Kyle Busch Says Struggles Have Not Been Due To “Lack Of Effort” Following Richard Childress’ Harsh Comments About Dover Race

Well, if you’re not going fast enough, you’re definitely not going to win a NASCAR race.

Richard Childress Racing has a long history of success in professional racing, with most of it coming with Dale Earnhardt. The Intimidator won six championships for RCR, and the team has won 117 races in the NASCAR Cup Series over its long history with drivers like Earnhardt, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Burton and Tyler Reddick.

But recently, success has been hard to find for RCR. The team currently fields the #8 car for Kyle Busch and the #3 car for Austin Dillon. But despite having one of the best Cup Series drivers of all time in Busch, RCR hasn’t won a race since Dillon’s controversial win at Richmond last year, and Busch hasn’t made it to victory lane since he won three times in 2023, his first season with the team.

Busch went winless in 2024 and finished a disappointing 20th in the points, and so far in 2025 Busch is sitting 15th in the points and risking finding himself in a position where he needs a win to make the playoffs in a few weeks.

The team’s struggles have been well-documented, and at times, it seems like Busch has had better speed than last year, though the team is always struggling to get the car to perform at a level their driver is capable of. Of course, that gets old pretty quickly, and after Busch managed to fight his way to an 11th place finish at Dover last weekend, despite handling issues from his car and a track where he’s historically run well, winning two Dover races in his career, his boss was not happy.

It definitely wasn’t a bad finish, but it’s not good enough for a driver that’s still fighting his way into the playoffs, and team owner Richard Childress had some harsh comments that he shared over the #8 radio:

“Gotta get some race cars. We are in trouble. Period.”

And he made similar comments on the radio of the #3 team of Austin Dillon:

“We gotta get some damn race cars. I’ve seen enough out of our drivers and teams, we’ve got to work on this sh-t. Period.”

It’s not hard to imagine that everyone, from the boss, to the drivers, to the crew and other staff, are all frustrated over what’s been going on, especially knowing that Kyle Busch should be competing for wins on a regular basis… I don’t like him, but he’s a great driver, and his performance as of late is certainly not reflective of that.

And during an interview on the Pat McAfee Show today, Busch said he’s looking forward to the race in Indianapolis this weekend:

“I’m looking forward to it. You know, we had a fast race car here last year at Indianapolis. We were right there in the top five they’re coming down towards the closing laps. Kyle Larson stole the win, so we wanna make that this Kyle this time.”

When asked about the conversations that have been had about his team and if they were in a position to really compete for a championship, Kyle says their struggles have not been “due to lack of effort,” and the engineers have been working tirelessly to h”find the speed” and get him in a position to win:

“I’ll tell you, it is not due to lack of effort, that’s for damn sure. You know, everybody at RCR are back there at the race shop, they’re working as hard as they can. Engineers are trying to figure it out and look at all the notes, and figure out where the speeds at you know.

So, balance of the race cars has been pretty good this year, like the liability feels okay, it’s just the lack of speed. There’s just guys that are out there that just more potential you know they’re just a little bit faster.”

Kyle seemed pretty optimistic when answering that question, so maybe he knows something we don’t and they’ve been able to pinpoint exactly what problems they need to fix going into this weekend:

“I’m looking forward to this weekend..

Everybody at RCR is working as hard as they can to figure this car out” ~ @KyleBusch #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/dR6ojU3KXD

— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) July 23, 2025

For all of the aforementioned reasons due to his team’s recent performance, there have been plenty of rumors swirling that Busch might RCR for a better ride, though in 2024 he signed a contract extension with the team that would keep him in the car through the 2026 season.

We’ll see what happens, and if they can all, quit literally, get things back on track, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him moving on if things keep going the way they are right now. And like many have pointed out, considering Childress is the boss, maybe he should start trying a little harder to get it figured out too.The post Kyle Busch Says Struggles Have Not Been Due To “Lack Of Effort” Following Richard Childress’ Harsh Comments About Dover Race first appeared on Whiskey Riff.