Thoughts: No Time to Lose Means New Crew Chief for Kyle Busch

Kyle Busch has a new crew chief. Jim Pohlman is absent; Andy Street is here. No one should seem surprised by this decision. Yes, Pohlman joined the team after the 2025 season and only competed in 10 races. But Busch sits 27th in the Cup Series standings, and that won’t be enough for a two-time series champion. He also finished five times better than teammate Austin Dillon and five times worse than him, but Dillon sits 24th in the standings. Busch told me and other reporters Saturday that he could see some light in the tunnel, that they made an adjustment at Kansas that worked. But Pohlman was perhaps a little too feisty to be Busch’s crew chief. He expressed some of his frustration on the secondary radio channel when he spoke with the Busch Observer earlier this month in Bristol. “Just the same [expletive] “He may be mad at me,” Harvick said on the “Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour” podcast. “But speaking like they spoke on Channel 2 after Bristol that week was unacceptable.” He’s not the right person. » Now Busch has Street, the RCR performance director who seemed to be doing a good job as interim crew chief for the end of 2025 with Busch when Randall Burnett announced he would be joining Trackhouse Racing in 2026. It was pretty clear that there would be a change in the Burnett-Busch relationship after 2025 given the struggles that have haunted Busch in recent years. Can Street help turn things around? Turnaround that Busch and RCR continue their relationship beyond 2026? Street won 11 O’Reilly races (10 with Austin Hill) and emerged as the top internal candidate to be Busch’s crew chief late last season. But RCR brought in Pohlman, who worked in the organization, and Street could continue to serve as director of performance at RCR, which is a key position in building the program. going from known (or at least as much as you could know after 10 races) to known (or at least as much as you could know after five races). This should provide stability. [POWER RANKINGS: New Cup Winner Carson Hocevar Joins List] This appears to be a final push to see if the team can turn things around for Busch, who will likely decide in the coming months whether to start talking to other teams or commit to RCR. No one would expect him to want to stay if he’s 27th. Hopefully Pohlman will get another chance with a driver more compatible with his style. His O’Reilly title win with driver Justin Allgaier was no fluke. He helped Allgaier win that championship in 2024. But that didn’t mean much when he worked with Busch. If you’re the crew chief of a two-time Cup champion and you fall out of the top 25 in points, you’re going to be replaced. Especially when it looked like an oil-water relationship. This is what happened. That makes sense. Busch is not the 27th best driver in the NASCAR Cup Series. If he wants to be able to demonstrate it to the RCR in the coming seasons, the time has come to find out. It wasn’t going to be that way with Pohlman. The RCR therefore made a change.