Kyle Busch has found a new home at RCR. Now he’s after bigger things

Kyle Busch experienced an indoctrination into Richard Childress Racing’s culture last week when he and team owner Richard Childress went on a hunting trip to North Carolina’s outer banks. This marked the first time Busch had gone on a hunting trip in years and the first time he had ever gone with Childress, an avid outdoorsman.

Duck hunting with the boss isn’t necessarily noteworthy, but doing so with Childress is considered a bit of a special privilege. It also encapsulates the many new things Busch has experienced over the last year since signing with RCR following a highly successful 15-year run at Joe Gibbs Racing that included two NASCAR Cup Series championships.

But as Busch has learned and embraced over the past 12 months, change can be a good thing.

He’s proven to his detractors that he made the right decision in joining RCR. He proved he could win big with a team other than JGR. And he proved that any skepticism whether he could adjust to life at RCR — with a new team owner, crew chief, manufacturer and everything else that comes along with a new beginning — was largely hogwash.

Busch no longer being public enemy No. 1 among fans can be attributed to a few factors. First, he’s now with a team in RCR that has long been a crowd favorite but also one hasn’t won a Cup title in 30 years. And with Busch now in the fold, RCR stands a significantly better chance of snapping its skid that dates back to Dale Earnhardt winning the 1994 championship.

Busch won three times during the 2023 season, at one point ranking as high as second in the regular-season standings. More victories slipped away due to factors within Busch’s control, miscues by the team or mere bad luck.

“We started well, but we didn’t end as well as we wanted to,” Randall Burnett, Busch’s crew chief, said. “We won three races fairly early in the season, but we just had some problems. And though we had some fast cars, we didn’t get the results, didn’t get the finishes we wanted at the end of the season.”

The other reality is that Busch is no longer the brash upstart whose success came at the expense of popular grizzled veterans. Entering his 19th season, he’s become the veteran trying to fend off NASCAR’s next crop of future stars. Now, winning doesn’t feel as seamless.

Going from disliked to liked is a situation similar to the likes of Earnhardt, Darrell Waltrip, Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson, all Cup champions who were once booed only to gain more popularity as they transitioned into the second act of their careers. It’s almost a right of passage in NASCAR.

“I have noticed that, and I love it,” Busch said of the change in fan response. “I think it’s cool. I think it’s great. I’ve seen it happen with a lot of other big-name drivers over the course of their career as well, too.

“I feel as though the move from JGR Toyota to RCR Chevrolet was a big deal in the fan base and the eyes of casual and avid fans, if you will. Just kind of like, ‘OK, well, we love this. This is a great mix.’ … People are just excited for me to be a part of the legacy of RCR. And they love the legacy of RCR and Richard and everything that they’re about, so they’ve given me my fair shot, and I think it’s going well.”

Said Burnett: “I think he’s come a long way. I think this change was good for him.”

Already, RCR has sold all the primary sponsorship on Busch’s Chevrolet for the entirety of the 2024 season. The team announced Thursday that Zone Nicotine Pouches is the latest company to sign on, becoming the anchor partner for the No. 8 team.

It’s significant for Busch, whose time at his previous team ended in large part due to a lack of sponsorship. For the entirety of his 15 years at JGR, Mars, Inc. (primarily through its M&M’s brand) held the role as Busch’s anchor sponsor, but after the company announced prior to the 2022 season that it was withdrawing its support, JGR couldn’t secure an adequate replacement.