Kyle Busch Takes Massive Impact Into Inside Wall On Lap 125

While the 2026 NASCAR Cup Series season started with so much promise for Kyle Busch and his No. 8 Richard Childress Racing team, as they scored the pole position for the season-opening Daytona 500, things have unraveled a bit since then.

After a 15th-place finish in the Daytona 500, Busch will follow up that subpar finish with a DNF in the Autotrader 400 at EchoPark Speedway after he was turned on the backstretch on Lap 125. It seemed that Busch got tight on the exit of Turn 2, which caused him to feather the throttle. As he slowed, Noah Gragson collided with the rear of Busch's car.

The contact would send Busch spinning to the inside of the track, where he would slam incredibly hard head-first into the inside wall.

Kyle Busch hit the inside wall a ton. Thankfully, he was able to walk away with no issue. #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/IHWK5uoXyw
— Toby Christie (@Toby_Christie) February 22, 2026

Thankfully, Busch was able to climb from his race car. But unfortunately, the hit will drastically impact Busch's placement in the NASCAR Cup Series championship standings heading into next weekend's event at Circuit of the Americas.

After being checked and released from the infield car center, Busch was none-too-pleased with Gragson, who he felt could have given him some grace to prevent the incident.

"I didn't get the best of exits off of [Turn] 2, there, but when I drifted out to the wall, I was trying to get back straight, and [Gragson] never checked up," Busch explained in an interview on FOX. "He just rammed me as hard as he could to get me back going to get my momentum back going again. But when a guy is a little out of shape, you have to give a second to collect it before you just ram them. Or at least try to check up and push gently. Yeah, but that's kids these days."

While it's still early in the season, drivers and teams will begin number crunching earlier than usual thanks to a change back to the "Chase for the Cup" championship format, which will see the top-16 drivers in the regular-season point standings advance to the Chase, where they'll compete over a 10-race slate of races to decide a champion.

As the No. 8 Chevrolet was towed back to the garage area, Busch joined several others, who have fallen out of Sunday's race in the early portion of the event. Ty Gibbs and Josh Berry fell out after a hard crash on Lap 82, and on Lap 103, Riley Herbst, Ricky Stenhouse Jr., and B.J. McLeod all suffered race-ending damage in another crash.

Adding insult to injury, Busch's career-long losing streak will extend to 95 races following the heavy impact on Lap 125 of Sunday's race. Busch last won at World Wide Technology Raceway, the 15th race of the 2023 NASCAR Cup Series season.

Prior to his winless campaigns in 2024 and 2025, Busch, a two-time series champion, had never gone an entire NASCAR Cup Series season without a victory.