told his team over the radio<\/a> that he was \u201cgoing to need a shot.\u201d He didn\u2019t mean a shot at the win \u2014 though he was competitive in the race at the time \u2014 but an actual medical shot. The FS1 broadcast later added the context that Busch wanted Dr. William Heisel to meet him at the team bus after the race, with Busch having reportedly battled a sinus cold throughout the week.<\/p>\nThat same weekend, Busch skipped the Truck Series race, and Connor Mosack filled in.<\/p>\n
Of course, if the details are never made available, that\u2019s fine as well. In a sport where drivers routinely climb into 3,400-pound stock cars at nearly 200 mph and somehow still treat pain and illness like an inconvenience, there are moments that remind everyone these drivers are still human beings first and race car drivers second.<\/p>\n
FORT WORTH, TX – NOVEMBER 04: Kyle Busch, driver of the #18 Traxxas Toyota, and Ron Hornaday Jr., driver of the #33 OneMain Financial Chevrolet, hit the wall after an incident in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series WinStar World Casino 350k at Texas Motor Speedway on November 4, 2011 in Fort Worth, Texas. (Photo by Tom Pennington\/Getty Images for NASCAR)<\/p>\n
Getty Images for NASCAR<\/p>\n
Busch has missed races during his long career. The first time he missed a race weekend came in 2011, but that was for something far from health related. Busch deliberately wrecked Ron Hornaday Jr. during a Truck Series race at Texas Motor Speedway, and NASCAR penalized Busch by forcing him to sit out both the Xfinity (then Nationwide) and Cup Series races that weekend.<\/p>\n
He missed the first 11 races of the 2015 Cup Series season after suffering horrific injuries to his lower legs during a crash at Daytona International Speedway in the season-opening Xfinity Series race.<\/p>\n
Busch would not only make a triumphant return to racing but would go on to win his first NASCAR Cup Series championship later that same 2015 season. It was a comeback story that became one of the biggest stories in sports that year \u2014 the kind that sounded less like a racing season and more like something a Hollywood screenwriter would reject for being too unrealistic.<\/p>\n
Now Kyle Busch will again miss a weekend, this one for health issues. Here\u2019s wishing him a quick, and complete, recovery. Perhaps this time away will serve as a reset. He gained a new crew chief and showed some competitiveness at Watkins Glen.<\/p>\n
Who knows, maybe Kyle Busch making a triumphant return to racing once more will become one of the biggest sports stories of 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA – JANUARY 21: Kyle Busch poses for a photo during NASCAR Production Days at Charlotte…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":684562,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,13751,133558,8661,634,9536,82],"class_list":["post-684561","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-charlotte-motor-speedway","tag-coca-cola-600","tag-kyle-busch","tag-nascar","tag-richard-childress-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684561","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=684561"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/684561\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/684562"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=684561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=684561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=684561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"NASCAR](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/1779383956_879_0x0.jpg\")
<\/p>\n