In recent weeks there has been a lot of speculation over where two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch will race after his current contract with Joe Gibbs Racing expires this year.
Conventional thinking expects Busch to continue driving the No. 18 Toyota for the Joe Gibbs Racing organization where he’s raced for the last 16 seasons (dating back to 2008) and earned 56 of his 60 race wins and a pair of series championships in 2015 and 2019.
And while there doesn’t appear to be any immediate news on the situation, the race team has said it wants Busch back and is looking intently for a sponsor. On Saturday at Pocono Raceway, Busch also echoed his desire to remain at JGR next season.
“We’re all working as hard as we can obviously, and the goal hasn’t changed, and that goal is for me to be able to continue at Joe Gibbs Racing with Toyota and have that chance to continue to race for race wins and race for championships,” Busch said.
“That’s what everybody is striving for. That’s the first goal and we’ll continue to try to push for that.”
Busch has already qualified for the 2022 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs with a victory in the Bristol (Tenn.) Dirt Race this Spring. He has six top-five and 11 top-10 finishes (including that win and runner-up showings at Charlotte and Gateway) through the opening 20 races. He’s currently ranked sixth in the series driver standings and will be starting on the front row of Sunday’s Pocono race.
His Kyle Busch Motorsports team won Saturday’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at Pocono with driver Chandler Smith, and he has two trucks (driven by Smith and John Hunter Nemechek) that have advanced into the 2022 series Playoffs.
“I mean, you’d like to be done obviously,” Busch said of making sure the contract talks don’t distract from his title hopes. “So certainly, that would be key but obviously, you’ve got to kind of weigh out everything that’s in front of you and see what the best thing is not only for myself, in Kyle, for my family and of course, the KBM (Kyle Busch Motorsports) family.”
Busch added that his focus becomes the track when the helmet goes on.
“When you’re behind the wheel and you’re racing you’re focused on that task and what that is,” he said. “So, you try to put that best foot forward and that chance to be able to go out there and score wins. The best thing right now is to go out there and show everybody that you can still do it, that you can still win, that you can still be competitive. Hell, if it was four weeks ago, we were talking about being second in points and chasing after a regular season championship. We went cold and somebody else standing over there got hot. We’ve fallen far away from that obviously right now, but we still want to make ourselves as high as we can in points. Get those reset points from the standings aspect and be able to go chase for a championship.”
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