‘Your cars suck’: NASCAR owner provides some levity amid grief over Kyle Busch
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kyle usch died at age 41 Thursday after severe pneumonia progressed to sepsis.
- Stories about Busch filled Charlotte Motor Speedway Saturday, amid laughter and grief.
- A number of tributes honoring Busch’s life are planned at the Coke 600 Sunday at CMS.
Stories about Kyle Busch were everywhere Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway, as the sport tried to come to terms with the NASCAR superstar’s unexpected passing.
First came the news around 11:20 a.m. Saturday from the Busch family that provided more information about Busch’s cause of death.
“The medical evaluation provided to the Busch Family concluded that severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis, resulting in rapid and overwhelming associated complications,” the family said in a statement.
After that came a torrent of stories from the garage.
Busch, who was 41, had been in the game so long — and had raced so often in all of NASCAR’s three major series — that everyone had a core memory of the racer they called “Rowdy.” And there was time to tell them, too. Many of Saturday’s events got rained out at the speedway, which meant there were a lot of NASCAR folks sitting around, waiting for Sunday night’s Coke 600 and exchanging memories.
Joe Gibbs, who owned the racing team Busch drove for when he won his two NASCAR Cup championships in 2015 and 2019, told one of the best. The former Super Bowl-winning coach is one of the most respected men in the NASCAR garage, and few would purposely criticize him.
Busch didn’t mind doing so, though. He was a “freight train,” as Gibbs said, and it was best to get on that train before you got run over.
At one race in New Hampshire, Busch finished second. This made Gibbs cringe, because he knew Busch was one of those guys with the opinion that finishing second just meant you were the first loser.
Gibbs went down to monitor Busch’s interactions with the media because, as Gibbs noted: “Sometimes there might be something I could have to handle afterward.”
Gibbs was pleasantly surprised to see that Busch wasn’t laying waste to anybody in this particular press conference, though. The former NFL coach thought to himself: “Well, gosh: He must be happy he finished second.”
After the media availability was over, Busch strode directly over to his boss. He got in Gibbs’ face and said three words: “Your cars suck!”
Then he walked off.
Gibbs laughed when he told this story on Saturday, and there has been a lot of laughter interspersed between the tears this weekend as the reality of Busch’s sudden death sets in. People have begun to recover from their shock and remember him fondly, as they did in the days and weeks after Dale Earnhardt Sr.’s death at the Daytona 500 in 2001.
Gibbs also told a story of when Busch, who often delighted in playing a villain, won a race at Bristol and was being booed by many fans as he got out of the car.
Instead of getting upset himself, Busch mimed wiping away fake tears to the crowd. Busch didn’t drive for Gibbs the past several years, but all Joe Gibbs Racing cars will have “Rowdy” on the nameplate above the door for Sunday’s Coke 600 — one of many tributes scheduled.
Driver Brad Keselowski, with whom Busch butted heads off and on for years, said he hoped NASCAR’s hall of fame in Charlotte would make a one-time exception and induct Busch along with the rest of the just-announced class.
“I understand there’s a lot of things to work through on that,” Keselowski said. “But it’s very clear Kyle’s a first ballot hall of famer, and I don’t know why that needs to wait another year.”
Busch had asked for a doctor to “give him a shot” during the race weekend at Watkins Glen earlier this month, but he then won a trucks race the following weekend at Dover — the last of his record 234 wins across NASCAR’s top three series.
When asked if he thought Busch wasn’t feeling well the past 10 days or so before his death Thursday, Keselowski said: “Yes, and I won’t go into any specifics. But then when he ran the truck race (May 15), I think (that feeling of Busch being sick) was honestly kind of erased in my mind. I’m not any level of doctor. But I do know the workload associated with running a double-duty weekend pretty well, having done it myself. He obviously executed at a very high level, winning one of the races, so I kind of was very dismissive of that (health issue).”
Keselowski also said, however, that NASCAR drivers routinely put pressure on themselves to stay “healthy,” whether or not they really are.
“Racing season is a very difficult season,” Keselowski said. “It’s 38 weekends a year, and there’s a lot going on… I mean, shoot, I broke my leg … and had to power through it, because that’s what the sport requires. ... There’s no shortage of drivers that would love to take my seat, or anybody else’s seat, if we weren’t doing well. And I think every driver feels that pressure, as most athletes do.”
Several drivers said Saturday that Busch’s death would be a wakeup call to them to monitor their own health more closely.
Said driver Joey Logano: “Immediately I started thinking about: ‘What are the things that I’m putting off, health-wise, that I should be attacking right now.’”
Logano was both a teammate and a competitor with Busch over the years, and the two had antagonized each other several times. “A rollercoaster relationship,” Logano called it. But over the past few years, as each had children, they had started to mend their relationship and had recently played in a game of pickup basketball against each other at Talladega.
“Who knows what would have been once we were done racing,” Logano said. “Everybody changes. And I think, when you’re done racing, you bury the hatchet.” Logano also noted that Busch had “a ridiculous amount of grit” and marveled at the reaction to Busch’s sudden death that went “all the way to our president,” as Logano said.
Indeed, President Donald Trump praised Busch on social media and mourned his death.
Driver Ryan Blaney said Busch would happily “bust you up” with his wicked sense of humor, but that on some plane trips out west he grew to understand and like the man behind the “Rowdy” persona.
“Kyle was an icon,” Blaney said. “And I feel like he started a lot of arguments in households, because if the wife was a fan of him, the husband hated him. There was always tension. He was just a polarizing figure. And no matter if you disliked him or you liked him as a racer, he was always talked about. He was a guy who was always there. Won too much — that’s really why people didn’t like him.”
Driver Denny Hamlin, a longtime teammate of Busch’s, said Saturday that Busch was NASCAR’s Kobe Bryant.
“Some people are just more skilled than others, and he was just far more skilled than 99.9% of people that did it,” Hamlin said of Busch. “I don’t know how he did some of the stuff that he did behind the wheel. And he just had the swagger, even when he was a rookie.”
