By all accounts, there was Kyle Busch and there was Rowdy with a considerable amount of overlap depending on the circumstances, time and place.
That was the best way to eulogize the life and times of the two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion by those who knew him best. With the industry still in collective shock over the unexpected death of Busch on Thursday, the Sanctioning Body offered drivers the option to skip media availabilities this weekend but many chose to participate anyway.
Those who stopped by the infield media center at Charlotte Motor Speedway on Saturday each expressed a desire to publicly acknowledge another side of the man that so seldom revealed itself publicly over the past 20 years.
Busch was a nuanced figure who could be equal parts charming and scathing to those in the community. There were times he could switch back and forth on a whim and it once left Chase Briscoe astounded.
“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 crap and stuff. We walked off the stage and told him it was crazy he could switch it on and off.”
Again, Busch was being friendly again, completely different from how he was in front of the crowd. His response?
“Oh, that was Rowdy,” Busch told Briscoe. “That was my Rowdy face.”
Daniel Suarez had perhaps the most poignant commentary on the side of Busch that rarely made it into the public discourse. Suarez had been racing in the United States for three years when he joined the Joe Gibbs Racing development program in 2014 and Busch immediately made himself available.
“I reached out to him, literally, every single week in 2015 and he took the time to answer every single one of my questions,” Suárez said. “He was giving me advice and back then we didn’t have any SMT data so everything was by feel. He was giving me a lot of advice on what to do for practice, what to do for qualifying, in the race, what to look for in the lines. A lot of people don’t know that.
“Most people knew Kyle as the villain, as that guy that fans either loved him or hated him. He had a huge heart and was one of those drivers and people that was always willing to give you a hand.”
And this wasn’t just limited to race craft but also acclimating to the English language.
“Maybe a call, two calls or three calls, but you don’t expect that guy to call you 30 to 35 times over the course of a year,” Suarez said.
For Busch, helping someone also meant chewing them out when he felt like they deserved it, and Suarez was no exception to that policy. He recited an incident that took place at Atlanta in the Truck Series in 2016 in which Suarez crashed Kyle Busch Motorsports teammate Christopher Bell.
Did Busch chew out Suarez.
“He sure did, especially because I didn’t want to believe he was right,” Suarez said. “I’m very outspoken as well. I’m that kind of person. I want to tell you how I think they are. So he was telling me all these things and I say, ‘no, you’re crazy, that wasn’t the case,’ and we go back and forth.
“Then, he shows me the information, and I’m like, ‘I think you’re right.’”
Say what you will about Busch, but he was also very loud, and generally objectively right … not that NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell would agree with that.
“We’re not always going to agree,” O’Donnell said. “If we did, I think people would be really bored. We certainly had our battles, right? But I’d give a lot of money to have a few more battles going forward.”
Ryan Blaney recounted an instance, after the 2017 championship banquet where Kyle and Samantha ran into Blaney in the lobby, and asked what the youngster was up to. Blaney said they were going out for drinks and a good time.
Busch asked if they could tag along. Blaney started crying in telling the story.
“The next day, we had media and we were like, where is Kyle at,” Blaney said, tears turning into laughter. “He’s under a table, the table cloth draped over him, just his feet hanging out, yellow suit. It was just a funny memory man.
“He was all around good person, and I had a good time getting to know him and compete with him.”
Those who knew Busch said he loved to dance. They say he was always getting into mischief and playing practical jokes on his friends.
Even his two biggest rivals from over the past decade, Brad Keselowski and Joey Logano, each said they had started to have more positive interactions with him over the past five or six years. Busch becoming a dad over the past decade, twice over, and just the maturity that comes with age resulted in a more mature public facing persona.
He started to win over Logano and Keselowski, the latter wishing he could have the chance to complete that burgeoning bond.
“Kind of selfishly, I was hopeful for a long time that our racing career would continue on a journey that saw us in the Hall of Fame and doing those type of things together,” Keselowski said. “Who knows? Maybe oneday competing in the Truck Series against each other when we were done with Cup.
“Obviously, that’s not going to be the case now, but with respect to our relationship, I would say there was a small thaw over the last year, maybe two, that came from his circumstances being different with respect to race teams and positions on the grid. It was interesting to see and it was thawing almost more by the weekend.”
Logano echoed that sentiment.
“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 (and) who know what would have been once we were done racing,” Logano said. “You see everybody changes. When you’re done racing you bury the hatchet, if you will. It was obviously far too young and far too soon.”
His car owner from 2008-to-2022, Joe Gibbs, asked to come into the media center because he wanted to share some thoughts for the assembled group. He offered a 15-minute monologue that included all the highs and lows, from first learning about Busch through son JD when they raced in the Truck Series together, to all the times Busch snapped at his car owner because he expected more from their program.
Gibbs told those stories to also share how he was behind the scenes in their shop in Huntersville, North Carolina.
“There’s a part of him that I just, I just really admired, and that was kind of highlighted in several things with his personality and the way he dealt with things,” Gibbs said. “One of those is you guys may know, we do a Christmas video, and when JD was here, he and (president) Dave Alpern, were Sal and Pern and they were – this wild video, and all kinds of stupid stuff.
“They had all kinds of skits and everything, and I’m going tell you, that Kyle Busch, he loved that. Every single thing we asked him to do, at one point, they had these plastic gloves, and they shoved it down over their heads, you know what I mean? They got the fingers up like this. He was full bore on all that.
“Whether it was in a car, singing all kinds of stupid songs and stuff, he was full bore on the, he had a great sense of humor, but things like that. When he was away from a racetrack, he was so funny.”
But he was also the guy that chewed Gibbs out in front of the media because he got wrecked by Martin Truex Jr., who at the time was in an allied car at Furniture Row Motorsports. So they had Busch do a social media skit where he served as the human resources coach for all the younger drivers at JGR, which is absurd, because Busch was the opposite of human relations, publicly.
But Coach wanted everyone to know that Busch was more than just ‘Rowdy.’ He also brought up the Bundle of Joy charity that he and Samantha grew into a really important difference-maker for so many families.
“I just wanted to kind of mention that because it was so important, because that part of him, sometimes, some people really didn’t get to see, but we got to see it,” Gibbs said. “I would say this for me personally; I’ll have Kyle Busch stories forever. I can’t tell you how many funny things he did, and some of the things would shock me, and everything, and I’m going, ‘What the heck is he doing?’ You know what I mean?
“I said, ‘For God’s sakes, quit pushing my buttons.’
And one thing about Kyle Busch is that he was not going to stop pushing your buttons.
“So anyway, I just end with that, that this was somebody that we all kind of admired, a great athlete, that can do things that all of the rest of us … we admire pro sports, because these guys do things that are just, we admire,” Gibbs said. “It’s unbelievable the talent that they have. Just wanted to share those things with you.”
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