"I’m still going to be haunted by what happened" - Toyota admits they cost Kyle Busch a shot at his third NASCAR Cup Series championship

Two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch is a known commodity in NASCAR. The 2022 silly season, as seen by the world, however, has not been kind to the Joe Gibbs Racing driver.

Busch, whose future in the sport loomed in darkness after his team was unable to find a sponsor for him earlier in the season, announced his switch to Richard Childress Racing for 2023. While Busch is slated to switch camp from a Toyota-backed team to a team affiliated with Chevrolet, he and the officials around him are focused more than ever on the job at hand: of winning the championship in 2022.

The Las Vegas, Nevada native's appearance in the Bass Pro Shops Night Race put an end to that as the #18 M&M's Toyota Camry TRD driver suffered engine failure in the race, knocking him out of the playoffs. On a day where several other drivers struggled with the Next Gen car's reliability and raceability on the track, Kyle Busch paid the ultimate price with his car smoking to a halt during the race.

David Wilson, president of Toyota Racing Development, deemed the incident the worst that could have happened for Busch and took responsibility for his elimination. Wilson elaborated on the two Toyota engines that failed over the course of three weekends, and the implications it had for Kyle Busch, saying:

“We cost Kyle Busch a shot at his third championship. We’re not giving up our performance potential, we feel like it’s conservative enough to get us kind of out of this danger zone. Whether we’re so fortunate enough to possibly win a championship with either Christopher or Denny later this year, I’m still going to be haunted by what happened, not just in Bristol, but Darlington as well. Two engine failures across three weeks is unheard of. It’s unacceptable.”

Toyota as a manufacturer did not suffer from any engine failures in the previous Cup Series season, which makes their struggles this year even more surprising.

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Toyota seem to have found issues with their engines that cost Kyle Busch to retire twice in three races

David Wilson, president of Toyota Racing Development, says the manufacturer has seemingly identified the root cause of their engine failures in 2022 and has made appropriate changes ahead of the weekend at Texas Motor Speedway. He elaborated on what went wrong with the V8s and said:

“We have some sort of an instability in our valve train and it seems to be triggered by us running into NASCAR’s mandated rev limiter, interestingly enough.”

Wilson claimed Kyle Busch missed an upshift from fourth to fifth gear at Darlington and hit the rev limiter of the engine hard enough for it to give up a lap later. He also mentioned that the engines need to be robust enough to get such abuse on the track.

Watch Busch try his luck this weekend at Texas Motor Speedway in the AutoTrader EchoPark Automotive 500.