Activity at the Charlotte Motor Speedway on Saturday started with a profound silence as the NASCAR Cup Series car that was previously driven by Las Vegas native Kyle Busch was unloaded off its trailer and rolled through the garage with a sea of people observing.<\/p>\n
As the day went on, many drivers and people involved with the sport shared their memories of the two-time Cup Series champion.<\/p>\n
Busch died unexpectedly Thursday at 41. The family released a statement on Saturday morning saying that he died after \u201csevere pneumonia progressed into sepsis, resulting in rapid and overwhelming associated complications.\u201d<\/p>\n
At Concord, N.C. on Saturday, drivers and people in the industry reflected on Busch\u2019s impact on the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe one thing I always felt about Kyle, that guy had great courage,\u201d said Joe Gibbs, the owner of Joe Gibbs Racing where Busch raced for 15 seasons, in a Saturday news conference.<\/p>\n
\u201dHe was not afraid of almost anything, and he had a burning desire to race. It was just inside of him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Drivers wore Busch hats and T-shirts during media availability. Teams put decals remembering Busch on their cars and placed Busch\u2019s name above the driver side door.<\/p>\n
William Byron wore a Kyle Busch Motorsports shirt, the Truck Series team Busch owned. Chase Elliott wore a t-shirt for Brexton Busch, Kyle\u2019s 11-year-old son that races on dirt and short tracks around the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s sad. You never want to go through this, but it does make everybody feel good when you see the community come together like they have,\u201d said two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Larson.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know that I respected (Busch) more than any other driver in the field.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018That passion came out\u2019<\/p>\n
Gibbs recalled seeing all sides of Busch. That included the fiery competitor that told Gibbs after a second-place run in New Hampshire that \u201cYour cars suck.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then there was the 2015 O\u2019Reilly Auto Parts Series (then Xfinity Series) race at Daytona, where Busch wrecked and suffered a broken left foot and double compound fracture to his right leg.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the wreck, I went to the hospital,\u201d Gibbs recalled. \u201cHe was on a gurney. Everyone was there and Kyle was raving at the doctor. He was going \u2018Get me in there. Fix this. I want to get back racing.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Busch returned after missing the first 11 races of the Cup Series season, went on to win five races and claim the 2015 Cup Series title.<\/p>\n
\u201cKyle was like a freight train,\u201d Gibbs said. \u201cIf you get in the way, you\u2019re going to get run over. There\u2019ll be some good things in there, and then every now and then he\u2019s going to run over a few things and cross a line. That passion came out in so many different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
Busch won both of his championships with Joe Gibbs Racing and won 56 of his 63 Cup Series races with the organization.<\/p>\n
\u201cPretty much everything good that\u2019s happened to me in my racing career is because of him,\u201d said Busch\u2019s former crew chief Adam Stevens crying in an emotional interview on SiriusXM NASCAR Radio.<\/p>\n
Drivers share memories<\/p>\n
The 10 Cup Series drivers racing in Sunday\u2019s Coca-Cola 600 that raced for Kyle Busch Motorsports in the Truck Series all took a group photo \u2013 Bubba Wallace, John Hunter Nemechek, Erik Jones, Bryon, Corey Heim, Daniel Suarez, Christopher Bell, Riley Herbst, Todd Gilliland and Noah Gragson.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a lot of drivers that (Busch) had an impact on, and that\u2019s what made him special,\u201d said Suarez, who added he appreciated the calls and conversations with Busch as Suarez started his NASCAR journey coming from Mexico.<\/p>\n
Ryan Blaney recalled a night in Las Vegas in 2017 where Busch and his wife, Samantha, asked to join Blaney and his friends on a night out.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had a late night,\u201d Blaney said, his voice cracking and full of emotion. \u201cThe next day, it was the funniest part, we had media (obligations) and were asking \u2018Where\u2019s Kyle at?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd he\u2019s laying under a table with the tablecloth draped over him with just his feet hanging out with that yellow M&M\u2019s suit. It was just a funny memory. He was all-around a good person.\u201d<\/p>\n
Elliott has been voted the series\u2019 most popular driver for the last eight years. Elliott\u2019s father, Bill, won the award 11 times during a stretch of 12 years.<\/p>\n
The lone year Bill Elliott didn\u2019t win the award came in 2001 when he pulled his name out of consideration for the award and encouraged fans to vote for Dale Earnhardt, who died in the Daytona 500 at the start of the season.<\/p>\n
Chase Elliott suggested after he\u2019s been able to \u201cprocess\u201d everything that\u2019s gone on, that he could do the same thing as his father and encouraged fans to vote for Busch.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has hit me pretty hard, truthfully. I think it\u2019s hit all of us pretty hard,\u201d Elliott said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard to put into words. He\u2019s a guy that really impacted my career more than I even realized. It\u2019s not really going to feel right racing without him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brad Keselowski suggested he or whoever would win Sunday\u2019s race should do Busch\u2019s signature bow to the crowd, a nod by Busch to his Las Vegas roots.<\/p>\n
Keselowski, who had a well-documented on-track rivalry with Busch added the best way to honor Busch would be to put him into the Hall of Fame immediately.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s clear that Kyle is a first-ballot Hall of Famer, and I don\u2019t know why that needs to wait another year,\u201d Keselowski said.<\/p>\n
Contact Alex Wright at awright@reviewjournal.com<\/a>. Follow @AlexWright1028<\/a> on X.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Activity at the Charlotte Motor Speedway on Saturday started with a profound silence as the NASCAR Cup Series…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689801,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[446],"tags":[49,48,634,82],"class_list":["post-689800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nascar","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nascar","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689800","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=689800"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689800\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}