For a while Sunday at Texas Motor Speedway, Kyle Busch looked like Kyle Busch again.
Not the frustrated version we’ve seen too often lately. Not the guy buried in 23rd while television cameras politely pretend he doesn’t exist anymore. No, this was the old Busch. The sharp-elbowed, permanently irritated racer who hangs around the front of the field like a shark circling a pontoon boat full of tourists.
And honestly, it was refreshing.
The two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion spent much of the Würth 400 doing something that has become strangely uncommon in recent seasons: contending. Busch finished Stage 1 in eighth, flirted with the top five throughout the afternoon, and looked capable of salvaging a genuinely respectable result for Richard Childress Racing.
For a team that has spent the better part of the last year wandering through Sundays like a man searching for his car in a Walmart parking lot during a thunderstorm, it mattered.
Texas is not a forgiving racetrack. It’s a place that eats tires, tempers, and occasionally entire race cars. Yet Busch looked composed. Fast, even. There were moments when the No. 8 Chevrolet appeared planted enough to make you wonder if the recent crew chief change might actually be doing something besides generating press releases.
This was Busch’s first race with Andy Street atop the pit box after replacing Jim Pohlman, and for most of the day, there were signs of life. Small signs, perhaps. But in NASCAR, hope often arrives disguised as an eighth-place stage finish and a car that doesn’t try to murder its driver in Turn 4.
Then came the final laps. Sadly.
Busch was battling John Hunter Nemechek for 12th with two laps remaining when the pair squeezed together exiting Turn 2. The contact shoved both cars toward the backstretch wall, and what had been a solid recovery day instantly became another chapter in what has lately felt like NASCAR’s longest-running practical joke.
The two made contact again entering Turn 3, with Nemechek getting the worst of it after slamming the outside wall hard enough to destroy the right side of his Toyota. Busch limped home in 20th, the last car scored on the lead lap, while Nemechek finished 21st, one lap down.
And just like that, a promising afternoon dissolved into another statistic nobody at RCR wanted.
Still, beneath the ugly finishing position sat something mildly encouraging. Busch had speed. Real speed. Not miracle pit strategy speed. Not “everybody else crashed” speed. Genuine top-10 pace.
Which, these days, counts as progress.
“Disappointing end to the day for the No. 8 team, but we are making steps in the right direction,” Busch said afterward. “We ran in the top-10 for most of the race today at Texas Motor Speedway, and started the weekend with a solid sixth-place qualifying effort. Unfortunately, we ended up with right-front damage after contact battling for position on the final lap. It turned our top-10 day into a 20th-place result.”
Greg was a writer for DriveTribe supporting Amazon's The Grand Tour and has been published in major publications across the country including the Los Angeles Times, the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He was also a contributor to Chicken Soup for the NASCAR Soul, published in 2010, and the Christmas edition in 2016. He wrote as the NASCAR, Formula 1, Auto Reviews and National Veterans Affairs Examiner for Examiner.com and has appeared on Fox News. He holds a BS degree in communications, and a Masters degree in psychology. He is currently the weekend Motorsports Editor for Autoweek and a regular contributor to Forbes.