‘He looks he’s lost it,’ Richard Petty’s comments resurface after Kyle Busch’s next-gen struggles

Richard Petty’s blunt lost remark resurfaces as Kyle Busch’s winless Next Gen struggles at RCR highlight NASCAR’s shift from manhandling to precision driving.

Fahad Hamid
April 24, 2026
4 min read

‘He looks he’s lost it,’ Richard Petty’s comments resurface after Kyle Busch’s next-gen struggles — © Greg Atkins-Imagn Images

Kyle Busch received a sobering reality check regarding his historic slump this week. Now, some previous comments have connected the dots with NASCAR royalty Richard Petty, making some telling comments in February. He declared that the two-time Cup Series champion simply looks “lost” trying to tame the Next Gen car.

The assessment cuts straight to the core of a crisis currently unfolding at Richard Childress Racing. Busch is mired in a winless streak that recently eclipsed the 100-race mark, a staggering reality for a generational talent who built his entire legacy on winning.

The candid evaluation surfaced when Petty offered his thoughts on how the current garage is adapting to the sport’s modern machinery. “I’ve been watching these new cars. Some of the guys have really adapted to them and some of the people haven’t,” Petty explained, attributing the struggles directly to the physical demands of the Gen 7 vehicle.

“Kyle could really manhandle a car. You can’t manhandle a car. So he looks like he’s lost. And I feel for him. Because he’s got the ability to flat drive a race car. But these are not the kind of race cars that he’s used to. It’s a different environment.”

1. When Manhandling Fails

2. The Setup Smackdown of 2023

To understand how Busch arrived at this frustrating crossroads, you have to rewind to his debut season with Richard Childress Racing in 2023. At first, the pairing looked like a match made in heaven. Busch hit the ground running, snatching three victories in the first half of the season at Auto Club, Talladega, and Gateway. Then, the music abruptly stopped. During an interview on Hang Out with Sean Hannity, Busch pulled back the curtain on why RCR suddenly lost its edge. It wasn’t a loss of talent; it was a mandate from the governing body. After his third win of the season at Gateway, NASCAR officials stepped in. According to Busch, the team had found a clever mechanical loophole in their setup. “We got our hands smacked for some of the stuff that we were doing to the race car that NASCAR didn’t like and said, ‘Don’t bring that back,’” Busch revealed. He clarified that RCR wasn’t outright cheating. In motorsport, finding speed often requires living in the shadows of the rulebook. “We exploited a gray area, and we found something, and we had an advantage,” he said. “It’s cheating without cheating.” Once NASCAR stripped them of that specific setup advantage, RCR was thrust back into the middle of the pack. While powerhouse organizations like Hendrick Motorsports, Joe Gibbs Racing, and Team Penske rapidly figured out new ways to maximize the Next Gen platform, RCR stalled out. They have yet to find the next big breakthrough.

3. A Mountain of Unforced Errors

The mechanical deficit is only half the story. As the car’s natural speed dipped, the pressure mounted, leading to a cascade of unforced errors across the board. Busch, desperate to make up for a lack of raw pace, admitted to overdriving on pit entry this season, triggering costly penalties. Pit road execution has been sloppy, with agonizingly slow stops routinely erasing whatever track position Busch manages to claw for on restarts. RCR has actively tried to stop the bleeding by shuffling personnel and swapping crew chiefs. They moved from Randall Burnett to Andy Street late in 2025 and brought in Jim Pohlman for 2026. It’s a systemic issue within the organization’s engineering department, something team owner Richard Childress has openly acknowledged they need to fix. Both Busch and his teammate, Austin Dillon, have routinely struggled to even sniff the top-10 in recent outings. Looking ahead, the burden is split. Richard Childress Racing must overhaul its engineering approach to find the mechanical grip that the top-tier teams currently enjoy. The days of dominating through setup loopholes are heavily policed in the Next Gen era. But for Kyle Busch, the challenge is intensely personal. Petty’s diagnosis is accurate: the environment has changed. Busch can either continue fighting the car or fundamentally alter the driving style that made him a legend in the first place. Time is ticking, and the garage isn’t waiting around for him to figure it out.