As of Tuesday, Kyle Busch still has not been re-signed by Joe Gibbs Racing, and hasn’t found a new sponsor yet. The two-time NASCAR champion finds himself in a dilemma: does he stay with JGR or move on?
Busch told The Associated Press last week he’d be willing to take a pay cut and stay with JGR. But he’s aware the market has changed and he may have to move on.
“It’d be like Dale Earnhardt in 1998, three or four years after winning his last championship, being on the free agency market and not having a ride. That just sounds crazy,” Busch said. “I don’t know what to do, how to fix that.”
“You talk about what you want, and I think you are insinuating that I’m asking for the sky on salary or something like that, and I’ve already admitted I’m willing to take concessions,” Busch continued to say. “I feel like the market is different than what it was years ago, and I’m willing to race for under my market value.”
“You gotta have sponsorship in this sport to go forward. It’s not as simple as being a basketball player and being Michael Jordan or LeBron James and being a really good player and then the team losing a sponsor and then saying, ‘OK, Michael, LeBron, we gotta let you go. We can’t afford you.'”
Last month, Sports Business Journal‘s Adam Stern looked at how Mars’ exit from NASCAR impacted Busch:
.@MMSChocolate gave a lot to NASCAR financially — $25 million to JGR annually — but the Mars family was also a big backer of @KyleBusch.
🗨: "They got to know me at a personal level and didn’t always judge everything from a short clip they saw on TV." https://t.co/dWIzjONnFj
— Adam Stern (@A_S12) July 23, 2022
.@KyleBusch earns one of the most lucrative salaries in NASCAR via @MarsGlobal's $25 million annual JGR deal, and JGR has conceded that it's proving difficult to fill the hole left by Mars.
🔳 In turn, that has increased industry speculation that Busch may leave JGR after 2022. pic.twitter.com/5o3epHWXEJ
— Adam Stern (@A_S12) July 23, 2022
Speaking of Michael Jordan, it seems there will soon be an announcement regarding his re-signing of Bubba Wallace beyond the 2023 season. You wonder if Jordan would be willing to take Busch as well, seeing that they both are under the JGR racing umbrella.
One driver who said he would welcome Busch to his team is Kevin Harvick. Harvick is part of the Stewart-Haas racing team.
“Kyle is still one of the best that’s ever come through this garage. There’s a lot of teams that can say that they’ve never had one of those types of drivers. He literally could rebuild an organization if somebody took a chance that hasn’t had one of those types of drivers.”
The only question is, what will Kyle Busch do?
[ESPN]
