A two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and the ninth winningest driver of all time, Richard Childress Racing’s Kyle Busch is undoubtedly one of the sport’s greats.

With 730 Cup Series races under his belt already, Busch, who recently suggested NASCAR consider a major rule change regarding spotters, has seen his fair share of drivers both succeed and fail in the sport. As for his own successes, the 40-year-old appears to put much of it down to his ability to push his cars that little bit further than others.

“When you’re a race car driver and you’re going out there, you want to push the car to its absolute limits,” he explained on ‘The Pat McAfee Show.’ “And for me, what always sort of made me as successful as I was, I could push it to that 100.5 percent line and just a little bit over the edge and yet keep it under control, where everybody else sort of lies within that 97 to 98 percent range. So, you can get that little bit out of it, you can make a lot more hay in being able to get those wins.”

Currently competing in his 21st full-time season and with 63 wins to date, the 2015 and 2019 champion is now without a win in over two years, dating back to the 2023 Enjoy Illinois 300 at World Wide Technology Raceway. However, Busch appeared optimistic heading into the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, a facility where he’s tasted victory twice in the Cup Series.

“I love Indy, coming to Indys a lot of fun,” he said. “I’ve really gotten pretty good here over the years, I won the race in ‘15, ‘16, should have won it in ‘17 but we got wrecked out in a late caution restart. 

“But I feel pretty good about me here at Indy. And then the Chevy camp has obviously been really fast here over the years as well too; Kyle [Larson] winning the race last year.

“So, I would think that our basis should be pretty close that we can go out there and we can have a good shot.”

RCR heads to Indianapolis under somewhat of a cloud, following Childress’ damning comments over Busch’s radio after the checkered flag fell at the last race in Dover. “Gotta get some race cars. We are in trouble. Period,” the Hall of Famer said. 

Busch came home 11th in the No. 8 Chevrolet while teammate Austin Dillon finished 15th in the No. 3. This disappointing result was just the latest in what has been an underwhelming season for RCR, with Busch yet to finish higher than fifth while Dillon has not cracked the top six.

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“It is not due to lack of effort, that’s for d— sure,” Busch told McAfee. “Everybody at RCR, 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. Balance of the race cars has been pretty good this year, the driveability feels okay, it’s just the lack of speed.”