{"id":602590,"date":"2026-04-14T03:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T03:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/602590\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T03:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T03:29:09","slug":"denny-hamlin-is-at-a-loss-for-whats-happened-to-kyle-busch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/602590\/","title":{"rendered":"Denny Hamlin is at a loss for what\u2019s happened to Kyle Busch"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast<\/a>, Denny Hamlin<\/a> ponders if the Kyle Busch<\/a> era of NASCAR is over and actually has been longer than most within the community realize.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been three years and 100 races since the two-time Cup Series champion last won at Gateway on June 4, 2023 and it has been a struggle ever since his first half season at Richard Childress Racing<\/a>. Since then, teammate Austin Dillon<\/a> has won back-to-back races at Richmond Raceway and Busch doesn\u2019t exactly out run the No. 3 on a weekly basis these days either.<\/p>\n

Hamlin offered that Busch should at least be outperforming Dillon by a significant margin and that\u2019s just not happening.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe keep talking about this but the last couple of years (at Joe Gibbs Racing<\/a>) was not good; it\u2019s been like this for five years,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cYou\u2019re a Hall of Fame Mount Rushmore driver and if you\u2019re of the greatest, then carry better than your teammate that\u2019s only won 10 races. I think he should be able to do that but it\u2019s not happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Hamlin said Busch \u2018just doesn\u2019t know how to consistently get speed out of the NextGen car,\u2019 and that his three wins in 2023 came in an era where teams were still guessing on set-ups with this car. The parity has increased tremendously since then.<\/p>\n

He said that drivers are now responsible for making the difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just my opinion, and I can\u2019t hold a helmet to Kyle Busch on talent, but I just think that this is not new,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cHe\u2019s struggled for five years now so we just have to be honest about our expectations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re expecting Kyle Busch to just go back to Victory Lane, you\u2019re 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\u2019m not in his shoes. I\u2019m not his crew chief. I\u2019m not his engineer and I\u2019m not his team owner. \u00a0I\u2019m not in the weeds. I\u2019m just a podcaster that happens to be on the race track around him and I can say it\u2019s not working. I don\u2019t have the answers and I think we have to live in this reality for the time being.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamlin wonders if Busch has reached the moment Jimmie Johnson<\/a> did in 2017 where he went from winning the championship the year before and abruptly stopped being as competitive somewhere shortly afterwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes the light switch goes off at different times. I don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamlin doesn\u2019t even know if there is a place for Busch outside of Richard Childress Racing after his contract ends this season. He\u2019s not going back to Joe Gibbs Racing where he was a teammate of Hamlin from 2008 to 2022. Maybe Spire Motorsports could have an opening next year, but again, Hamlin says Busch cannot consistently best Dillon right now in equal cars.<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

He says Busch was not that good in the NextGen car in his last season at JGR either. Hamlin pondered if Busch is too \u2018hands-on\u2019 when it comes to set-up decisions. Instead of simply telling crew chief Jim Pohlman how the car is driving, Busch is offering specific set-up changes he wants.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe in the short term,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cMaybe he just says \u2018I am going to give you feedback and just drive the car\u2019 because it\u2019s the drivers job to send them in a direction but that doesn\u2019t mean telling them what to change.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hamlin thinks Busch would be better served just focusing on how the car feels rather than simultaneously playing a crew chief \u2013 engineer role.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I don’t know,\u201d Hamlin said. \u201cI genuinely don’t like seeing one of the most polarizing and 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the latest episode of his Actions Detrimental podcast, Denny Hamlin ponders if the Kyle Busch era of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":602591,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[33064,29779,49,48,3932,227937,8661,634,3628,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-602590","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-bristol-motor-speedway","10":"tag-ca","11":"tag-canada","12":"tag-denny-hamlin","13":"tag-denny-hamlin-is-at-a-loss-for-whatu2019s-happened-to-kyle-busch","14":"tag-kyle-busch","15":"tag-nascar","16":"tag-nascar-cup","17":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602590","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=602590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/602590\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/602591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=602590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=602590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=602590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}