Kyle Busch: Next Gen car "has been a bit of my demise"

Kyle Busch is still winning NASCAR Cup races and still contending for the series championship but the veteran admits something has changed since the introduction of the Next Gen car and he vows to “fix it.”

Busch, 38, has already amassed a Hall of Fame-worthy career of statistics and appeared to pick up right where he left off joining Richard Childress Racing this season after more than 15 years at Joe Gibbs Racing.

Busch has won three times in 2023 and qualified for the playoffs but his performance since the advent of the Next Gen car last year has been somewhat erratic.

His only win last season came at the Bristol Dirt Race, taking the victory only when the leaders wrecked ahead of him. He finished 13th in the final series standings, his lowest finish since 2012.

This year, Busch has failed to finish more races (six) than he has victories (three).

Kyle Busch spinning out on his own in a race? Virtually unheard of in his career, but has become an occasional occurrence of late, including as recently as last weekend at Texas Motor Speedway.

While RCR may not be quite on par with JGR in terms of performance, Busch believes a large part of the problem is his own driving style and a need to adjust to the times, or in this case, the new car.

“I think when we’ve had really good cars, I’ve just over-tried. In 2017, 2018, whatever when we were super-fast all the time – I always think back to the golden days – you could drive from the back of the field to the front of the field. You could make something happen,” he said.

“I still feel like I can do that – I can drive from the back of the field to the front of the field. But in reality, with this car, equipment, talent and everything being so equal, the SMT data – everybody seeing it and being so equal – it’s tougher than ever to pass the guy in front of you.

“So, I guess that’s kind of been a bit of my demise, which is I don’t feel like I can do as much as I want to be able to do. Me overtrying has sort of hurt my race craft, if you will and (why) I haven’t been finishing, frankly.”