Kyle Busch open to pay cut, options outside NASCAR as he looks for 2023 seat

INDIANAPOLIS — Kyle Busch started his Saturday by joining past winners at the hallowed Indianapolis Motor Speedway for a class photo on the Yard of Bricks.

He was seated next to Arie Luyendyk and in front of Marcus Ericsson, Alexander Rossi and Helio Castroneves — a combined eight Indianapolis 500 titles flanking NASCAR's only active driver with multiple Cup championships.

And yet Busch still doesn't have a contract for next season. His longtime sponsor is pulling out of NASCAR at the end of the season, and if Joe Gibbs Racing doesn't find a deep-pocketed replacement for M&M's and Mars Inc., Busch will have to find a job elsewhere.

It's an unfathomable predicament for Busch, the 2015 and 2019 NASCAR champion and winner of 60 career Cup races, with all but four won since joining JGR in 2008. He wants to stay in the No. 18 Toyota, but the clock is ticking.

«It'd be like Dale Earnhardt in 1998, three or four years after winning his last championship, being on the free agency market and not having a ride. That just sounds crazy,» Busch said. «I don't know what to do, how to fix that.»

Despite his credentials, Busch knows he is going to have to take a pay cut. The motorsports business model relies on corporate funding, and the market is radically different than it was when he signed his first deal with Gibbs in 2007 and even when he signed his last extension in 2019.

«You talk about what you want, and I think you are insinuating that I'm asking for the sky on salary or something like that, and I've already admitted I'm willing to take concessions,» Busch said. «I feel like the market is different than what it was years ago, and I'm willing to race for under my market value.

»You gotta have sponsorship in this sport to go