Kyle Busch’s career “is not even close to being over” 

Richard Childress Racing’s NASCAR Cup Series lineup won’t change for 2026. While Austin Dillon will continue to pilot the No. 3 Chevrolet, the team confirmed on Saturday that Kyle Busch has picked up an option in his contract to continue driving the No. 8 through 2026.

“We’re really excited,” said Childress, who won six driver’s titles with Dale Earnhardt Sr. between 1986 and 1994. “You know, this is extending our contract for another year, and we’re really excited. Kyle has been great to work with. Everybody had questions going in. I love a driver that doesn’t like to lose. We’ve worked hard. We’ve got some exciting things coming up. He and I are both alike in one area – that we don’t like to lose. We want to win races.

“I still think Kyle will win him a championship, and we’re going to have it at RCR. That’s our plans. We’ve got a lot of new things coming. This car is a lot different. It’s so engineer-driven that we’re stepping our engineering up more. And I’m excited about the future of where we can go. Watching Kyle race and working with him, it’s been a great pleasure. You know, he’s a champion. Here’s the guy that’s won over 200 NASCAR races. His career is not even close to being over.” 

There are few drivers who claim to have had as much success as Busch in the history of NASCAR. The two-time NASCAR Cup Series champions leads current full-time drivers in race wins (63), but that doesn’t mean it’s all been smooth sailing for him.

Focused on ending KB’s winless streak

After ending a 15-year tenure with Joe Gibbs Racing, he joined Richard Childress Racing at the start of the 2023 season. They won three races in their first year together, but after going winless in 2024, he missed the playoffs. Busch hasn’t won in nearly 70 races in the longest winless streak of his career.

“We certainly have a winery and a champagne bistro there that we can get plenty of booze to have a good time (when we do win),” said Busch about the drought. “I’m excited for the next win when it is. We want to get back to that as soon as possible. It has been a little bit humbling, I would say. I feel like there’s added times where it’s motivation, and it gets you to have that itch of being able to want to get back to Victory Lane and to work as hard as it possibly needs to be. Trust me, my wife, she sees that as well, too, where I’m gone a little bit more than what I was, and so she’s on the fact of, ‘This better be worth it!’”

RCR earned a victory last year with Dillon, but admits that he “felt like we let (Kyle) down some last year by not winning a race. There’s things that we’ve changed a lot to try to win. We will win a race this year with him and hopefully Austin as well. We’re working really hard. Like he said, he hit the key point. You’ve got to work smarter, and that’s what we’re trying to do. And I think we’ve got a lot of good things going.”

Not done yet

Kyle Busch, Richard Childress Racing Chevrolet

Photo by: Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images

Another question that constantly surrounds Busch is that of retirement. He is now the most experienced driver in the Cup Series field with over 700 starts. But at 40 years old, he doesn’t have any immediate plans of slowing down.

“No, no, not at all,” he said of retirement. “There’s kind of the vision or the plan, if you will, on being able to race in some Truck races with Brexton (his son, aged 10) alongside him. So obviously, that’s six years from now before he can make that start. That would sort of be an idea of when I would look at stepping aside from Cup Series racing. But, you know, it’s a long ways out.”

Photos from Charlotte – Practice & Qualifying