Kyle Busch shares heartfelt words regarding new team after..

A year after replacing Tyler Reddick with Kyle Busch, where is Richard Childress Racing?

At about the same place.

Busch for Reddick — the biggest move going into this season — was essentially a trade-off. But don’t judge this just on one season. This is a move that should be viewed over the next few years.

While it’s easy to point to an advantage going to Reddick and 23XI Racing because the 27-year-old Reddick is the younger driver, don’t discount what Busch does for RCR.

One of the biggest roles the 38-year-old Busch plays is helping elevate Richard Childress Racing. The last time a driver from RCR made the Championship 4 was in 2014 with Ryan Newman. No Richard Childress Racing driver has made it to the Round of 8 since.

Andy Petree, vice president of competition at RCR, told NBC Sports in March that Busch was “bringing things to the table for us that we haven’t had.”

Busch said at the time that he “still don’t have all of what I want accomplished yet.”

Still, Busch won three races — the most Cup victories he’s had since 2019.

Busch’s three wins and 10 top-five finishes matched what Reddick scored last year at RCR. Busch’s 17 top 10s were two more than Reddick had a year ago with the company.

Comparing how both Busch and Reddick fared this season with their new teams, Busch had one more win, the same number of top fives and two more top 10s, but Reddick finished sixth in points, while Busch was 14th.

“Did we meet expectations?” Busch asked last weekend at Phoenix. “Yes. I would say there were a lot of doubters that I wasn’t going to win at RCR and all that stuff, so for us to go out and win, I feel like, that was really good.

“We’re building on a notebook. We’re building on our program this year to be able to get ready to go back to some of these places for a second time next year. I’d like to think that next year can be even better.”

One of the challenges for Busch and his team was the inconsistency of the No. 8 Chevrolet. He had nine finishes of 25th or worse.

We had a lot of highs and lows,” Busch said. “The peaks and valleys were very far and spread wide. We’ve got to clean that up and, obviously, raise our bar, get more top 10s, more top fives even though we’re high on those amounts.

“We were very high on DNFs (six) as well. I think there were probably two at least, maybe three other races that we had potential that we could have won. Wish I could have them back.”