One-on-one with Kyle Busch’s crew chief Randall Burnett

Randall Burnett doesn’t think about his string of success until someone points it out.

And why not ask him about being one of the winningest crew chiefs in the NASCAR Cup Series over the last 59 races? Burnett of Richard Childress Racing’s No. 8 team is tied with Rudy Fugle of Hendrick Motorsports for the most wins by a crew chief in the series since the start of the 2022 season.

Burnett guided Tyler Reddick to three victories last season, including on the Indianapolis road course where the series returns Sunday (2:30 p.m. ET, NBC). Three more victories have been added with Kyle Busch.

“It’s cool,” Burnett said. “I’m really fortunate and really blessed to be with such a great group of people and to have some success from them.”

The pairing of Burnett and Busch got off to a fast start with a win in Fontana, the second points race of the season. As the regular season winds down, Burnett’s team has solidified its position in the postseason but believes there is still a lot of room for improvement.

“We don’t have the consistency on a weekly basis that I think we need to be a championship team right now,” Burnett said. “We’re working on that, discussing how to do things better to be a little more consistent and working to get our short track package better. Then we’ve got to clean up some execution things and make less mistakes. Make our days less eventful at times. I feel like we’ve had a lot of really good speed at a lot of places but we’ve kind of put ourselves behind the eight ball.

“In the playoffs, you have to be consistent, you have to be able to score stage points, and you have to be able to compete for wins. And we do that but probably not consistently enough at this point.”

Burnett got his first opportunity as a Cup Series crew chief in 2016 with AJ Allmendinger at JTG Daugherty Racing. It was one year and done for Burnett before he moved to Richard Childress Racing where he oversaw Matt Tifft’s program in the Xfinity Series in 2018 and then won a championship in the series with Reddick in 2019.

Childress moved Burnett and Reddick to the Cup Series together in 2020. It makes this the second stint Burnett has had at the Cup Series level, which is proving to be his most successful.

This interview was condensed for brevity and clarity.

Q: Do you feel like you’ve settled into your place again in the Cup Series garage?

RB: Starting on the Cup side with AJ [Allmendinger], I had a lot of hurdles to overcome, a lot of things to learn. I’d been a race engineer for a long time and definitely switching into the crew chief role, it presents its own challenges. It’s more than just when to pit or what springs you want to run in the car. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into it on a weekly basis, and I had to learn my footing on that. So going back to the Xfinity Series for a few years — I’d always been on the Cup side so I really didn’t know much about an Xfinity car when I went to crew chief one. Fortunately, I had some really good people on me when I first got to working on the Xfinity car. We worked through some things and I think it was a good growing experience for myself to go through some of that on Xfinity side, and then to get the chance to do the Cup side in the right circumstance.