Column: Kyle Busch, William Byron Sign Contract Extensions; Charlotte News & Notes

Column By: REID SPENCER / NASCAR – CONCORD, NC – Kyle Busch will stay put for the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season, now that Richard Childress Racing has picked up the option on Busch’s contract with the organization.

Busch and team owner Richard Childress made the announcement in the Charlotte Motor Speedway media center on Saturday morning, complete with the commitment that the organization is working hard to return the two-time series champion to Victory Lane.

After winning three of the first 15 races of 2023, his first season with RCR, Busch has experienced the longest drought of his career. His winless streak stands at 69 races entering Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte (6 p.m. ET on Amazon Prime, PRN and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio).

“This is extending our contract for another year, and we’re really excited,” Childress said. “Kyle has been great to work with. Everybody had questions going in. I love a driver that doesn’t like to lose. We’ve worked hard. We’ve got some exciting things coming up.

“He and I are both alike in one area, that we don’t like to lose. We want to win races. I still think Kyle will win him a championship, and we’re going to have it at RCR. That’s our plans. We’ve got a lot of new things coming.”

Childress indicated the organization has made changes and improvements on the engineering side of the sport.

“I certainly echo Richard’s statements that there’s a lot of things happening behind the scenes,” Busch said. “It’s a great place to be, a great place to work, a great atmosphere, and a lot of grit and determination with a lot of people up there in Welcome, North Carolina. We have certainly had our battles. It’s been fun, but yet challenging. It definitely isn’t easy. This sport is very, very tough, very, very close and challenging.

“Being able to score those wins and compete for those each and every week… we know those areas in which we can improve both behind the wheel, on pit road, in engineering, all of the above. This is just the pinnacle of that, and I hope to continue to build on our successes that we’ve been working towards for the last two years.”

 

William Byron says contact extension with Hendrick is business as usual

Driver William Byron is so comfortable with his current role at Hendrick Motorsports that his negotiations for a contract extension were all but routine.

The organization announced on Friday that Byron has agreed to a four-year contract extension that will keep him at HMS through 2029.

“I definitely wanted to be here, and really for me, just want to focus on winning races,” Byron said on Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “That’s what it’s all about at Hendrick Motorsports, and that’s what I personally enjoy and want to be here to do.

“So, for me personally, I try to just kind of keep my head down this year and focus. I’m just really happy that it’s done… it’s a bit of a relief, I guess you could say, just to be able to focus on what we’re doing here. We have a lot of goals to accomplish.”

That Byron re-signed with Hendrick was a surprise to no one. His 14 career victories include back-to-back Daytona 500 wins in 2023 and 2024.

“This is my third (contract), because I had sort of my rookie deal that was included in Xfinity, and then my second one was back in 2022,” Byron said. “So, I think this one, we’ve definitely won a lot more races since then and sort of become a consistent threat at the front of the field.

“So, I think just kind of working through that, and all the conversations I think this time around were really positive.”

All four Hendrick drivers are now signed through at least 2026, which is a contract year for both Kyle Larson and Alex Bowman. Chase Elliott is under contract to the organization through 2027.

 

Jimmie Johnson proves that you can go home again

In Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600, NASCAR Hall of Famer Jimmie Johnson will make his 700th NASCAR Cup Series start on the same track where he made his debut in the series in 2001.

On Oct. 7 of that year, Johnson drove the No. 48 Hendrick Motorsports Chevrolet for the first time, but his race ended early. On Lap 151, Johnson tangled with the Penske Ford of Ryan Newman, who would edge Johnson for Cup rookie-of-the-year honors the following season.

Johnson retired from the race in 39th place after 192 laps, but that was hardly predictive of his future performance at the track.

Eight of Johnson’s 83 career victories have come at Charlotte. In 2004 and 2005, he won four straight races at the 1.5-mile speedway.

“It’s wild how my first start just coincidentally ends up being my 700th,” said Johnson, who now co-owns and drives occasionally for LEGACY Motor Club. “It means a ton to me. I am a numbers guy, and to have these numbers play out on their own is really special.”

Johnson was quick to emphasize that his 700th Cup start will not be his last.

“Last year, I ran nine—it was a little too much on the organization,” said Johnson, who finished third in the Daytona 500 in his only start so far this season. “This year, I’m at two. Maybe we do a few more, so as we plan for next year, as long as it doesn’t take away from our full-time cars, we hope to run an unchartered vehicle and have me in it, and use that to develop talent, and also help develop partnerships and such.

“It is part of our plan. We don’t have ’26 picked yet, but rest assured, there (are) more than 700 starts. I’m jumping up and down asking for more races than two.”

 

Reassurance meant a lot to Ryan Blaney, who thought he was fired

Ryan Blaney is an established NASCAR Cup Series star with 13 victories and the 2023 championship, but back in 2015, he wasn’t on such firm footing.

In fact, after a particularly frustrating run in a NASCAR Xfinity Series race at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Blaney was afraid team owner Roger Penske was ready to fire him.

“I did think I was going to get fired one year—not really, but in my mind I was,” Blaney said on Monday at a proclamation from the city of Mooresville, N.C., honoring Team Penske’s three straight Cup championships.

“I blew a race at Indy, an (Xfinity) race, like 2015, I think. I lost the race, blew Turn 2 the last lap, Kyle Busch goes on and wins the race. And I’m like, ‘Oh, my God, I just lost at Indy for Roger. I’m canned. I’m done.’”

When Penske’s number popped up on Blaney’s phone later that evening, he feared the worst.

“He called me that night, and it was a pretty cool moment of reassurance, like ‘We believe in you; you’re going to make mistakes; this is how you learn,’ things like that.

“That was like the only time in my mind I was like, ‘Oh, my God, I’m getting fired.’ And when I saw him call me, I’m like, ‘This is it, I’m done.’ But those words afterwards really helped me out. I was 22, so it was a cool moment to talk to someone like that.”

In fact, just one week later, Blaney won his first race of the season at Iowa Speedway.

 

Christopher Bell, Brad Keselowski have new spotters this weekend

The timing seemed odd.

On Wednesday, three days after Christopher Bell won the NASCAR All-Star Race at North Wilkesboro Speedway, Joe Gibbs Racing confirmed that Matt Philpott has replaced Stevie Reeves as spotter on Bell’s No. 20 Toyota.

Reeves had spotted for Bell from his debut in the Cup Series in 2020 through last weekend but unexpectedly decided to leave the role.

“I was surprised as well,” Bell said. “It was all Stevie’s decision. He made the decision on his own to quit, and that’s all I’m going to say.”

Philpott is not an experienced spotter. Accordingly, he and Bell worked on an iRacing event together earlier this week, and Bell planned to spend time on the spotters’ stand with Philpott during Saturday’s Xfinity race at Charlotte.

“I’ve been around Philpott a lot as a mechanic,” Bell said. “He was on the 11 car (of Denny Hamlin) full-time, and he was on my car a couple of times throughout the course of the years.

“I have a relationship with him. I’ve listened to the feedback that we have online, but we’ll just play it week by week and see how it goes.”

Reeves has the habit of going out on top. After spotting for Jimmie Johnson during the NASCAR Hall of Famer’s second championship season in 2007, Reeves was informed with two races left in the 2008 campaign that he would not be retained in 2009.

Johnson went on to win his third straight title in 2008 and added championships the following two years with spotter Earl Barban.

Brad Keselowski will have a different spotter this weekend, too, though not by choice. Veteran spotter T.J. Majors has been sidelined because of a medical procedure that’s expected to keep him out of action for a month.

“It’s part of life, I guess,” Keselowski said on Friday during a sponsor announcement at Roush Fenway Keselowski Racing. “We don’t like it, but we’re doing our best to adapt for it.

“Thankfully, because there was some warning, we had ample time to prepare, and he had ample time to do his homework and share that. But we’re hopeful he’ll be back real soon.”

Keselowski’s brother, Brian Keselowski, will provide a familiar voice from the spotters’ stand during Majors’ absence.

“Yeah, very familiar,” Keselowski said. “We have some depth today.”