Richard Childress has decided. Kyle Busch will get a different crew chief, Andy Street, following Talladega. And Denny Hamlin finds the whole situation absurd.

After news emerged that Street would take over Pohlman's duties, Hamlin remarked, “It’s got to be like the 12th or 15th crew chief,” Hamlin remarked, highlighting the instability at the team. And you just brought Jim in. This is not even a mid-season change,” Hamlin said.

Notably, this move makes Street the third crew chief on the No. 8 car in less than a year. However, the change was important. The radio exchange at Bristol highlighted the friction between Jim Pohlman and Kyle Busch.

At the same time, Hamlin admitted that while he sees the move, he isn't entirely sure what it will fix without knowing the team's internal issues.

“As Kyle Busch would say, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Because I just don’t know. I don’t know the inner workings of the team or, you know, where the weak spots are or anything like that,” he explained.

This isn't the first time Andy Street and Kyle Busch have worked together. Street stepped in for the final five races of the 2025 season after Randall Burnett’s departure, guiding Busch to a top-five finish in the season finale. With two decades of experience at Richard Childress Racing, Street most recently served as the Performance Director, bringing a deep technical background back to the trackside of the operation.

Andy Street returns to the pit box for the number eight team

Street has a proven track record in the NASCAR O'Reilly series, where he earned eleven victories and led Austin Hill to a championship finale appearance in 2024. He also played a key role in Myatt Snider’s first career win.

Richard Childress believes this transition is purely about organizational efficiency. “This move is about putting our people in the best position to succeed,” Childress stated, emphasizing that the team is focused on placing talent where it can deliver the expected results.

By bringing Street back to the top of the pit box, RCR hopes to replicate the chemistry he and Busch showed during their brief run together last year.

Read more at the RFK Racing Digest!

Written by

Sanskriti Pastor

Edited by

Siddharth Shirwadkar