Yesterday, NASCAR champion Kyle Busch passed away. The details aren’t out yet, but maybe the most shocking thing about it was that it didn’t happen in a racecar. He died from some random illness that came on fast and no one saw coming. That’s how he drove too. He was absolutely wild. Even if you don’t care a lick about NASCAR, you would have loved Kyle Busch. Or you would have hated him beyond belief. Maybe even both.
(The following is a lot of thoughts running through my head upon hearing this tragedy rather than going through his career achievements)
I only got into NASCAR because I grew up in the town next to where Martin Truex Jr grew up in South Jersey. We all knew Truex and a local kid from our po-dunk town doing something big was all we needed to get involved. Come 2004, Truex was ripping up the Busch series (NASCAR’s AAA) and won the championship. Who was biting at his heels the whole time? A 19-year-old named Kyle Busch. He was Truex’s rival, so I hated him. Pretty standard fair. Two years later, they were both up in the bigs with Truex hanging with Dale Earnhardt Jr and Busch with the elites and Hendrick Motorsports. He was the enemy. He was also damn good.
After the death of his father, Dale Earnhardt Jr. became the face of NASCAR. He was everyone’s favorite driver because he was Dale’s son. Simple as that. Me as a NASCAR novice went with the crowd. Junior’s people did not like Kyle Busch. He was brash, he was reckless, and he was very clearly more talented than the young Earnhardt even if he didn’t have the wins to back it up yet. Fuck Kyle Busch! Then Dale took his job at Hendrick and Kyle went to Joe Gibbs racing. At a race in Richmond in 2008, the two were battling for the lead and Kyle spun Junior out. As Kyle showed no remorse after the race, the Jr. fans were livid. He’d receive death threats, aggression, and pure hate from then on.
There are two types of wrestling fans. Most kids love the faces, the good guys, the ones who overcome the adversity. As you get older though, you realize that the heels, the bad guys, are much more fun, antagonizing the fans. From an early age, I liked the heels. To get booed by 20,000 people seemed like the greatest thrill imaginable. Kyle Busch was a real life heel. When Junior Nation fully focused their hate on him, I knew I had my guy (2nd to Truex of course).
Once I embraced his inner heel, things got VERY fun. He’d drive like an absolute lunatic, more so than the other 40 lunatics he’d be driving with. There was a road race in Watkins Glen one year where everyone had to slow down early on a straightaway because a sharp turn was coming. Well, Busch was going for the lead and just didn’t slow down. Yeah, he took the lead, but he went right into the wall to do it. He either just got tunnel vision on taking the lead, or simply believed he could make it, physics be damned. Either way, how could you not love that brazen confidence?
Sometimes races become all about pit strategy and saving gas instead of going all out. Imagine running out of gas on the last lap with a big lead and being helpless to do anything about it? Well one race Kyle had his big lead and his crew chief is yelling at him to “SAVE, SAVE” for the whole end of the race. Of course, he didn’t. He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. It just wasn’t in him to do it. He ran out of gas and didn’t win. The best part though was when they interviewed him after the race. He had the audacity to claim that no one told him to save gas. He either completely ignored them or was so focused on being in the lead that nothing penetrated his Cro-Magnon brain. I’m betting the latter. I laughed my ass off.
My favorite Busch moment though wasn’t even a race, it was by chance listening to a NASCAR radio show while on a long road trip (literally the only one I’ve ever heard and it was serendipitous). They had some old southern racing expert on and he was asked to describe Kyle Busch and he did it in the most southern way possible. Explaining that he wasn’t for everyone, the guy let out this gem: “Some people like butter on they grits. Others like sugar on they grits. [Emphatically] Kyle Busch is the Tabasco on the grits.” My friends and I have been calling him the Tabasco ever since.1
By everyone else, he was called KFB, Kyle Fucking Busch. It worked for the people who loved him and the people who hated him just as much. He was always the guy who was going to do something, a full-time instigator on the track. Kyle was going to win or drive you into the wall trying. I’m sure every NASCAR fan has a dozen stories on both sides of KFB.
He was also known as Rowdy, taken straight from the movie Days of Thunder and Michael Rooker’s character Rowdy Burns. Rowdy was the badass who fucks with Tom Cruise’s Cole Trickle through the first half of the movie. Trickle was Jeff Gordon and Burns was Dale Earnhardt. Busch loved that movie and saw himself as Rowdy, the fictional Intimidator. Rowdy, Dale, and Kyle Busch cared about one thing, winning. If you were in their way, well that’s bad news for you. What I think made the Junior fans so mad was that they knew Kyle Busch was the real heir to the Intimidator throne than anyone else. Kyle Busch was way more like their hero in the #3 car than his son would ever be. That’s tough to swallow.
Years ago, I thought a great show would be NASCAR drivers just telling stories. Sure there would be old Dale stories and stories of guys no one remembers, but there would certainly be more stories about Kyle Busch than anyone else. I figured everyone would have a new Rowdy story that would make everyone laugh. Then they’d have him in there sometime trying to defend himself and explain just what in the hell he was thinking. Everyone would be dying trying to hold in the laughter. Now they’ll still tell the stories, but they are going to come with tears instead. Everyone who ever watched him is going to miss Kyle Busch.
- Or “give me some of that Kyle Busch” when at a restaurant or BBQ ↩︎
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Friday Fun: 10¢ Beer Night (Forfeit #2)
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