race after a winless 2023 season marred with an injury. Elliott came back and struggled in the Next-Gen car. Despite some promising runs, like during Martinsville in the 2024 playoffs, the HMS driver has been a shadow of himself before 2023. This is eerily similar to what Busch is going through, as Rowdy is currently on a 62-race winless streak, aiming to break the longest duck of his career.

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Busch’s formula for success at RCR

As Kyle Busch enters the 2025 season with RCR, he has a clear vision for the future of his team, a future that is inspired by the success of Hendrick Motorsports. After a disappointing 2024 season where he went winless for the entire season for the first time in his two-decade-long career. However, Busch believes that RCR has learned from the past and is constantly improving.

Speaking on how the culture at RCR has progressed over the years, Busch said ahead of the Las Vegas race, “I feel like there’s a lot of grit and there’s a lot of determination, and it starts from the top. It starts with Richard [Childress], but it then trickles down to everybody there that we’re a hard-working group, and I don’t think anybody’s gonna outwork us. It’s just a matter of making sure that we’re working as smart as we can work and making fast race cars when we get to the shop.” 

As RCR continues to show improvement with Busch’s bright start to the season, there’s still a long way to go. As Kyle Busch said after his top-5 run at Phoenix, “I would say the step that we made from last year to this year was a really good step. The same amount of step. If we do that again, then we can be a contender to race for a win.” 

With HMS by their side, and a motivated Rowdy ready to prove his doubters wrong, it is only a matter of time until Busch breaks this miserable streak. What do you think? Will Kyle Busch go winless again in 2025? Or has he gotten over the growing pains of shifting to Chevrolet after 15 years at Toyota? Let us know in the comments!