Exclusive: Kyle Busch Reflects On His Difficult Season As Miami Nears

The 2024 season has been a tough one for NASCAR Cup Series Kyle Busch. He didn’t qualify for the playoffs and he has yet to win a race this season, which is putting his NASCAR record of race wins in consecutive seasons in serious jeopardy. The two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion sat down for an exclusive interview with Newsweek and discussed his difficult season, playing spoiler in the playoffs, and trying to win races in 20 consecutive seasons.

Newsweek: What can you tell me about the new contest coming up?

Kyle Busch: It’s actually really cool. So we’re introducing the Family Dynasty plant sweepstakes from Straight Talk Wireless. It’s an opportunity for a lucky fan to win a chance of 100 years of wireless service on America’s best network. So it’s really, really cool.

All through this week, we’ve got fans that can text the keyword Dynasty to 855-727-RACE for their chance to win 100 years of unlimited talk, text, and data straight from Straight Talk Wireless. So it’s really neat. I’ve been a Verizon customer for over 20 years, and I’ve got myself on there, my wife’s on there, my son’s on there, he’s got an Apple watch. So we all like to keep in great touch and, of course, do all the FaceTime calls that we can whenever I’m traveling away. So it’s perfect for any family dynasty down the road.

Newsweek: I’ve been reading lately about your son Brexton. It sounds like you’re setting up a family dynasty for racing it sounds like. What’s going on with him?

Kyle Busch: My dad was a racer, I’m a racer now, my son, third generation racer. So we’ve got this racing family dynasty all planned out, but he’s having a great time with it. He’s enjoying it a lot. He’s winning a lot and so I think that that’s been a lot of fun to see and his growth that he’s had. So again, just last weekend he was racing in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I was in Las Vegas, Nevada. So we needed to call him on his watch a few times and of course, that was easy to do.

Newsweek: How are you feeling going into a Homestead Miami this week?

Kyle Busch: Yeah, no question. We’ve had a lot of ups and downs this year. We’ve been really close. Just a couple weeks ago we were leading the race coming into the later stages and I messed up but it was a mile-and-a-half racetrack homestead. Miami is another mile-and-a-half racetrack, so hopefully the car set up and everything will work really well down there this weekend. We’ve run well there. I’ve won the there as you mentioned in the past. It’s been a great track for me. I’ve won two championships by winning races there, so I would love to get that win here this year to continue my streak of 20 straight years of winning a race in NASCAR Cup series.

Newsweek: On a personal level, how big of a deal is it for wins in 20 straight seasons? Because you guys obviously are out of the playoffs, but I imagine there’s some personal going into it.

Kyle Busch: Yeah, definitely. No, it’s a personal goal for sure. I mean I kind of set that out last year. I was able to top Richard Petty, so Richard Petty had the record at 18 years last year. I got it at 19 to hold it on my own and I want to of course stretch that out as far as I can. If I’m racing into 26 or 27 years, man, I want to make that thing all the way through to prove that I’ve been a winner the whole time. It doesn’t matter with age or team or people that you’re working around. I’ve had a lot of great camaraderie with my team members and stuff like that over the years, which has made me really strong. So would love to have that.

Newsweek: If the number eight doesn’t win this year, can you consider it a successful season for you guys?

Kyle Busch: It definitely hasn’t been a successful season, no. I think this has definitely been one of my most trying years and being able to put all of the things that we’ve learned this year. There’s been a lot of that and we definitely want to come back stronger next year and carry ourselves into the Daytona 500 and try to win that one. Haven’t won that race. So that’ll be the kickoff to our next year.

Newsweek: What type of changes do you think need to be made with the number eight going into 2025? So you have a more successful season, you make the playoffs or however you engage that?

Yeah, it’s a big part of what we do and winning races is obviously how you’re graded. We got to get back to Victory Lane and being able to win races and competitive on a weekly basis. Some of those changes this year, the second half of the year have come from some engineering department changes. We have been running better lately. We’re also looking to try to improve on some of the staff back of the shop men and women back of the shop that are building the cars. There’s some really good people that are out there for hire with another competitive team that’s closing down at the end of the season. So you try to get some of those hires as well.

Newsweek: You’ve got three races left in the season. You got Homestead Miami and then obviously ended up in Phoenix and everything. What would be a successful way for you guys to go out in 2024?

Talking about Homestead Miami Speedway and the Straight Talk Wireless 400 this weekend? That would be a fantastic way to win one, partnering up with Verizon and Straight Talk Wireless. It would be a great chance for us to see ourselves on Victory Lane and celebrate that race, celebrate that win. So I feel like this is a really good shot for us. Of course, we also have Martinsville and Phoenix coming up too. There’d be nothing greater than going into Phoenix and winning that race and sort of spoiling the championship race if you will.