It goes without saying that Richard Childress Racing found themselves, for the second time in the past quarter of a century, in the worst possible situation a NASCAR Cup Series team could possibly find themselves in earlier this year.
You simply cannot plan on the passing of an active all-time NASCAR legend during a season (or even during an offseason, or even, quite frankly, ever). That's what RCR was up against in 2001 with Dale Earnhardt, and it's what they were, and still are, up against with Kyle Busch following his death in May.
It's an impossible situation to navigate. Yet to a certain extent, they managed to navigate it in a way that turned another young star into a NASCAR legend 25 years ago when they brought in Kevin Harvick, who took only three races to earn his first win and spent the next 13 years with the team, winning 23 races, including a Daytona 500, a Brickyard 400, and two Coca-Cola 600s.
When this year's team went with Austin Hill, who has demonstrated that he, on paper, is a career O'Reilly Auto Parts Series driver, it felt underwhelming, but it was understandable.
He's been with the organization since 2022, he has run select Cup Series races each year since the same year, and he could do the job to finish out the season. Especially with O'Reilly Series teammate Jesse Love signed to Wood Brothers Racing for 2027, it made sense to put Hill in the No. 8-turned-No. 33 Chevrolet for the remainder of the season. He was, for all intents and purposes, the obvious next man up.
Austin Hill decision points to a broader harsh RCR reality
But keeping him in that car for the 2027 season, the decision officially made by RCR this week, makes a lot less sense, and it unfortunately points to the harsh reality facing RCR that existed even before Busch's passing. And that is that they are simply not even a remotely desirable free agency landing spot for any big-name free agents anymore.
Sure, Busch picked RCR in 2023, when he was out of a ride at Joe Gibbs Racing. But even that iteration of RCR had just won four races in 2022, including three with Tyler Reddick.
After a one-win season with JGR in 2022, Busch took just two races to earn a win in 2023, and just over halfway through the regular season, he had three wins to his name and was the outright betting favorite to win a third championship.
Since then, this organization has taken a massive step backwards. Busch never won again after June 2023. He didn't make the playoffs in 2024 or 2025, registering career-low finishes in the standings both years, all while continuing to prove that he never actually lost his touch with Truck Series win after Truck Series win.
In 2026, he earned his final Truck Series win just days before his passing, even as he found himself in another career-worst 24th in the Cup standings.
Austin Dillon has just two top five finishes since the end of the 2022 season in non-dirt races, and both came when he won at Richmond Raceway in 2024 and 2025. This year, he only finished that race in 19th.
Look no further than the case of Noah Gragson. Gragson was long rumored to lose his ride at Front Row Motorsports to Layne Riggs, due to Riggs' exceptional Craftsman Truck Series performance and Gragson's continued struggles at the Cup level. Gragson was rumored to be on RCR's list.
Not only did Gragson not join RCR, but he ended up staying with Front Row, despite sitting 31st in points, well over 100 points behind both of his teammates.
What does that tell you?
While we later learned that Busch had indeed planned on re-signing with RCR for the 2027 season, even his future was subjected to rumors, given the team's ongoing struggles and some of his own frustrations.
Would he be back? Would he retire? Would he move to Spire Motorsports? Would the most dominant Truck driver of all-time pursue a Truck championship to fulfill his goal of becoming the first driver to win NASCAR national series championships at all three levels?
Now this is a team that sits 26nd (Dillon) and 32nd (Hill) in the owner standings. They are objectively no faster on any given week than single-car teams Haas Factory Team and Hyak Motorsports, and a two-car Kaulig Racing team that Chevrolet no longer even supports. Let's not pull any punches: the only team that they're clearly better than on a regular basis is now Rick Ware Racing.
We can criticize the decision to re-sign Hill all we want to, but at the end of the day, who else were they going to get? The harsh reality is that this is no longer a team that is going to have drivers banging down the door for the opportunity to compete every week, and quite frankly, that has been the case for the past three years now.
We would love to see them turn it around. We all know how emotional it would be for the team to get their first win since Busch's death, especially if it comes in the car he once drove. And who knows? Maybe it happens this weekend at Daytona International Speedway, where we've seen Dillon pull off upsets before, and where Hill has excelled in the O'Reilly Series. But from top to bottom, this team is simply not the team we once knew, and there is very little reason to believe that will change anytime soon.
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