DOVER, Del. — Kyle Busch doesn‘t feel as though he‘s ever lost a step. It‘s hard to argue after watching another dominant performance in Friday‘s NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Dover Motor Speedway on the way to his 69th series victory, padding his record high.
“I don‘t feel like I really lost anything,” Busch said after Friday‘s truck win. “It‘s just a matter of being able to go out there and do a good job and have the team be there with me to do a good job.”
But 105 Cup races have come and gone since the two-time Cup Series champion has visited Victory Lane. Next month will eclipse the three-year mark since his most recent triumph at World Wide Technology Raceway at Gateway. He won in three of his first 15 starts with Richard Childress Racing before going cold.
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In that span, Austin Dillon has won a pair of races at Richmond Raceway. With both Nos. 3 and 8 teams cracking the top 10 at Watkins Glen International, the organization is coming off its best collective performance since the Chicago Street Course last year, when Busch and Austin Hill — in a third entry — were scored inside the top 10. It was the first time Busch and Dillon placed in the top 10 in the same event since April 2024 at Texas Motor Speedway, some 75 races ago.
Busch has top 10s in two of the last three races in 2026 and had his best overall speed at Texas Motor Speedway, fading to finish 20th after contact with John Hunter Nemechek with two laps remaining. In that period, Andy Street joined the No. 8 team to call the shots for Busch, replacing rookie Cup crew chief Jim Pohlman.
Busch credits Street for the bump in speed.
“I guess I just remembered how to drive,” Busch quipped on Friday. “It‘s Street — I don‘t know what he‘s doing different. I don‘t feel like I‘m talking to anybody any differently. I don‘t feel like I‘m relaying any of the information any differently. I just feel like it‘s construed or thought about in a different way, and the execution of being able to listen to my words and being able to put it into the race car translates differently.
“It‘s no different than Adam Stevens, I had him for five years, made the [Championship 4] five years in a row and we were unstoppable. We won [28] races in those years. It was crazy and easy. I was like, ‘This is Jimmie and Chad.‘ When you can find those moments and those guys that you can click with, you try to do everything in your power to keep it all together as much as you can.”
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The driver-crew chief relationship between Busch and Street has just clicked. In a handful of races at the conclusion of the 2025 season, they scored two top 10s, including a fifth-place effort in the season finale at Phoenix Raceway, matching Busch‘s best result of the campaign (Circuit of The Americas and Chicago).
Dillon has noticed how the pairing has connected.
“I think they had a little chemistry and it‘s just bled over,” Dillon told a group of reporters at Dover. “Andy has a positive mindset with Kyle, and he can ask more out of Kyle and Kyle can ask more out of him. Their relationship is good — that‘s the biggest thing. They feel confident talking around each other and putting it out there.”
Immediate speed in practice has been critical for Busch. The No. 8 team ranked fourth in single-lap speed during practice for the All-Star Race, and clocked in second on 10-lap averages, trailing only Carson Hocevar. That follows a recent trend that Busch has noticed.
“I feel like we‘ve had good speed off the truck at Watkins Glen. Texas, I was working my way into it. It‘s nice to be able to score top five in practice, even though it doesn‘t pay anything. It‘s better than the alternative of unloading in the bottom five.”
The most noticeable difference, Busch believes, lies within the data. It‘s not even about the gathering of numbers, but rather who is dissecting the information and how it‘s being decoded.
“I think sometimes it‘s just how you interpret the data, who is interpreting the data and things like that,” Busch added on Saturday. “I‘ve seen it in years prior where some engineer might be looking at the squiggly lines and they are upside down. It sounds as dumb as it may be, like, ‘Uh, that doesn‘t quite look right, flip that section over‘ and it tells you a different story.”
Positivity is beginning to flow within the RCR walls. Having momentum and confidence “gives you that vote of confidence that we’re doing our job,” Busch said. The No. 8 car will take the green flag for Sunday‘s All-Star Race (1 p.m. ET, FS1, HBO Max, MRN Radio, SiriusXM NASCAR Radio) in 11th position.
