The first person I thought of Thursday when I saw Kyle Busch and the words “severe illness” in the same paragraph was Tom Busch. And I can’t comprehend at this moment the horror and pain that dropped into Tom Busch’s life Thursday after he left a hospital without his younger son. Tom Busch is one of the most prominent parents in auto racing. He watched Kyle and Kurt, Kyle’s older brother, advance from racing Big Wheels in their Las Vegas driveway to the heights of American motorsports, and Tom was there for virtually every lap. His life was tied to the successes of his boys, and he was them every lap along the way, in spirit if not in person. He built their race cars in the early years. Then he rebuilt them when they wrecked them, often racing each other. I talked at length to Tom after Kurt was elected to the NASCAR Hall of Fame, putting Tom in the unique position of resting between two Hall of Fame sons. When Kurt was chosen for the hall in his first year of eligibility last year, it was already a given that, no later than a few years down the road, Kyle would join him. Tom could frame the picture in his mind: A son on either side of him, wearing big smiles and Hall of Fame rings, their prominent places in auto racing history sealed forever. It was a pleasant thought, a kind of dreamy reality-to-be that not many parents reach. Kyle Busch with his wife, Samantha, and son, Brexton, and his parents Gaye and Tom Busch after winning the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series Stratosphere 200 at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on March 2, 2018 in Las Vegas. “We were just a family trying to have fun on Saturday night,” Tom Busch said then. “We scraped stuff together. I might have one spare tire and one spare wheel. There wasn’t another spark plug, another engine, another control arm. Everything we had was on the race track, and they’d race each other like cats and dogs.” Although Kyle was seven years younger than Kurt, they might as well have been contemporaries. On the way up the ladder, Kyle followed Kurt as closely as the eligibility rules would allow (and sometimes in violation of those rules). It was clear early on that Kyle was at least a match for his brother, and possibly better. When Kurt stormed into the top levels of NASCAR and stirred up both trouble and wins, he occasionally told reporters about the kid coming along. “Wait until you see who’s next,” he would say. He was a prophet. Kyle made bigger noise than his brother, both on track and off. They both had more than their share of controversies, but they almost always came out the other side holding a checkered flag. Kyle and Kurt Busch. They both drove to the ragged edge—and often beyond it. Their bodies were battered by driving adventures gone wrong, Kurt eventually retiring because of a concussion and Kyle suffering a broken leg in a brutal crash at Daytona International Speedway, that occurring in a spot now covered by soft walls. The pain on his face that tough night and the tremor in wife Samantha’s voice told the story of racing gone wrong. He bounced back to win the Cup championship. There are hard days ahead for one of racing’s first families. And for the sport in full. As his father guessed early on, Kyle Busch will be recognized as one of the greatest wheelmen to drive stock car racing’s fast lanes.
Liked by Carter Tremblay, Emma Walker
Liked by Carter Tremblay, Emma Walker
Liked by Carter Tremblay, Emma Walker
