The Daytona 500 Is Still Trolling Kyle Busch

gettyimages-2244052439 — AVONDALE, AZ - NOVEMBER 01: Kyle Busch (#8 Richard Childress Racing Cheddar's Scratch Kitchen Chevrolet) looks on before qualifying for the NASCAR Cup Series Championship on November 1, 2025 at Phoenix Raceway in Avondale, Arizona. (Photo by Kevin Abele/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

Kyle Busch has 232 national series wins, two Cup titles and more trophies than shelf space—yet the biggest race in America still refuses to cooperate.
The Daytona 500 Is Still Trolling Kyle Busch

Kyle Busch is a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion who has won more races in the sport’s three national series (232) than any driver in history. But the 40-year-old Las Vegas native lines up for his 21st green flag in Sunday’s DAYTONA 500 amazingly still looking for his first win in the Great American Race.

His statistics at the 2.5-mile speedway are certainly good enough. He’s won in all three major series—the NASCAR Cup Series (summer, 2008), the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series (2007) and the CRAFTSMAN Truck Series (2014).

Of Busch’s 539 laps led in the NASCAR Cup Series at Daytona, 63 percent of them (342) have come in the DAYTONA 500. Yet his best finish came in his 2019 series championship season, when he finished runner-up to Denny Hamlin – a blink-of-the-eye .138-second behind.

He’s had five top-10 finishes in all, including a third-place showing in 2016—a race also won by his then-Joe Gibbs Racing teammate Hamlin.

“Coming to Daytona, as you’re coming in (to your career) maybe four-five years in, you’re a young guy, you’re pumped up and amped for the DAYTONA 500,” Busch said. “As you go on through the years, you’ve got to figure out a way to be in the right ‘mind place’ and figure out how to go out there, excel and be in the right place at the right time (to win).

“We’ve seen it here the last couple years. You can be leading coming off Turn 2 and not make it back to the start-finish line. You can be running fifth, or seventh or 11th and be the one that wins the race. It’s just a matter of having it be your way.

“Being able to win Daytona, that’s obviously sort of the last box to check in my career, and getting that done would be a lot of fun,” he added, breaking into a wide grin. “We’d celebrate that really, really big.”