Kyle Busch Signs Brother Kurt for Nationwide Team at BetLM

MOORESVILLE, N.C. – The Busch Broth­ers will be teamed together for the first time in more than a decade this sea­son as co-drivers for Kyle Busch Motorsports.

Kyle Busch tabbed his older brother, Kurt, to share the No. 54 Toy­ota this year in the Nation­wide Series. The broth­ers on Thurs­day intro­duced Mon­ster Energy as their spon­sor for the new team.

KBM has fielded a Truck Series team since 2010, but this will be its first year in stock-cars and in NASCAR’s second-tier series. The broth­ers wasted no time boast­ing what they can accom­plish this year: Kurt Busch said it’s pos­si­ble for them to sweep the entire 33-race sched­ule, while Kyle said his team will run for the Nation­wide owner’s championship.

“We’ve had a lot of talks about how this whole deal is going to work out, what we’re both look­ing to get out of this and what a great oppor­tu­nity this is to race in the Nation­wide Series,” Kyle Busch said. “Kurt’s never done a full Nation­wide deal, he’s always had the itch but never really cared about it.

“Now this is some­thing for him to get out there and win some races, help bring some ban­ners over here.”

The pair­ing of the Busch broth­ers brings together the two most polar­iz­ing dri­vers in NASCAR, and it’s the first time they’ll be teamed together since they drove for their father more than a decade ago.

It also marks a turn­ing point in both of their careers.

Kyle Busch had to fight hard in Novem­ber to keep his job when he was sus­pended by NASCAR for inten­tion­ally wreck­ing Ron Hor­na­day Jr. in a Truck race at Texas. His pri­mary spon­sors had been pushed to the edge by Busch, but with the help of Sprint Cup Series owner Joe Gibbs, he kept his pro­gram intact.

Kurt Busch then lost his job in Decem­ber when he split with Penske Rac­ing after yet another pub­lic melt­down. He’s since put together a Cup deal with fledg­ling Phoenix Rac­ing and now has this Nation­wide pack­age with his brother.

Although Richard Petty indi­cated last week that Kurt Busch is cur­rently untouch­able because spon­sors are hes­i­tant to asso­ciate with him, Kyle Busch said he had no prob­lems sell­ing his brother to Monster.

“When his oppor­tu­nity came about, we col­lab­o­rated on what we could do together and took it to Mon­ster and they were like ‘Hell, yeah, let’s do this. Sign him on,”‘ Kyle Busch said. “For us now to be able to come together with Mon­ster, every­body seemed like a per­fect fit. Both of us seem to have that per­son­able, edgy atti­tude, we just want to win, and that’s what Mon­ster is all about.”

Kurt Busch didn’t view the job from his brother as char­ity, though, and saw his par­tic­i­pa­tion as a way to help Kyle launch his Nation­wide team.

“I think we are team­ing up together, to do this as broth­ers,” Kurt said. .

There are still details to be worked out, though.

Kyle Busch, the all-time win­ningest dri­ver in the Nation­wide Series with 51 vic­to­ries, plans to drive between 15 and 18 races. He’ll drive the first four of the sea­son then turn the wheel over to Kurt at Texas Motor Speed­way. Kurt has just 12 career Nation­wide starts, with three wins– his last as a fill-in for Brad Keselowski last year at Watkins Glen.

Kurt is already com­mit­ted to dri­ving the Nation­wide races at Day­tona and Tal­ladega for Phoenix Rac­ing, so the rest of his sched­ule still has to be hashed out with his new boss, Kyle.

“He’ll prob­a­bly want some of the eas­ier por­tion of the sched­ule because he’s the owner, and I’ll give him that respect,” joked Kurt. “But between the two of us, we’re rac­ing all 33 Nation­wide races on the schedule.”

KBM is the only team Kyle will drive for in the Nation­wide Series as he scales back his non-Cup par­tic­i­pa­tion. He won’t drive at all for Joe Gibbs Rac­ing in Nation­wide, and won’t drive for KBM’s Truck team.

Jason Lef­fler is tabbed to drive KBM’s No. 51 in the Truck Series, and Kyle Busch said he’s talk­ing to a hand­ful of Cup stars about fill­ing out that sched­ule for him.

The broth­ers also dis­missed any notion that their rela­tion­ship is too volatile to work together. They had a very pub­lic falling out when they wrecked each other rac­ing for the $ 1 mil­lion prize in the 2007 All-Star race and did not speak for months. It took their grand­mother bro­ker­ing a peace agree­ment that Thanks­giv­ing to mend the relationship.

Kurt Busch said that’s the only hic­cup the two have had, and all other spec­u­la­tion about their rela­tion­ship “is just a myth.”

“The only thing that we had run in our way was dol­lar signs at the All-Star race that year,” he said. “Any­time some­body is going for a mil­lion bucks, you for­get who your brother is … I think we’ve always got­ten along really well on track, to draft with each other, to yield to each other, it just hasn’t been well documented.”