“You never know when the last one is.”
Kyle Busch’s answer to the question “What makes these moments so special?”, posed to him moments after he won the Dover truck race less than a week ago, proved to be sadly prophetic. At the same time, Busch unknowingly left us something to think about, something bigger than NASCAR, something more important than a race.
Yes, Busch was taking about a win in NASCAR but he left us a message about life.
Tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. You never know where the day will take you. Each day is a gift and you need to make the best of it. You need to cherish the people in your life because they won’t always be there.
When I woke up this morning, I had things on my mind. I had to reply about a job opportunity; I was hoping my Mom was feeling better; and that she’d hear back about the refrigerator we are hoping to purchase. I never thought I would end the day writing a tribute to Kyle Busch, passing away at 41.
I knew he’d asked for some medical attention after the Watkins Glen Cup race. This morning, I read that he was being hospitalized and would miss the races at Charlotte. Maybe there was some inkling that it was more serious due to people asking to keep Kyle and his family in their thoughts. Still, I think everyone assumed he’d be back in a couple of weeks and getting himself healthy would be what he needed to take the #8 RCR Chevrolet back for one more victory. Everyone assumed that the biggest Kyle Busch story of 2026 would be where he decided to race next year.
Instead, the NASCAR world pauses, to remember Kyle, to remember his accomplishments. He won two Cup championships and sixty-three wins in NASCAR’s top series, ninth on the all-time list and most among full-time active drivers at the time of his passing.
I’m not going to promote myself as the world’s biggest Kyle Busch fan. For most of his career, I disliked some of his actions, especially carving out a career by racing in the lower series instead of sticking to the Cup Series. I’ve said my piece many a time about that, both in cases when Kyle did it and as others continue to. We can discuss that in a more appropriate time and place.
I will be the first to admit, his move from Joe Gibbs Racing to Richard Childress Racing made me soften my stance on Kyle. (If anything, I used my cheering for Kyle as proof that if they drove for RCR, I’d be a fan of anyone!)
The announcement was a bit of a shock as I never figured he’d truly leave a powerhouse like JGR for a team like RCR who didn’t have the resources to truly compete with the bigger teams. Maybe it was RCR’s ties to Dale Earnhardt, or maybe Kyle wanted to prove to doubters that it was the driver and not the equipment. (And yes, for the last several years, social media has been filled with people dissing RCR because of Kyle’s winless streak. That’s another topic I will save my opinion of for another time.)
While Kyle wasn’t always the most pleasant guy when they stuck a microphone in his hand, the last few years had seen a “kindler, gentler” Kyle Busch. Maybe it was the move to RCR, save that we’d seen hints of it during his last year at Gibbs. Maybe it was having his sponsor depart NASCAR, which led to his time at Joe Gibbs Racing come to an end and that humbled him. Maybe it was the difficulty that he and his wife, Samantha, had in trying to conceive a child. Maybe it was realizing that his own career in NASCAR was less important to him than that of his son, Brexton. Maybe the illness that claimed him had shown signs over the last few years, and he was faced with his own mortality.
Whatever it was, Kyle became more likeable. He still had the desire to win but we also saw moments such as him showing his appreciation to Carson Hocevar for his drafting help in Kyle’s win earlier this year in the truck race at Atlanta (er, I mean EchoPark Speedway).
I think that racing in the Truck Series was just what the commentators said, it was fun for Kyle. I think he felt he was helping Spire Motorsports. One thing you always heard about Busch was just how good at giving feedback. He might have left a track with the trophy but one wonders just how much his time behind the wheel benefitted Spire Motorsports, their drivers, and the future of the sport.
While I wouldn’t have considered it at the time, I can see now where Busch was doing quite a bit to foster the future of the sport, even when he was with Joe Gibbs Racing, through his truck team, Kyle Busch Motorsports. KBM was, at one time or the other, the home of drivers like two-time Daytona 500 winner William Byron, Brickyard 400 winner Bubba Wallace, John Hunter Nemechek, Danie Suarez, 2015 Truck Series champion Erik Jones and 2017 Truck Series champion Christopher Bell, to name just a few. While we often think of Busch’s legacy in terms of stats, it will be those young drivers he helped bring to the upper echelon of the sport that may truly be the legacy that Busch leaves behind.
The great irony of my thoughts on Kyle Busch are the same as when he wrecked in the 2015 season-opening Xfinity Series (now O’Reilly Auto Parts Series) race at Daytona. I may not have liked him at the time, I knew he was a father, a husband, a brother, a son, a teammate, a friend, and my first thought was “Man, I hope Kyle’s okay.” It’s similar to something that was written about Dale Earnhardt, an often-polarizing figure much like Kyle was: No matter what you thought of the guy, you still wanted to see him show up next week and compete.
I want to tell one personal story involving Kyle. A few years ago, I found out that a guy (also named John) was a NASCAR fan and more specifically a Kyle Busch fan. At the time, I was…well, let’s just say I was not a Kyle Busch fan. However, John was a guy who I could talk to about NASCAR. We may not have always agreed on everything but at the end of the day, we were both NASCAR fans. When David Pearson died, he knew who I was referencing, much as he did when Ryan Newman walked out of the hospital following his wreck at the end of the 2020 Daytona 500. I always thought that in a world where people always look for reasons to be divided, we were able to see what united us: a mutual love for NASCAR. We don’t all have to share the exact same thoughts and opinions, but we need to find those things that we have in common. In our case, it was NASCAR, but it’s something that people need to be thinking about on a grander scale.
Thanks for the memories, Kyle, and thanks for the things you taught us when we weren’t looking. I hope you get to race a few laps with Dale Earnhardt.
johnmilner.ca 