NASCAR’s biggest prospect knows who will lead his team in his rookie NASCAR Cup Series season.
Connor Zilisch will have Randall Burnett atop his pit box as Burnett moves from guiding Kyle Busch at Richard Childress Racing to Trackhouse Racing.
This move could prove beneficial for both sides.
Burnett has won races in the Next Gen car with both a young driver in Tyler Reddick and the veteran in Busch. He moved from Xfinity (six wins with Reddick) to Cup at RCR. He went winless with Reddick in two years and then they won three races together in 2022, the first year of the Next Gen car.
Randall Burnett will move to the Connor Zilisch team in 2026.
When Reddick left, Burnett assumed the role as crew chief for Busch and they won three races in 2023.
Since then, they have slumped. And while neither Busch nor teammate Austin Dillon has run well, a change with Busch likely can’t hurt. If the team brings someone from the outside, a quality crew chief taking a fresh look at the RCR program also could be a plus.
The fact they have stayed together for this long should show that RCR and Busch didn’t believe that Burnett is the root of their problems. The team has changed competition leadership in hopes of boosting performance.
Burnett — regardless of whether he felt he’d be pushed out — was obviously respected enough for Trackhouse to go after him to guide the team of NASCAR’s newest potential star. He has recent experience working with a driver transitioning from Xfinity to Cup and also experience working with Chevrolet.
Randall Burnett and Kyle Busch during qualifying for the running of the NASCAR Cup Series Ambetter Health 400.
This seems like a solid match.
So who will crew chief for Busch, the two-time Cup champion who has had a frustrating last two seasons?
All indications are that it is still to be determined. While some will clamor for former Kevin Harvick crew chief Rodney Childers, it doesn’t appear that he will be a candidate for this job, since there are already signs pointing toward where he will land in 2026.
It’s worth noting that this is a job with a lot of uncertainty, as RCR needs to turn things around as a whole and Busch is only signed through 2026. So if it is anyone from outside the organization, they might be going into a situation where, if things don’t go well early, Busch won’t return.
If it isn’t someone in-house, then there is the additional factor of the RCR shop being about an hour from the hub where most of the teams are located and long travel days for questionable gain.
RCR does have crew chiefs in-house who could assume that role.
Andy Street has been doing the third Cup entry and was successful in previous years as crew chief for Austin Hill. Xfinity Series crew chief Danny Stockman and Busch have won races together in trucks. Stockman has been a solid crew chief for Jesse Love, and the goal might be to keep them together for a potential move to Cup. Or pairing him with Busch for a year could be a way to get him some Cup experience with the Next Gen car with the anticipation he could be Love’s Cup crew chief in the future.
Both Busch and Zilisch have been successful with a variety of crew chiefs. They are great drivers who should be able to adapt to any situation, as long as the crew chief doesn’t lead the team down the wrong path, either with car setups or strategy.
The crew chief, though, certainly matters.
Zilisch has one he should have confidence in as a key component in the Trackhouse program. Busch will have to wait and see, but he likely has confidence that a change could shake things up in a good way.
Bob Pockrass covers NASCAR and INDYCAR for FOX Sports. He has spent decades covering motorsports, including over 30 Daytona 500s, with stints at ESPN, Sporting News, NASCAR Scene magazine and The (Daytona Beach) News-Journal. Follow him on Twitter @bobpockrass.
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