Denny Hamlin Deems Kyle Busch ‘Non-existent’ With a Harsh 3-Word Claim on Rowdy’s Darlington Struggles

Kyle Busch is possibly having the worst start to his Cup Series campaign in 2024 with Richard Childress Racing. After the Darlington race, the regular season has reached its halfway point. And going by the results of the No. 8 RCR, their chances to make it into the playoffs seem bleak. After two back-to-back Top-10 and Top-5 finishes in the previous two races, the Goodyear 400 event was expected to be a turning point in Rowdy’s season. However, it proved to be quite the opposite, as the two-time champion struggled throughout the entire race, before settling with a disappointing P27 finish.

However, besides fans and other industry experts, the one who was the most surprised by Rowdy’s form, or the lack thereof, was Denny Hamlin. In the recent episode of the Action’s Detrimental podcast, the Joe Gibbs Racing star didn’t hold back from speaking his mind about Busch’s torrid run in 2024. This only added to the scrutiny RCR is going through for failing to back their star driver.

Denny Hamlin is not impressed
‘The Lady in Black’ hasn’t been Rowdy’s favorite place to visit in recent years. In his last four starts at the racetrack, he only has a single top-10 finish, with a win at the venue coming way back in 2008. Trying to tame the track in 2024, he started the weekend with the Truck race, which ended in a DNF finish. He was battling for the win against Corey Heim, but got loose on turn 2, hitting the bump and crashing his truck into the wall.

Hamlin, who himself finished P4 last weekend and sits pretty in the points standings on third position with three wins and five Top-5s, tried to explain the reasoning behind Busch’s dire run in the Truck event. “Yeah, Kyle same thing, just got loose in Turn 2. There’s a big a** bump off turn 2 that you gotta be careful of if you are running on the bottom, and it bit Kyle, who was non-existent yesterday, holy sh*t. He was bad, right? Bad all day,” the JGR racer opined.