Throughout the years, a new standard has been established when it comes to race car drivers starting their careers. The learning curve has begun at a much younger age than in previous generations.
Kyle Sieg, however, is racing with an old-school approach. Being 14 years younger than his older brother Ryan Sieg, Kyle has had a front-row seat to RSS Racing’s growth over the last decade. But being so close to the racing bubble didn’t scratch the itch for Kyle until Ryan swayed him to strap into a racecar for the first time in 2019.
“I just knew it took a lot of money,” Kyle said of getting into racing at a later age. “I didn’t think I wanted to do it until I got older. Ryan was like, ‘Come on now, it’s time to go race.’ He was pretty much the one that drove me to get into racing and race with them. I was around it all of my life and I was always at the shop, so I knew what it took and watched my brother for years.”
RSS Racing has achieved plenty of success in the Xfinity Series since Ryan’s debut in 2013. Now in his 11th full-time season, Ryan has made the playoffs four times. With four races remaining in the regular season, he sits on the inside of the playoff bubble, ahead of multiple JR Motorsports drivers.
Both Sieg brothers still work at the team’s Georgia-based race shop. Ryan remembers picking his younger brother up from high school and driving down the same road to get to the race shop. After getting into Kyle’s ear, it was time for Kyle to make some noise.
“We’ve always had that chat about him going racing,” Ryan recalled. “We had a couple of late models. I kept racing late models and he wanted to try to do it, and I kept telling him to pursue it. We had the stuff going pretty good. I said, ‘Why don’t you get in there and see if you like it or not? If you don’t, you don’t have to do it.’”
In 2019, Kyle made his racing debut driving a late model. He flourished out of the gate, qualifying for the Snowball Derby in his first attempt. That allowed Kyle to not get in his own head, knowing he could be competitive by picking up racing quickly.
“We went to the Derby, that was my first try, and didn’t have much racing experience and I went down there and qualified for it and had all the confidence in the world,” he said. “If I could race with those guys in that race, I could probably run with anybody.”
Kyle estimated running 10 to 15 races during the 2019 season, setting him up to run more frequently during the 2020 campaign. The COVID-19 pandemic shuttered those plans, though he competed in three ARCA Menards Series races and a pair of ARCA West events. In 2021, RSS fielded an ARCA car for Kyle in 11 races with 2000 Xfinity Series champion Jeff Green as his crew chief. He had eight top-10 finishes.
Kyle said: “We got a top five at Daytona and then went to Phoenix and we were running somewhat close in the proximity of [Corey] Heim and [Ty] Gibbs. If you can do that, you can probably race with the best of them.”
Early in the 2021 season, Kyle made his Xfinity debut with DGM Racing, where he blew a tire in Turn 1. RSS wanted to get him more experience and put him in Ryan’s No. 39 car at Phoenix, guaranteeing him an entry into the field. Ryan ran the No. 38 car and only qualified better than his inexperienced brother by four positions.
That set them up for the 2022 season, in which Kyle ran half the Xfinity schedule. His first top-10 finish came in a wild summer race at Daytona, rounding out the top 10. By 2023, he was ready for the full season, despite having just started racing less than four years prior.
Ryan, who is Kyle’s primary mentor, suggested the idea.
“If you start this late, you almost have to quicken the steps and stop spending all the money for late models because you get stuck there trying to pursue a win,” Ryan said. “We’ve had that plan of trying to move up quicker and skip those steps, trying to save a little bit of money. We already have the Xfinity program. With the way I did it, we were almost a stepping stone to try and figure out if we could do it or not, and we had good enough people around me to try to pursue it.
“If you drive some late models and like it and are good, try to continue and quicken that process to where he’s at now.”
Kyle is learning rapidly. RSS paired him with established spotter Freddie Kraft for the 2024 season in an attempt to quicken the learning curve even quicker. So far, so good.
“Working with a guy like that, you know the majority of the time you’re just trying to help him get better, help him improve,” Kraft said. “That’s what we spend a lot of time doing: assisting with lines and really confidence. The biggest thing with Kyle that I found is for a guy that doesn’t have a lot of experience, he’s incredibly talented. To be able to run where he’s at in the Xfinity Series, he’s running inside the top 20 weekly and that’s pretty impressive for a guy that has 20 ARCA starts and [70] Xfinity starts.
“The biggest thing is working on confidence and getting him to believe in himself. He has the talent to do it.”
Because of Kyle’s inexperience, he can be timid on restarts, Kraft mentioned. Getting a touch more aggressive is next on the agenda for the 23-year-old.
“[Kyle] runs a really smart race, and because of that, sometimes has to be more conservative than he should be,” Kraft noted. “That’s the biggest thing that I fight with him. It’s not talent. If I tell him to adjust his line at all, he can do that anytime I ask. It’s more so when it’s time to be aggressive, does he have that extra gear? It’s there, it’s just a matter of believing in himself in getting there.”
With a top-20 finish being the consistent goal, Kyle has improved tremendously. Forty percent of his starts in 2024 have cracked the top 20, and had the No. 28 Ford not flipped on the final lap at Michigan earlier this month, he would have had another. He feels like he’s improved the most on the road courses, and Kraft believes he’s an excellent short-track driver.
Kyle is also going to school on the race track, getting an education each week.
“It’s fun to learn every week. I’m still learning to this day and I feel like I will learn every race that I run,” Kyle added. “You can never learn enough.
“Our deal is different from Ryan’s, as people can tell. We do the best that we can do. A good day for us is a top 20, especially with the way the field is right now. It takes everybody. If you’re not clicking, you’re going to run around 25th.”
Though it took Kyle until he was nearly 20 years old to opt to race, he’s fully committed now, declaring that he wants to race “for the rest of my life.”