Around the time of Kyle Busch’s most controversial days with the NASCAR media, it was suggested I get to know him better by spending some time with him in the desert.
Back then, Busch loved running his sand car up and down the towering sand dunes of the Mojave Desert. With a NASCAR engine powering the lightweight car, Busch would absolutely shred across the sand, rocket up a steep hill, turn and plunge down it like a rollercoaster.
It was the most thrilling of thrill rides, and the most freeing. Out in the desert, there was no scrutiny of his clashes on the track, no dissection of his words, no chorus of boos from the fan base.
There was just endless sand, speed and blue sky.
I could see why Busch loved this, why he felt the call of the Mojave on an off day from NASCAR. And as we ripped across the sand, engine roaring, wind howling, radio playing through our headsets, I vividly remember peeking over at Busch in the driver’s seat.
He had that classic Kyle Busch smirk as he manhandled the car. That otherworldly raw talent, the car control few humans have ever achieved, allowed him to twist the wild desert into his personal playground.
But it was the soundtrack to that moment I’ll remember most. Through our headsets, Busch had the radio set to Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”
In so many ways, no song could have fit Busch’s life any better.
Rowdy. KFB. There was no one like him in NASCAR before, and there never will be again. No one will ever come close to winning that much again, either.
There’s no way to process the news we’ve just received — that Busch died Thursday at the age of 41 after being hospitalized with an unspecified illness — and the reverberations on this seismic loss will resonate in NASCAR for decades. I won’t pretend to write the definitive piece on Busch’s life, as it’s impossible to sort through all the various thoughts in a sad head swirling with them.
But this much is clear: Busch was always a larger-than-life character, and he’ll be so even more now.
Has any driver had more sound bites, more classic moments, more memes, more memorable swings between positive and negative and everything in between?
Kyle Busch becomes youngest driver to win a NASCAR Cup Series race! Kyle Busch smashes a guitar in victory lane! Kyle Busch runs himself out of a ride at Hendrick Motorsports! Kyle Busch breaks his leg, misses part of the season and wins the championship anyway! Kyle Busch wrecks Ron Hornaday under caution! Kyle Busch punches Joey Logano on pit road at Las Vegas! Kyle Busch answers every interview question with “Everything is Great!” Kyle Busch wins his second Cup title! Kyle Busch runs himself out of a ride at Joe Gibbs Racing! Kyle Busch becomes one of the 10 winningest Cup drivers in history! Kyle Busch is washed up!
Kyle Busch’s last NASCAR national series win came just six days ago, in a Truck Series race at Dover Motor Speedway. (Sean Gardner / Getty Images)
And that’s only scratching the surface.
Nothing moved the needle in the NASCAR world like Busch, for better or worse, over a generation of racing. And as it turned out, it’s because we all got to witness the entirety of the man’s adult life.
People talked about Busch before he even ran a NASCAR race. At age 16, he tried to make his NASCAR Truck Series debut, but NASCAR implemented a “Kyle Busch Rule” and wouldn’t let anyone race until age 18.
He later went on to win so many races, NASCAR had to make another “Kyle Busch Rule” to stop Cup drivers from hogging all the trophies in its lower series.
He hated those rules and also hated how he was perceived. There were so many wart-filled moments with millions watching him as a teenager and young twentysomething that he was never able to outrun later in life — even as fast as he was on the track.
Fans still brought up controversies from 15 years ago like they reflected the Busch of today — the Busch who had mellowed as a doting father, a dedicated team player, a veteran driver.
But even though he changed as a person, the single biggest thread and the one he’d be most proud of were the same: Winning.
Busch was a winner from the first time we saw him until the last. How fitting is it that he won his 234th and final NASCAR national series race less than one week ago, when he put on a master class in the Truck Series race at Dover Motor Speedway?
The win meant something to him — “You never know when the last one is, you know?” he said — because they’d been harder to come by lately.
Yet it still felt like there were many more to come, and his story was far from finished. Sure, Busch was in a tough spot in his career, but he would figure it out again soon. He was Kyle Busch! And as he loved reminding people after the Dover win, he hadn’t forgotten how to drive.
Those on the receiving end of his post-victory jabs included his former teammate Denny Hamlin, who irked him last month by speaking on a podcast about the state of Busch’s career.
Days after the podcast comments, I asked Busch about what Hamlin said. The colorful, vintage Busch response made for some viral content — like so many things he did over the years.
So the next morning, when I crossed paths with Busch in the garage, I got his attention and said, “You got me like a million views on that video yesterday.”
“You’re welcome,” Busch said deadpan, without missing a beat.
He kept walking for a few more seconds, then turned around and called back to me.
“Hey!” he said, grinning. “And you wonder why they talk about me so much!”
Actually, I never wondered. Busch had a way of making all of us in NASCAR talk about him.
And I have a pretty good feeling we always will.
