Kyle Busch has suffered his career-worst start to a NASCAR season (Image: Getty)
Richard Childress Racing has fired crew chief Jim Pohlman, with Kyle Busch suffering his career-worst start to a NASCAR season.
After 10 races, the No.8 team has only managed to place in the top 10 once at Talladega last weekend. It marked the longest stretch of races that Busch had gone without a top-10 finish in his 22-year career.
RCR announced the decision on Monday, confirming that Pohlman will remain with the stock car team in its competition department. It also confirmed that Andy Street will lead the team in a bid to improve the two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion’s future. Meanwhile, Dale Earnhardt Jr. believes NASCAR drivers keep breaking an “unwritten code.”
Pohlman was in his first season as crew chief of Busch’s No. 8 team, having been brought in by RCR to revive its performance after Busch went winless and missed the playoffs in each of the previous two years.
However, the move from NASCAR’s second-tier O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, where Pohlman had worked as a crew chief for JR Motorsports, turned out to be a difficult and frustrating adjustment. Busch sits 27th in the points standings following Sunday’s race, 66 points adrift of the final playoff transfer position with 16 regular-season events still to run.
Jim Pohlman was fired after just 10 races (Image: Getty)
A radio exchange between spotter Derek Kneeland and Pohlman at Bristol caught widespread attention. Pohlman initially responded to Busch at Bristol after the driver reported an issue with the car, but with no immediate fix available, he erupted over the radio. “What is the frickin problem now? Is the thing sideways, or is it plowing? What the f— does it look like!?” said Pohlman. “Why? I don’t get it. We tightened it up, and why can’t it get in the f—— corner? Just same s— every week.”
Referring to the incident on his podcast, Kevin Harvick said: “If I had a crew chief that talked about me like that, I would fire his a– quickly, because that is unacceptable.”
When Pohlman joined the No. 8 team at the start of the season, he suggested that his partnership with Busch might not be without its share of conflict. He said: “There might be some spats, I’m not going to lie. He’s passionate. I’m passionate. The end goal is that he wants to win races, and he wants to win races at RCR, and he was crystal clear about that.”
However, nobody would have expected the team to run so badly that it forced RCR to make a mid-season change.
According to Harvick, the Busch–Pohlman partnership was a mismatch from the outset. “Jim Pohlman’s just like Kyle Busch, you know, very vocal, very rough-and-tumble, fiery. That never sounded like it was going to work. I think Richard believes that Kyle Busch can get it done behind the wheel. It’s just a matter of putting him in the right scenario,” Harvick added.
Many had speculated that Kyle Busch would leave the team when his contract expires at the end of the season, and recent trends appeared to support that view. Given the underwhelming results from the RCR–Busch partnership over the past three years, such an outcome seemed increasingly likely.
However, Richard Childress’s decision to replace Busch’s crew chief after just 10 races suggests a different direction. It points to a clear intent from the 80-year-old owner to retain Busch—and a willingness to make decisive changes, even at the management level, to achieve that.