NASCAR insiders speculate about Kyle Busch announcement after cryptic teaser post

Following a forgettable race at Homestead, Kyle Busch made waves when he teased an announcement to come on Monday. The tease didn’t offer much insight into what potential news could be coming.

Busch tweeted simply: “News at 18:51 on Monday.” The numbers, of course, are near and dear to him.

18 was his number at Joe Gibbs Racing. 51 was his number at Kyle Busch Motorsports for years in the Truck Series. Will that have something to do with the announcement? A pair of NASCAR insiders for The Athletic weighed in on Sunday night.

“Sometimes these things could be just a sponsor thing,” Jeff Gluck said on The Teardown podcast. “We don’t know that. Do you have any sense of what this is? Because this would be good timing to press the panic button for Kyle Busch, because they were way off today while Austin Dillon for a while was going to run top 10. What happened to Austin Dillon? He ended up finishing 13th. That’s not terrible.”

As for Busch, the news will be hotly anticipated by fans of the No. 8 car. Anything for a little good news.

“Now Kyle Busch, I will say, he is tied for the last spot in the playoffs,” Gluck said. “So he’s in the playoffs right now, basically, points wise. But they don’t seem anywhere in the ballpark of running competitively. So is this just going to be some sort of like Brexit announcement or some sponsor announcement or is there something where there’s more to this at this point?”

Gluck’s co-host on the podcast, Jordan Bianchi, also offered his take on what the Kyle Busch announcement might be. He honed in on the numbers as the potential insight into what an announcement might have in store.

“So if you see me looking down at my phone, if you see me looking down a lot, it’s because I’m looking at my phone and I’m trying to track this and trying to figure this out,” Bianchi said. “I did see this before, trying to track it. I don’t feel comfortable saying what I think it is because I just don’t 100% know.

“But I will say look at the numbers in there: 18:51. Those are numbers that have been linked with Kyle throughout his career. So I would say it’s something related to that. Again, don’t 100% know. Don’t believe it’s related to anything like a contract extension or anything like that. Those conversations are still a ways away, that kind of thing. So I wouldn’t expect anything like that.”

Gluck seemed to agree with that line of thinking. A team change would be a bit early at this point for Kyle Busch.

“I think typically, I hate to burst everybody’s bubble, but typically people don’t telegraph when news is going to come out if it’s like a significant, like a big breaking news thing,” Gluck said. “Because all that does is alert people like Jordan to the story, and then Jordan breaks it before anybody can get on it.”

So in the meantime, we’ll just have to tune in tonight for the Kyle Busch news. The big reveal will come at 6:51 p.m. ET.