Public funeral for NASCAR legend Kyle Busch announced in NC. When and where
The public will be able to celebrate the life and mourn the sudden death of Kyle Busch together soon.
NASCAR announced Friday that there will be a public memorial on Oct. 9 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. That day is a Friday — the same weekend that the speedway will host its second and final set of NASCAR races of the season. The memorial, according to the announcement, will take place following the Truck Series race that day.
The celebration of life is free to attend, according to a release. There will be more information disclosed leading up to the event, including if the funeral will be televised or streamed.
The speedway’s address is 5555 Concord Parkway South, Concord, N.C.
The list of those slated to speak was not disclosed in Friday’s announcement. That said, it’ll certainly be attended by a large contingent of the NASCAR community as well as the family members who survived the 41-year-old superstar: his wife, Samantha; his son, Brexton; his daughter, Lennix; his brother and NASCAR Hall of Famer, Kurt; and his parents, Tom and Gaye.
Close friends and family reportedly had a private funeral for Busch in June.
Busch’s sudden death in May reverberated across the motorsports world and the country. The Richard Childress Racing driver of the No. 8 car was an icon of the sport. He recorded 234 wins across all three NASCAR national series, the most in history, and won two Cup championships — in 2015 and 2019.
Busch has 63 Cup wins to his name. That’s 10th all-time; his longtime teammate and contemporary, Denny Hamlin, passed him on that total earlier this year.
The NASCAR legend died in a Charlotte hospital on Thursday, May 21, after his severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis, which resulted in “rapid and overwhelming associated complications,” according to a family statement that was later corroborated by his death certificate. Busch’s death certificate, on file at the Mecklenburg Register of Deeds Office, also said that he had pneumonia for “days to weeks” prior to his death — and that the sepsis led to disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) and later “hours” of hemorrhagic shock.
This will not be the first public appearance the family has made since the passing of Busch. Those closest to the “American badass” of a driver bravely stood in the infield of Charlotte Motor Speedway in the minutes before the beginning of the Coca-Cola 600 and wept as NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell told the family and the sport and the nation that Busch will be with the sport every day. Specifically to the family, O’Donnell said: “You are NASCAR family forever.”
This event will also not be the first public funeral the NASCAR community has gathered for in 2026. In January, a crowd descended on Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte to honor the lives of seven people who died in a plane crash in Statesville in December — among them included retired NASCAR driver and North Carolina humanitarian Greg Biffle.
