Kevin Harvick weighs in on sudden shake-up at RCR, Kyle Busch: 'Andy Petree was first'

Things have not gone well lately for Kyle Busch, who has recorded a DNF in four of his last five races and has generally looked out of sorts for a significant chunk of the season.

But there might be bigger issues at Richard Childress Racing, which has made some mid-season personnel changes to try to turn things around.

“We saw changes this week. Andy Petree out as the competition director at RCR,” Kevin Harvick said on the Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour podcast. “So that tells me that there’s obviously some issues on the performance side with everything that is going on, with Andy stepping down or getting pushed out or whatever the scenario is. They obviously feel like they need to make their racecars run faster because they’re now looking for a new competition director, have an interim competition director.”

RCR, of course, will be hoping the changes are enough to spark things for its drivers. Kyle Busch, in particular, is right near the cut line for the playoffs.

Currently he’s 104 points off the cut line, three places out of the top 16 when including this season’s race winners.

One of the reasons Harvick feels like a change was made at competition director is the performance of the RCR cars in recent weeks. Austin Dillon has been outperforming Kyle Busch considerably.

“The last couple weeks the 3 car has outrun the 8, for the most part,” Harvick said. “I think the 3 has run a little bit better but has outrun the 8. I think there’s definitely some things that they’re trying to address internally with the moves they’re starting to make, and it looks like it was Andy Petree first.”

In his role as executive vice president of competition, Petree helped guide the organization to 26 race wins (nine in the Cup Series and 17 in the Xfinity Series), while also helping Richard Childress Racing win the Xfinity Series championship in 2019. Kyle Busch had several of those wins.

RCR made seven NASCAR Cup Series playoff appearances from 2017-2023 under Petree’s direction.

Petree was thankful for all of his opportunities on the way out.

“I’m incredibly grateful to Richard Childress for the impact he has had on my career, as well as the wonderful memories and on-track success we have enjoyed together,” Petree said in a press release. “Although my day-to-day involvement with RCR is changing, I will always be a fan and supporter of everyone in Welcome, North Carolina. I wish RCR the best for the rest of this season and beyond.”