By David Morgan, Associate Editor
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – 20 years of trying, 20 years of frustration.
Kyle Busch enters the 2025 running of the Daytona 500 still looking to add a win in the Great American Race to his resume, he’s been agonizingly close before, but has yet to be able to hoist the Harley J. Earl Trophy in victory.
Busch’s Daytona 500 luck is not that much different than another famous Richard Childress Racing driver, Dale Earnhardt, Sr., who finally scored a win in the biggest race of the NASCAR Cup Series season in his 20th start, back in 1998.
As he enters his 20th start on Sunday, Busch will be looking to channel the Intimidator to return Richard Childress Racing to victory lane at Daytona, while checking off the box of one of the last marquee races remaining to be claimed on his resume.
“Twenty years of trying. There was another storied racer of the past that won on his 20th try and that was a pretty big deal,” Busch said. “He was a former RCR driver as well so it’d certainly be nice to win that race and do it with RCR in the No. 8 Zone Chevrolet. So that would be pretty cool.”
Busch has finished in the top-10 in the Daytona 500 on five different occasions, banking a runner-up result in the 2019 running behind Denny Hamlin and leading at the end of regulation in 2023 before a crash in overtime wiped out his chances of victory.
“You have to go out there, race and run hard, and try as best you can to make the best decisions,” Busch said of his mindset for Sunday.
“It’s a lot like a chess match in trying to make sure you put yourself in the right positions to get yourself up front when it matters most. Two years ago we led mile-marker 500 but unfortunately we were coming to the yellow. Been there, been right and there and been close… finished second, finished third, finished fourth and all the top-five spots. So there’s definitely some angst over trying to win this one.”
Despite the hard luck he has been dealt at Daytona, Busch comes into this year’s race knowing he’ll have the car to get it done with RCR’s stout superspeedway program that has seen the organization be contenders on these types of tracks every time they show up.
“We’ve had really good speed being down here,” Busch said. These guys build great restrictor-plate program racecars, so when we go to Daytona, Atlanta, Talladega, we feel like those places are really good for us. We’ve got really good speed.”
While the speed will no doubt be there, Busch and the others vying for the win on Sunday will have to contend with Lady Luck to avoid the inevitable carnage that lurks around every turn here at the World Center of Racing.
“I just told someone that it’s 80 percent luck/20 percent skill race,” Busch said. “Others would disagree but I feel like you have to have a lot of things go your way and you have to have the stars align. Being able to lead off the final pit stop is certainly going to put yourself in a really good position…
“We’re all dealing with the same Legos. You see it sometimes when you get later in the going when you’re in the middle of the race or early in the race and you’re fuel-mileage racing and you can run three-wide and you’re side-by-side.
“But then when it gets down to the end and the bottom picks up and everybody is running wide-open, that top lane just falls. You can’t keep up there so you have to be in those first two lanes to make sure you’re toward the front. Trying to make a move and you’re trying to hang somebody out… that’s just a part of what we’ve got right now. It’s tough to make headway.”
Busch will look to get a head start on his quest to finally capturing a win in the Daytona 500 on Wednesday night during pole qualifying before heading into Thursday night’s Duels to set his place in the field.
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