Joey Logano and Kyle Busch had a well-documented rivalry over the course of the past two decades.
Even as their relationship started to thaw, and enjoy a casual respect in recent years, ‘Rowdy’ never missed a chance to take public pot shots at his fellow Cup Series champion. As recently as a month ago, Busch went on ‘Hang Out with Sean Hannity’ and revealed that Logano, Brad Keselowski and Carson Hocevar were peers he couldn’t stand.
Busch was characteristically playing it up for the camera a little bit but it’s also true that he and Logano were far from friendly at the time of his passing.
“Even though we had this little rivalry, if you will, on the racetrack and we didn’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things from that perspective, we were able to put that stuff away and joke around and have a little piece of what that is and who know what would have been once we were done racing,” Logano said during a press conference on Saturday before the Coca-Cola 600. “You see everybody changes. When you’re done racing you bury the hatchet, if you will.”
Earlier in the day, Michael McDowell revealed that the two rivals ended up playing basketball with each other and their respective kids last month at Talladega and Busch couldn’t help himself.
“One of the memories that I have in my head lasting memories I feel like it’s been playing on my mind the last few days with Talladega just a few weeks ago,” McDowell shared. “Kyle, Brexton and the kids were all playing basketball, and my son was playing too and I just have that memory of him playing basketball with them but also (Kyle) talking trash to Joey, which was a lot of fun.
“Because they sort of had their rivalry, right? But when you’re in the driver owner lot and the kids are playing, it’s a different environment.”
Logano says he only ended up playing that pick up game because he wanted to playfully confront Busch about the comments to Hannity.
“Probably one of the last times I talked to Kyle was at the playground at Talladega,” Logano said. “I remember seeing him and the first thing I walked up to him because it was right after he did a podcast saying how he didn’t like me, and, of course, because I just hit things head-on I walked up to him and said, ‘What the heck, I thought we were friends?’
“Then we had a good laugh about it and joked about it. Brexton and Hudson, they play together all the time. He’s a great kid and so they’re shooting hoops and, to be honest with you, neither one of us knew how to play basketball worth a crap, so I’m glad no cameras saw it because it would have been a little embarrassing.
“It hurt my argument of being an athlete, so I’m glad nobody saw it.”
This was a common refrain on Saturday but Logano said that Busch would put up his persona at the race track, but peel it off when clocked out.
“There was a side of Kyle where you can get him away from the racetrack and away from the competitive environment,” Logano said. “I got to spend a lot of time with him flying to the west coast and playing cards and stuff like that.”
Chase Briscoe echoed a similar experience, for example.
“There were two totally different sides of Kyle,” Briscoe said. “There was the competition side and the Kyle away from the track that would give you a hard time, bust your balls, and would be a lot of fun.
“It’s funny. There was a time where we did like this media thing together. We were talking backstage and he was just Kyle. We got on the stage and he was talking backstage and stuff, and we walked off the stage, and told him it was crazy he could switch it on and off.”
What did Busch say?
“Oh, that was Rowdy. That was my Rowdy face.”
Briscoe said Busch was so good at seamless playing both roles when a circumstance called for it.
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