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Denny Hamlin, a prominent figure in NASCAR and host of the "Actions Detrimental" podcast, has voiced his confusion and concern regarding the recent performance of two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch. Speaking on his podcast, Hamlin speculated on whether the dominant era of Kyle Busch’s career might have already concluded, suggesting that this downturn may have been more gradual than widely recognized within the racing community.
The statistics paint a stark picture of Busch’s recent struggles. It has been 100 Cup Series races since his last victory, which occurred at Gateway on June 4, 2023. This winless streak began in the initial half-season after his highly publicized move to Richard Childress Racing (RCR). In contrast, his RCR teammate, Austin Dillon, has secured two victories at Richmond Raceway during this same period. Hamlin pointed out that Busch is not consistently outperforming Dillon, a situation he finds incongruous given Busch’s Hall of Fame caliber talent.
"We keep talking about this, but the last couple of years (at Joe Gibbs Racing) was not good; it’s been like this for five years," Hamlin stated on his podcast. "You’re a Hall of Fame Mount Rushmore driver, and if you’re one of the greatest, then you carry better than your teammate that’s only won 10 races. I think he should be able to do that, but it’s not happening."
Hamlin posited that Busch is encountering difficulties in consistently extracting speed from the Next Gen car. He suggested that Busch’s three wins in the 2023 season may have occurred during a transitional phase for the car, where teams were still in the experimental stages of setup development. With the increased parity and refinement of the Next Gen platform across the field, Hamlin believes drivers are now more directly responsible for making the difference in performance.
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"This is just my opinion, and I can’t hold a helmet to Kyle Busch on talent, but I just think that this is not new," Hamlin remarked. "He’s struggled for five years now, so we just have to be honest about our expectations. If you’re expecting Kyle Busch to just go back to Victory Lane, you’re going to be very disappointed. I just think that, until we change the car or something changes, something has to change, and I have no idea. I’m not in his shoes. I’m not his crew chief. I’m not his engineer, and I’m not his team owner. I’m not in the weeds. I’m just a podcaster that happens to be on the race track around him, and I can say it’s not working. I don’t have the answers, and I think we have to live in this reality for the time being."
The veteran driver drew a parallel between Busch’s current situation and that of Jimmie Johnson in 2017. Johnson, who had won the championship the previous year, experienced an abrupt decline in competitiveness shortly thereafter. Hamlin questioned if Busch might be experiencing a similar inflection point in his career. "Sometimes the light switch goes off at different times. I don’t know," Hamlin mused.
The uncertainty surrounding Busch’s future extends beyond his current performance. Hamlin admitted he is unsure of Busch’s prospects outside of his current contract with RCR, which concludes at the end of the season. A return to Joe Gibbs Racing, where Busch was Hamlin’s teammate from 2008 to 2022, appears highly improbable. While potential opportunities might exist at teams like Spire Motorsports, Hamlin reiterated his concern that Busch is not currently demonstrating the ability to consistently outperform a teammate in comparable machinery.
Hamlin also raised questions about Busch’s approach to car setup. He suggested that Busch was not particularly dominant in the Next Gen car during his final season at JGR and speculated that the two-time champion might be overly "hands-on" with setup decisions. Rather than solely providing feedback on how the car is handling, Busch’s detailed input on specific adjustments could be a contributing factor.
"Maybe in the short term," Hamlin hypothesized. "Maybe he just says, ‘I am going to give you feedback and just drive the car,’ because it’s the driver’s job to send them in a direction, but that doesn’t mean telling them what to change." Hamlin believes Busch might be better served by focusing his energy on communicating the car’s feel and performance characteristics, rather than attempting to engineer solutions himself.
"So I don’t know," Hamlin concluded. "I genuinely don’t like seeing one of the most polarizing, popular, and talented guys in the sport running where he is at right now. But this is the new reality we have to set ourselves in until we see any kind of change."
Kyle Busch, a figure synonymous with winning and fierce competition for much of his career, has accumulated 60 Cup Series wins, placing him ninth on the all-time list. His two championships, in 2015 and 2019, solidified his place among NASCAR’s elite. However, the extended winless drought, coupled with the observations from a peer like Denny Hamlin, has ignited a broader conversation about the trajectory of his storied career. The upcoming races will be closely scrutinized for any signs of a resurgence or further indication of the challenges Busch is currently facing in the highly competitive NASCAR Cup Series landscape.
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