Kevin Harvick Demands More Urgency From Kyle Busch and

When Kyle Busch moved teams in 2023, he obliviously shuffled his fortunes. After moving into Richard Childress Racing, Busch’s winning streak hit a standstill after his Gateway win last year. However, one year has already passed since that day, and no glory is in sight. Technical issues seem to be boggling the No. 8 team.

Pit crew problems and faulty Next-Gen adaptability all add up to give Kyle Busch nightmares. So far, the winningest NASCAR driver has just a pair of top-five finishes this season, so it may be high time to push the panic button. Kevin Harvick emphasizes this while admitting inevitable issues.

Well, not literally, as Ricky Stenhouse Jr. did to him at the All-Star Race. But Kyle Busch needs to get a grip on his racing game. The two-time Cup champion is undergoing a dry spell, struggling to make it past the top-10 mark in most races. His pit crew has changed a few times already, and Busch himself admitted that this year has been one of “a lot of missed potential.”

Kevin Harvick sides with Busch on the Next-Gen car’s difficulties. He said on a recent episode of ‘Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour’: “How do you find that consistency to keep that speed in the cars week after week? It’s a little bit puzzling…I know with this car it’s harder to be consistent…It’s harder to maintain that top-five and maintain that ability to put those cars on the race track to have that speed every week.”

Despite their race track enmity in the past, Harvick hailed Busch’s superior analytical skills. But those turn out to be futile for the single-supplier parts of the Next-Gen car. “He’s good with analyzing the car. There’s not many people that are better than Kyle Busch at what they do…I think with this car, a lot of those tools and techniques that Kyle Busch just knew at the back of his hand like, ‘Hey, it’s not on the right front spring good enough…’ Those things are a little harder to come by with this car to say it needs ‘this, this, and this