Kyle Busch explains how son Brexton motivates him, opens up about teaching son

Kyle Busch is going through a bit of a rough stretch for the first time in his NASCAR Cup Series career. Even though his winless streak isn’t something he’s proud of, his son Brexton still gives him motivation to get back to Victory Lane week in and week out.

The two-time Cup Series champion has enjoyed immense success since taking his talents to NASCAR’s top level, winning 63 races in over two decades. However, he hasn’t won since June 2023. During the latest episode of Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour, Busch joined the show to shed some light on why that’s been tough on him, and how his son is helping him get his swagger back in 2025.

“It’s tough. It was really hard last year, going winless [for the] first year ever in Cup Series competition. Not being able to score a victory was really hard,” Busch explained. “So, I don’t know. I look at it through my son’s eyes sometimes, because he talks about how Owen [Kyle Larson’s son] gets to go celebrate with Tiny Kyle [Kyle Larson] and when he wins, he gets to go run out on the racetrack and get a ride to Victory Lane and all that.

“Brexton, when we were in our highs of 2015, ’16, ’17, ’18 and even some of ’19, we won four or five, six, eight races a year in those years. So, he was too young to really kind of remember it and take part in those, because he wasn’t that perfect age of running out to the track. You know, now that he’s a little bit older, he wants to be a part of that, and I’m not winning as much. So, it is tough. It’s more tough on, probably for me, feeling bad for him, that he doesn’t get to enjoy that as much, and I feel bad for me that I don’t get to enjoy in being able to go to Victory Lane as much as I once did. But life is life.

“You just keep fighting it out and keep working with the team and everybody that we’ve got on this year at RCR and stuff. Trying to make it better, to get us back to Victory Lane.”

While Busch hasn’t been finishing first in the Cup Series, his son’s racing career is picking up, and he seems primed to continue his development and become a second-generation wheelman in NASCAR in the future. That’s a while away though, but Brexton is learning a bit of perspective at the moment as well, according to his father.

“I think what helps him understand how hard it is are the times where he travels and he races and he doesn’t win all the time,” Busch added. “So, he gets to kind of see like, ‘Okay, it’s not just jump in a race car automatically I win,’ right? He gets to see a better picture of that. It’s hard. You do have to work at it. It’s something that this doesn’t come easy for everybody. So, that helps maybe a little bit, but he still does remind me quite often that he wins a lot more than I do.”

All told, Kyle Busch is still one of the best drivers to grace the NASCAR Cup Series, and it’s a matter of when, not if he’ll get back to Victory Lane. When he does, it’ll be sweeter than ever to have his son Brexton by his side, after all the struggles they’ve gone through over the past couple of years.