Kyle Busch was enjoying his third win of the 2023 season at the World Wide Technology Raceway, hoping for a strong end to the season and returning back with a championship contention team. However, he now finds himself without a win, making it a stretch of 36 races and just a couple of spots above the cut-off line to make it into the playoffs.

So what exactly has gone wrong for Kyle Busch and the #8 RCR team? The transition to a Next-Gen car hasn’t been a smooth ride for Rowdy, but at the same time, his team hasn’t been able to keep up with the competition. His frustration peaked during the All-Star event, where he deliberately took Ricky Stenhouse Jr out of the race and, afterward, was involved in a brawl.

But ahead of this weekend’s event, the former JGR star, in a composed manner, was able to dissect his season’s difficulties in an interview with FOX reporter Bob Pockrass.

Busch compares his last year’s run to his 2024 run so far.

The only consistent run in his first 14 starts this year came during the Dover and Kansas races. This was the first time he had secured a back-to-back top-placing finish. 4th place at Dover, followed by an 8th place finish at Kansas. So the optimism was on high for his next race at Darlington, a place that had treated him well last year.

But the inconsistency crept back into the team, and they were miles behind in the competition and contest for a win. Rowdy finished 27th in the race. “No. No, I can’t. It’s really crazy. The things that we did last year at Darlington, we ran third with it. And then this year, we’ve kind of gone on a different path and we ran well at Dover with it, we ran well at Kansas with it. So we’re like, “Okay, let’s go to Darlington with it.’ And complete miss. Would we have been better off just running what we ran last year? Who knows?”

Kyle Busch acknowledged how trends change every six months and how hard it is these days, to know what other teams are up to. What are the changes and modifications they make to their cars that help them compete for wins? “I mean, the only time you really have a chance to look underneath somebody’s dress, If you will, is when they’re in tech. When the tires are off the car, that’s pretty much the only time you get to see anything. So with limited time out on pit road, you’re not going to get a good chance to look underneath somebody’s stuff.”

It may seem like making it into the playoffs would be a bigger concern for the driver at this juncture in the season. But, his primary focus is to keep his streak of wins every year in the Cup Series alive, which will ultimately secure his entry into the knockout stages.

Kyle Busch has sorted out a plan to secure his playoff spot

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There are two ways to make it into the final 16 of the NASCAR Cup Series. The most effective way is to win a race during the 26 regular season races. This more or less guarantees a driver’s entry to the playoffs. And the next is the hard way of collecting enough points. Bubba Wallace knows a thing or two about how arduous the latter process can be.

However, Busch just isn’t stressing about the playoff qualification; rather, he wants to add a 19th year to his consecutive win streak, ever since his first full-time season back in 2005. “I’m not stressing over the playoffs probably as much as I’m stressing over the 20-year win streak. That’s the bigger goal. You win a race for that, you’re going to be in the playoffs. That’s the bigger one.” Busch said this to Bob Pockrass in a 1-on-1 interview.

It is only befitting for someone like Kyle Busch to compete and aim for wins. Although right now that idea might seem like a hard sell, all it takes is one good result to overturn a team’s ill fortunes. We have seen Chase Elliott break his winless streak this season, and the same is expected of the 2-time Cup Series champ.