The boss ain’t happy.
Richard Childress Racing has a long history of success in NASCAR, 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. At times it seems like Busch has had better speed than last year, but it seems like the team is always struggling to get the car to perform at a level their driver is capable of.
And it seems like the boss has finally had enough.
Yesterday at Dover, Busch managed to fight his way to an 11th place finish despite handling issues from his car and a track where he’s historically run well, winning two Dover races in his career.
It was a respectable finish, but obviously not the day that Busch or the team wanted when they’re trying to fight their way into the playoffs. And after the race, it seems like the frustration finally boiled over from team owner Richard Childress.
As his driver was making his way back to pit road, Childress hopped on the #8 team radio with some harsh words for his own organization:
“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.”
Seems like the entire organization is frustrated at the quality of equipment they’re bringing to the track every week, especially with a driver as good as Kyle Busch who should be competing for wins on a regular basis.
In fact, the team’s recent performance has led to a lot of speculation that Busch could leave 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.
At the time, Childress acknowledged that the team needed to step up their game in the engineering department and said they were taking steps to make improvements:
“I still think that Kyle will win him a championship, and we want it to happen at RCR and that’s our plans. We 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.”
But after Richard’s comments yesterday on the team radios, fans were quick to point out that it was ultimately Richard Childress himself who is responsible for fixing the problems with his team:
It’s a shame to see a driver as talented as Kyle Busch fighting for mediocre finishes every week. He should be competing for wins on a regular basis, and when you know the driver’s not the problem, you have to start looking elsewhere to fix it.
Seems like this is a conclusion Childress probably should have reached months (if not years) ago, but better late than never. Now let’s just hope they fix it before Busch decides to retire.
