Adam Stern dropped a major news bomb on Wednesday morning by saying that Kyle Busch Motorsports is set to announce a sale of the team to Spire Motorsports potentially as soon as Wednesday. This may surprise some people, and it begs the question of why KMB would even sell to Spire, or, why Spire would even buy KBM.
There are a couple of reasons why Spire Motorsports would want to buy KBM. It’s because KBM gives Spire some of the things that Spire needs if they want to become a successful race team. We discussed this issue with what Spire needs to do at length in the article below.
Two points we brought up are Spire needing better shop space and a true driver development program. Kyle Busch Motorsports is truly a state-of-the-art facility. It looks on par with some Cup Series race team shops, and that is something that Spire Motorsports needs.
Currently, Spire works out of the shop that used to be the home of Alan Kulwicki’s race team. A very historic site indeed, but, that site is now over 30 years old. While Kulwicki was a revolutionary for his time, but, what was needed in a Championship race shop in the early 1990s is not nearly the same as it is now.
Now, Spire has the chance to move their operation into a state-of-the-art race shop to build themselves into the race team they want to be. It is a big win for the team, and it becomes all the more important as the race team continues to expand.
Now, this is likely more about shop space than anything else, but it does open the door for Spire to also start working on a driver development program. They could keep some of the race truck assets from KBM and start their own full-time Truck Series team at some point. It may not happen next year, but it can happen sometime in the near future.
This opens the door for Spire to get their own driver development program, and they can start developing drivers from within their own race team. This is how race teams like Joe Gibbs Racing got drivers like Christopher Bell and Ty Gibbs. It simply makes sense for Spire, especially now that they have major money coming from Gainbridge.
This question is a bit tougher to answer. Just a couple of months ago, Kyle Busch spelled out his retirement “dream”, which included running one full-time Truck season when Brexton turns 15, sharing a Truck with Brexton for two years, then Brexton taking over when he turns 18.
Now that KBM is no longer going to be in his possession, Busch can no longer do that, at least with this Truck Series team. Again, it is worth noting that, as we said in the above article, this plan was still nearly a decade away from actually coming to fruition. Therefore, it was unlikely that this plan would unfold perfectly, and we are seeing now that it is now.
At least, not with KBM. It is not out of the question that Busch could do this with another Truck Series team, and it is not impossible for him to buy back into a team in the future. He could get another Truck Series team in 2028 or 2029 or something like that, so the retirement dream is not dead yet.
From a driver’s perspective, it makes some sense why Busch would not want to own a race team anymore. He is pulled in many different directions between driving, business ventures, and now having two kids. It is also worth noting that his performance has taken a dip since he won his second Championship in 2019.
It may be worthwhile then for him to just focus on just being a driver at Richard Childress Racing for a few years. It is also worth noting that Busch can no longer run in as many Truck Series races as he could in the past, and that could be a factor in why he is just not as excited about owning his own team anymore. He said to Dave Moody back in 2017 that if the Truck Series does not allow Cup drivers to run, he would shut down Kyle Busch Motorsports.
He is now down to five Truck Series races per year, so, maybe it has worn his motivation down over the past six years or so. Maybe he just is not having as much fun with this anymore, and it is time for him to move on. It is understandable why he would walk away if he could not do what made him want to be a team owner in the first place, give himself a race car to drive.
There is a reason for the move on both sides, even if it seems very one-sided to Spire at a glance. Ultimately, time will tell how this works out.
