Kyle Busch
Kyle Busch celebrates winning at Daytona International Speedway for what's now the ARCA Menards Series on Feb. 7, 2004. (ARCA Racing)

Kyle Busch’s ARCA Menards Series ties strengthen with full-time car ownership in 2022

www.arcaracing.com February 14, 2022

Few if any drivers are more recognizable in today’s NASCAR scene than Kyle Busch, one of the sport’s most successful drivers since his debut at just 16 in 2001. The veteran has won more than 200 races combined in NASCAR’s three national series, plus two Cup Series championships and an Xfinity Series title.

In 2022, Busch expands his reach even further as the new car owner of a full-time ARCA Menards Series team.

RELATED: KBM to field ARCA car with Sammy Smith as driver

This is far from Busch’s first foray into ARCA, but it will be his first as a team owner. After rule changes regarding age restrictions locked Busch out of NASCAR’s three national series until he turned 18, Busch turned to the ARCA Menards Series to gain experience on superspeedways. He made nine AMS starts between 2002-04, winning three times for Hendrick Motorsports. He returned one more time to run the combination race between the two series now known as the ARCA Menards Series East and ARCA Menards Series West at Iowa Speedway in 2009. Naturally, he dominated and won.

Kyle Busch
Kyle Busch celebrates winning at Nashville Superspeedway for what’s now the ARCA Menards Series on April 11, 2003. (ARCA Racing)

When Busch officially opened the doors for his NASCAR Camping World Truck Series team in 2010, one of the first moves he made was to sign Brian Ickler as a development driver. Ickler had spent time in what is now the ARCA Menards Series West with Bill McAnally Racing, winning a trio of races for the team in 2007 before trekking across the country to run the full 2008 season in what is now the ARCA Menards Series East and picking up three more victories on the other coast. Ickler ran for his family team in 2008-09, when he also entered select ARCA Menards Series races.

While Ickler showed great speed in his own equipment, the finishes often failed to match that effort. But Busch recognized the circumstances and had faith in Ickler’s talent. The result was Ickler becoming the first ARCA alum – of many, eventually – to find success at Kyle Busch Motorsports to the tune of four top fives and seven top 10s in just 11 scattered starts with the team.

KBM never made a full-season run at the Truck Series championship until 2013, when Busch announced the hiring of Joey Coulter and rookie Bubba Wallace for two of his team’s seats. Busch lured Coulter away from Richard Childress Racing, having graduated to RCR’s Truck Series program after finishing in the top 10 in the final AMS driver standings in 2009 and 2010. Coulter won his only ARCA Menards Series race at Berlin in 2010.

Wallace was a visible member of NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program and a standout in ARCA Menards Series East competition, where he was a six-time winner and the 2010 Bounty Rookie of the Year recipient. Wallace became the first African-American driver to win a NASCAR touring series race in five decades when he broke through at Martinsville for KBM in the fall of 2013, nearly 50 years after Wendell Scott won a NASCAR Cup Series race at Jacksonville, Florida, in December of 1963.

Busch plucked yet another rising star from the ARCA Menards Series to run a partial campaign alongside Coulter and Wallace in 2013. Erik Jones became the first 15-year-old to start an AMS race at Mobile in 2012 after ARCA lowered the minimum age rule, effective that season. The investment in Jones paid off when he became the youngest NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race winner at Phoenix in November of 2013, though his record has since been broken by Cole Custer.

Coming just two races after Wallace made history of his own at Martinsville, the ARCA-to-KBM leap became clearly established as an integral part of the Toyota Racing Development pipeline for young drivers.

Wallace and Jones returned in 2014, tallying seven wins between them before Wallace moved up to the NASCAR Xfinity Series for 2015 to drive one of Jack Roush’s Fords. Wallace ultimately returned to the Toyota stable in 2021 when Cup star Denny Hamlin joined forces with basketball legend Michael Jordan to start the 23XI Racing team in the Cup Series.

Bubba Wallace
Bubba Wallace celebrates winning at Lee USA Speedway in New Hampshire as part of the East Series on July 30, 2010. (Getty Images/NASCAR)

Jones hoisted the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series championship trophy for KBM in 2015 while the team added NASCAR Peak Mexico Series star Daniel Suarez to its lineup for a part-time schedule. Suarez broke onto the American scene via the ARCA Menards Series East, where he parlayed three wins and a best finish of third in the final standings into a ride for Busch’s team. Suarez bested that third-place mark, set in the 2013 East Series season, when he won the 2016 NASCAR Xfinity Series championship for Joe Gibbs Racing. Today, Jones competes in the NASCAR Cup Series for Petty GMS Motorsports, as does Suarez for Justin Marks and Pitbull’s Trackhouse Racing operation.

Busch took notice of William Byron clinching the 2015 ARCA Menards Series East championship in his lone season in the series, inking Byron for the 2016 Truck Series season to succeed defending series champ Jones. Byron quickly rose in prominence to become one of the sport’s top young prospects by winning seven Truck Series races for KBM and nearly taking that series championship before a blown engine late in the season’s penultimate race at Phoenix dashed his attempt. Byron’s rise continued with the 2017 NASCAR Xfinity Series championship before he embarked on his Cup career with Hendrick Motorsports.

Noah Gragson attempted to make history in 2016 by gunning for both the ARCA Menards Series East and ARCA Menards Series West championships in the same season, though he fell just short when he ended the year third in the West Series standings and fifth in the East Series standings while winning four races between the two divisions. That was more than enough to land Gragson one of KBM’s coveted Truck Series rides for 2017.

Gragson won his first Truck Series race with a gutsy performance at Martinsville that fall and built on his late-season success with an excellent 2018 campaign, winning at Kansas and qualifying on the pole six times en route to a Championship 4 berth at Homestead, where he ended up second in the final tally behind Brett Moffitt. Gragson in 2022 will prepare for his fourth season at JR Motorsports in the NASCAR Xfinity Series and run select Cup Series events for Kaulig Racing.

Noah Gragson
Noah Gragson celebrates winning at Sonoma Raceway for what’s now the ARCA Menards Series West on June 22, 2019. (NASCAR)

Gragson’s primary KBM teammate in 2018 was two-time ARCA Menards Series West champion Todd Gilliland, a third-generation racer behind father David and grandfather Butch. In 2015, Gilliland set what is one of the ARCA Menards Series’ most unbreakable records: He became the youngest winner in AMS history when he won a wild race at Toledo Speedway two days after he celebrated his 15th birthday. In addition, this set the mark for the youngest driver to ever start an AMS race.

Gilliland’s track record across the ARCA platform is nothing short of stellar. He won 13 times in 30 West Series starts and added seven more in East Series competition. Gilliland also nearly pulled off the seemingly impossible feat that Gragson had unsuccessfully attempted a year earlier – winning the East and West Series championships in the same season. Gilliland cruised to the West crown, but his East title bid was foiled by a wreck in the finale at Dover that allowed Harrison Burton to leapfrog him in the standings and win the championship.

With Gragson moving up the ladder in 2019, KBM brought in Gilliland’s championship rival Burton to fill out the team’s two-truck lineup. The duo that visited Victory Lane a combined nine times in 14 East Series races in 2017 won just once in the 2019 Truck Series season when Gilliland took the chaotic Martinsville fall race while Burton spun on the last lap battling for second.

Both drivers parted ways with KBM after the season ended, but 2022 will see a reunion of sorts for the ex-teammates as they begin their rookie seasons in the NASCAR Cup Series – Burton with the legendary Wood Brothers and Gilliland with Front Row Motorsports.

Busch turned to 2019 ARCA Menards Series champion Christian Eckes to fill the vacancy left by Burton in KBM’s No. 18 Toyota Tundra. Eckes won the AMS championship despite missing a race when he fell ill at the last minute, ironically being replaced by Burton as a substitute driver. Eckes, too, was shut out of Victory Lane in his single full-time campaign at KBM, though he would break through at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2021 following a move to ThorSport’s Ohio-based organization.

Chandler Smith
Chandler Smith celebrates winning the General Tire 150 for the ARCA Menards Series at Phoenix Raceway on March 6, 2020. (Adam Glanzman/ARCA Racing)

For 2022, Kyle Busch Motorsports will feature a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series lineup consisting of NASCAR full-timers John Hunter Nemechek and Chandler Smith, while Corey Heim will run a majority of the calendar as a part-timer.

Smith made his ARCA Menards Series debut in 2018 and immediately came out swinging. He set a modern-day AMS record by winning the pole in each of the first four races of his career, matching his qualifying effort with his first win in his fourth start at Madison. Smith was the AMS Sprecher Lap Leader award winner in 2018 and 2019 while running only half of the schedule in each season due to age restrictions. He has notched nine AMS wins to date and enters 2022 on a hot streak, having won two of the last five Truck Series races to conclude 2021, including the season finale at Phoenix.

Heim made three Truck Series starts for KBM in 2021 while duking it out with Ty Gibbs for the ARCA Menards Series championship, which Heim ultimately ceded to Gibbs despite winning six races and finishing no worse than seventh all year. Heim made his Truck Series debut at Darlington in May and was leading the race until he was hit from behind on a restart, triggering a massive pileup that relegated him to finish 23rd. Heim will look to erase that bad memory in an expanded role with KBM this season.

A total of 49 drivers have made at least one start for Kyle Busch Motorsports in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series dating back to the team’s inception in 2010. Of those, 46 drivers have made at least one start in the ARCA Menards Series, ARCA Menards Series East or ARCA Menards Series West. The only exceptions are three veteran star drivers crossing over from other series — Kimi Raikkonen, Alex Tagliani and Brian Brown — for one-off appearances.

A further 27 drivers are previous winners on the ARCA platform. Eight were named the Bounty Rookie of the Year in their respective series. Four have championship trophies — Byron (2015 AMSE), Gilliland (2016-2017 AMSW), Burton (2017 AMSE) and Eckes (2019 AMS).

The addition of defending ARCA Menards Series East champion Sammy Smith to its lineup will bump that number to five when he takes the green flag at New Smyrna to kick off the 2022 East Series season.

With this latest announcement that Kyle Busch Motorsports will expand its operation to the ARCA Menards Series, the path for Toyota’s top prospects to ascend the stock car racing ladder has solidified further and looks to remain clear and strong for many years to come.