Following the announcement of Kyle Busch going to drive for Richard Childress Racing in 2023, questions then arose for Kyle Busch Motorsports.
In what will be the Craftsman Truck Series in 2023, KBM will now be fielding Chevrolet’s with Busch’s move to RCR. Currently, KBM fields Toyota’s with the alliance through Joe Gibbs Racing. The championship winning team will have bow-ties on the nose in 2023.
During Tuesday’s announcement Busch did address some of the plans for his truck operation in 2023.
“Obviously there was an announcement today regarding RCR and Kyle Busch and KBM has not been a part of that, yet. Although, we are still working on that sort of stuff with General Motors and Chevrolet,” Busch said. “Kyle Busch Motorsports intends to compete in the truck series as a Chevrolet team next year. Whether that’s two, three, four entries, we’re not quite certain on that yet but we’re working through those details. Hopefully we’ll have an announcement on that here shortly.”
With the change in OEM’s also comes a lot of change within both KBM and Toyota’s camps.
KBM will now be searching for new drivers or at least a couple as John Hunter Nemechek, Chandler Smith and Corey Heim are Toyota team drivers and under Toyota contracts. Obviously, they can get out of those contracts should they choose or Toyota let them do so. However, expect Chevy to utilize a similar route that Toyota has in recent years. This will give Chevy a top level Truck team to help foster along the next generation of Chevy drivers.
For years Toyota has used KBM to groom the next talent in their driver developmental program with names such as Heim, Erik Jones, William Byron, Bubba Wallace, Christopher Bell, Todd Gilliland, Harrison Burton and others getting their starts in a KBM Toyota truck. Toyota has to look a different route now to bring their drivers up. Especially with the lack of Toyota truck teams there will be.
Time will tell who this move benefits more. Stay tuned for further announcements regarding KBM and their Truck team moving forward.
