‘I just remembered how to drive,’ Busch jokes of the No. 8 team’s turnaround

Kyle Busch says he's not doing anything different. The No. 8 team at Richard Childress Racing is not doing anything different. Andy Street, the new crew chief, has not changed anything. But a switch has been flipped somewhere in recent weeks.

“I think sometimes it’s just how you interpret the data and who’s interpreting the data and stuff like that,” Busch said Saturday at Dover Motor Speedway. “I’ve seen it in years prior where some engineer may be looking at the squiggly lines, and they’re upside down. It sounds as dumb as it may be. It’s like, ‘Uh, that doesn’t quite look right. Flip that section over,’ and it tells you a different story.”

Busch qualified sixth and had a potential top-10 run before fading late and then being involved in an incident with John Hunter Nemechek. He finished eighth a week later at Watkins Glen.

Dover, which hosts the non-points All-Star Race, saw Busch unloaded with top-five speed in practice. He also had top 10 speed in practice at Watkins Glen.

“I guess I just remembered how to drive,” Busch said. “It’s [Andy] Street; I don’t know. I don’t know what he’s doing differently. I don’t feel like I’m talking to anybody any differently. I don’t feel like I’m relaying the information any differently. I just feel like it’s maybe construed or thought about in a different way, and then the execution of being able to listen to my words and put it into race car translate differently.

“It’s no different than (with former crew chief) Adam Stevens. I had him for five years, we made the playoffs for five years in a row, and we were unstoppable. We won 35 races in those years, I think, or something like that. It was crazy, and it was just easy, and I was like, ‘This is Jimmie [Johnson] and Chad [Knaus].’ So when you can find those moments and find those guys that you can really, really click with, man, you try to do everything in your power to keep it all together as much as you can.”

Busch has been winless since 2023. In his first season driving for Childress, the group won three races. The two-time Cup Series champion has been adamant since that time that he hasn’t felt he’s lost anything behind the wheel. Childress, meanwhile, has made various changes throughout the organization in hopes of helping Busch and Austin Dillon’s teams.

Randall Burnett, who was paired with Busch when he joined the company, departed after the 2025 season. Street took over the crew chief role for the final few weeks, and then Jim Pohlman was hired to lead Busch’s team for 2026. But that lasted 10 races before Street was put back atop the pit box earlier this month.

“I would say so,” said Busch of a change in attitude or mindset for the group with the recent uptick in speed and finishes. “I would think that anytime that you have positive mojo going, it’s a good feeling and it kind of gives you that vote confidence of, ‘OK, we’re doing our job.’ Then, when you’re not doing well, you’re like, ‘Well, what am I doing wrong? I’m doing everything that I normally would be doing.’

“If you’re the car chief, I’m putting in what the engineers and the crew chief are telling me to put in there. Obviously, it’s not working, so who’s the idiot here? Which one of us? So, it’s just all got to come together.

"Like my Adam Stevens team, I always relate to that because that was my Jimmie and Chad era. The team doesn’t get too high on the highs and they don’t get too low on the lows. It’s just do your job, keep your head down, keep focused, and keep going. So, that’s where I feel like our team with Clay [Alexander] and his leadership with his guys being the car chief. I’ve been with the same group that I got at the beginning with RCR, and they’ve always had that mindset of let’s go. We just have to do what’s next and keep focused forward.”

Busch qualified 11th for the All-Star Race. He has three wins at Dover.