{"id":689543,"date":"2026-05-23T23:54:13","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T23:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/689543\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T23:54:13","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T23:54:13","slug":"for-nascars-young-drivers-kyle-busch-was-the-guy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/689543\/","title":{"rendered":"For NASCAR\u2019s Young Drivers, Kyle Busch Was \u2018The Guy\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s hard to fathom that an entire generation has passed since the death of a NASCAR driver hit the sport with the same force as the loss of Dale Earnhardt Sr.<\/p>\n

But it has. And the untimely passing of Kyle Busch a few days ago is a brutal reminder of that fact. It has been a little more than 25 years since that awful February afternoon when Earnhardt, a seven-time champion and arguably the greatest driver of his generation, lost his life on the final lap of the Daytona 500. What should have been a celebration became something else entirely. The sort of sporting moment where time stops dead in its tracks, the noise disappears, and even people who claimed they hated the man suddenly realized the sport would never quite sound the same again.<\/p>\n

Related Story<\/p>\n

Now NASCAR has lost Kyle Busch.<\/p>\n

Not in a race car. Not on the final lap of a race with sparks flying and engines screaming. Which raises an uncomfortable but unavoidable question: can Kyle Busch be compared to Dale Earnhardt?<\/p>\n

For many younger drivers, Busch may ultimately become the first truly larger-than-life NASCAR personality they experienced in real time. Drivers like Connor Zilisch. Born in 2006, Zilisch, and in fact his entire generation, never saw Earnhardt race live. He grew up instead during the Kyle Busch era, which meant growing up around a driver who was impossible to ignore even if you desperately wanted to.<\/p>\n

\"nascar<\/p>\n

James Gilbert\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

And the memories Zilisch carries are both meaningful and very, very Kyle Busch.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe texted me after I lost the championship last year and just told me how proud he was of me and just how far I\u2019d come,\u201d Zilisch said Saturday at Charlotte Motor Speedway. \u201cThat meant a lot. You know, he didn’t have to reach out and do that. He wrote a few paragraphs and just kind of gave me some confidence after what was a really tough day for me, so that one meant a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then there was this story, which sounds exactly like the sort of thing Busch would say because subtlety was never really his department.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe texted me after I lost the championship last year and just told me how proud he was of me and just how far I\u2019d come.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were at the Daytona 500 this year and we do a driver meeting before the race,\u201d Zilisch said. \u201cI was in the driver\u2019s meeting. It was my first one as a Cup driver. I asked if we were the last OEM group to pit, what should the plan be\u2026 are we going to try and like block the track and try and keep track position after the pit cycle? I asked that question. It was the end of the meeting and everybody kind of went silent. Nobody was answering me. And Kyle speaks up and he goes, \u2018No, just get the fuck out of the way\u2019. It\u2019s my first time in one of these meetings. I\u2019m a rookie, and I\u2019m just like, \u2018Oh okay\u2026 yeah, sorry.\u2019 I was so embarrassed (laughs).\u201d<\/p>\n

Having never raced against Earnhardt, Zilisch admits it\u2019s difficult to describe exactly what made \u201cThe Intimidator\u201d so feared. But he absolutely can describe Busch.<\/p>\n

Related Story<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was just a fierce competitor that didn\u2019t hold back,\u201d Zilisch said. \u201c\u2026He did things the right way until he felt like he had to do something in retaliation maybe, get somebody back or racing against somebody that had raced him the wrong way previously.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know, he taught me a lot from the few times that we got to race against each other,\u201d he added. \u201cHe never put himself in the wrong spot. I felt like he was a wizard at this stuff. Growing up watching him, you wanted to be like him, even if you didn\u2019t like him. You know, some days I didn\u2019t like watching him because he was so good that I didn\u2019t like watching him and that was just the way it was.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"mazdaJared C. Tilton\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Dale Earnhardt Jr. speaks with a 17-year-old Connor Zilisch prior to driving a Mazda MX-5 Cup race car during the Mazda MX-5 Cup Test at Martinsville Speedway in 2003.<\/p>\n

Born five years after Earnhardt\u2019s death, Zilisch knows the legend mostly through stories, grainy highlights, and the mythology NASCAR carefully preserves around the black No. 3 Chevrolet.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was kind of like the guy back in the day, right?\u201d Zilisch said.<\/p>\n

But he knows exactly what Kyle Busch represented.<\/p>\n

\u201cKyle Busch, when I was growing up, he was the villain, but he\u2019s what made people watch the race,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople loved to watch Kyle Busch either because they loved him or because they hated him and they loved hating him. You know, it wasn\u2019t really much in between there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Related Story<\/p>\n

And perhaps most importantly, Zilisch understands something modern sports sometimes forget: Indifference is infinitely worse than dislike.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like 5-10 years ago, everybody would be cheering. Some would be booing, but everybody was making noise,\u201d Zilisch said. \u201cAnd I feel like that\u2019s kind of just the way people viewed Kyle and who he was. I think that\u2019s what this sport needs. You heard Steve O\u2019Donnell say yesterday that you have to connect with the fans, and he connected with the fans.\u201d<\/p>\n

What young Connor Zilisch may not fully realize is that many of those same descriptions once applied almost perfectly to Earnhardt himself. Both men were generational talents. Both were unapologetically aggressive. Both could turn a grandstand into a thunderstorm of cheers and boos with a single move. And both understood something that many athletes never do: Fans don\u2019t necessarily need to love you. They just need to feel something when you walk into the room.<\/p>\n

\"charlotte<\/p>\n

David Jensen\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, that was just who Kyle was,\u201d Zilisch said. \u201cHe was unapologetically himself. Some people didn\u2019t like him. Some people liked him. But everybody respected him. That\u2019s the Kyle that we\u2019ll remember.\u201d<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s just the way the older generation remembers Dale Earnhardt. Brad Keselowski was 17 when Earnhardt died. He wasn\u2019t yet in NASCAR but witnessed it all from a fan perspective. He admits he hates comparisons of different eras, but even he has to make at least one. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt is a significant moment in the sport,\u201d Keselowski said. \u201cMuch like when Dale died, this sport won\u2019t be the same without Kyle. How that is, I\u2019m not entirely sure. I\u2019ll understand it a lot more in the next three to five years and you will, too, but it is a certainty that it will be different\u2014much like when Dale passed, it was different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lettermark\"<\/p>\n

I have been around and written about the sport of NASCAR for over three decades and previously worked fulltime for the Sporting News and \u00a0Scripps-Howard News Service. \u00a0I am also a contributor to two Chicken Soup \u00a0for the Soul books including the NASCAR edition, published in 2010 and \u00a0the author of \u201cThe Nuts and Bolts of NASCAR: The Definitive Viewers’ \u00a0Guide to Big-Time Stock Car Auto Racing.\u201d I am a multiple National \u00a0Motorsports Press Association award winner. Early in life I spent 23 \u00a0years combined active and active reserve military service, much of that \u00a0in and around the Special Operations community serving in support of \u00a0Operation Just Cause, Desert Shield\/Storm and ended my military career \u00a0in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to fathom that an entire generation has passed since the death of a NASCAR driver hit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[252207,49,48,782,252208,784,237154,1642,634,252206,82,183339],"class_list":["post-689543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-busch-was-the-guy","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-1f730347-21a1-47be-9d4d-d0c959a97c39","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-us","tag-nascar","tag-shorttitle-for-nascars-young-drivers","tag-sports","tag-subsection-nascar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689543","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=689543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}