On Kyle Busch and the Passage of Time

AN ARTICLE BY MATTY

When I was a wee lad, I didn’t care for football, or football, or hockey. I was the grandson of a redneck, and he loved Nascar. Dale Earnhardt Jr. was his favorite driver, and he was mine too. To this day, the man universally known as Junior has been one of the key figures I tried to model myself after. I’ve got a massive plastic box in my basement full of small diecast cars. I look to my nightstand and see a small collection of diecasts looking like a showroom. Some diecasts are modeled after cars run by Junior’s own team, JR Motorsports. My lucky hat is a hat with the logo of the team. I got to visit Junior’s shop one day while on vacation, a memory I will never forget. Other diecasts, Junior ran himself as a driver. His 2014 Daytona 500 win, one of my favorite moments in sporting history that I watch all the time on YouTube, his shining golden National Guard paint scheme from that win sits on my nightstand. Junior was the ultimate good guy, winning the Most Popular Driver award every single year he competed in Nascar’s top series. He now scouts young talent, gives them top tier equipment in the second division, and helps those young drivers build their own careers in the top series. Many recent champions in the top series owe their beginnings to Junior. However, he’s not the most famous Earnhardt, and this is where the story takes a turn. His dad, Dale Earnhardt Sr, a 7-time champion and the most popular driver ever, went by one name: The Intimidator.

If Junior was the young hero, Dale was the villain who raised him. The phrase “Raise Hell, Praise Dale” is popular in the South to this very day because of The Intimidator. A country boy from a racing family, Dale Sr. was a no-nonsense man. He wrecked a veteran competitor for a race win once because “I just wanted to rattle his cage a little”. The beauty of Dale Sr. was that he was tough as nails on the outside, but a warm and kind soul on the inside. He was tough but fair with Junior. He gave drivers like Michael Waltrip a second chance when everyone else in the top series had given up on him. Dale would be the ultimate competitor on the track, even helping his crew putting his car back together. But off the track, he started his own merchandise company, gave other drivers a share of the money, hunted deer, and owned a farm. He was always friendly, and even won the most famous Daytona 500 because he met a girl with cancer and put her lucky penny on his dashboard to fulfill her wishes. Make no mistake, while his aggressive and borderline reckless driving style made him a villain in the eyes of some fans, most real racing fans loved him and loved what he stood for. The good old American boy, starting his own race team for his son and his friend Waltrip to race in the top series full time. Three years after his first Daytona 500 win in 1998, which came after 20 attempts. Dale had won it all. 76 races, seven championships, all the toughest races like the Southern 500 and World 600. On February 18th, 2001, he was on top of the world.

Dale Earnhardt drove his famous black number 3 car, owned by his longtime friend Richard Childress. Throughout the race he had a fast car. At the specific tracks known as restrictor plate tracks, where high banking means that the gas pedal is almost always to the floor, Earnhardt was unbeatable. He preferred an open helmet because he wanted to see the air coming off the cars. To this day, only Dale and his son Junior seem to have such an ability to see the air. It’s what makes them so dominant at these tracks. He once went from 20th to 1st in five laps in a race in Talladega, the other restrictor plate track beside Daytona. His 76th race win in October of 2000, proving he still had the goods. But on this fateful day, Dale’s driving a bit different. He’s still just as aggressive as ever, but he’s blocking like a madman now. For the first time in his life, he’s not thinking about trying to win. His two cars, Waltrip and Junior, are the only two in front of him. And after a long race, filled with the usual crashes, Dale Sr. is going to do anything to keep his car ahead of the rest and finish 1-2-3 in the biggest race of the season. He wants his men to succeed. It’ll come at the cost of his life.

On the last lap of the race, in the last turn, Dale Earnhardt Sr. turns right to block the oncoming Ken Schrader, a dear friend. Schrader’s coming up with too much speed, meaning that he clips the right rear of Dale’s car and sends him head-on into the wall at 180 mph. Because of his ability to see the air, Dale didn’t like to use the newly-created HANS device, which is a cord designed to restrict neck movement in the cockpit and keep a driver’s neck from snapping in the event of a crash. Dale wanted to lean out the car window at times so he could get a better look at the downforce coming off the sides of the cars. Dale’s car comes crawling to a stop in the infield of Turn 4, totaled. His driver Michael Waltrip wins the race with his older brother Darrell as the color commentator on the broadcast. Junior comes second. Junior’s dad never finished the race. Schrader’s car is also wrecked and sits near Dale. Schrader climbs out of his car to check on his dear friend. His face instantly turns white as a ghost, and he hurriedly motions to oncoming EMTs for help. Dale’s neck had snapped. He had died upon impact with the wall. His last image before death was seeing his two cars driving towards the checkered flag. He is quickly transported to hospital, but it is too late. Half an hour after his driver celebrated the biggest win of his life, Michael Waltrip’s 1st ever win in 763 races, Dale Earnhardt Sr was announced to be dead. He was 51 years old. Junior was 26 and now his dad was gone. Richard Childress had lost the man who made him a championship owner. The sport lost its villain and its hero. February 18th, 2001. The day many believe to be the time of death for the sport of Nascar.

Dale Earnhardt Sr’s death in the 2001 Daytona 500 was the last time an active driver in the top series of Nascar had died. Until today. May 21st, 2026. Richard Childress has lost his superstar driver again. Kyle Busch is dead at the age of 41, leaving behind a wife and 2 children. His dream of racing with his son Brexton will never be realized. Dead from an illness, at the time we know not what. If Junior was the new hero of Nascar in the wake of his father’s death, Kyle Busch embraced the role of being Nascar’s new villain as soon as he entered the top series in 2004. Rude, loud, obnoxious, and a serial winner. He won 234 races across Nascar’s top three series, a record. A two-time champion of the top series. He knew most people hated him. He didn’t care. It’s only fitting his last race was a win.

Kyle Busch’s death is tragic by itself. I think it’s especially tragic because the hatred of his success and his brash style early in his career meant that a lot of people never took the time to see who he was off the track. Time had changed Kyle Busch. He still had that fiery mean streak in him, but it was more tempered. More and more, as other drivers of his era retired, Kyle Busch was in some ways one of the last of the old school drivers I grew up watching. He was by all accounts an incredible family man. Love him or hate him, you had to respect his talent, his commitment to greatness, his increasingly apparent heart of love that hid underneath the driver persona. Kyle Busch was more than just the guy you didn’t like because he beat or crashed your favorite driver and then said in the winner’s circle that he hated his car. He was a loving father and husband, another man like Junior who had a team in a lower series and developed young talent into superstars. It hurts that he’s gone. I say that as someone who used to hate him as a child but has grown to see all the good that he was, all the good that he represented. It still feels weird typing about him using the past tense.

Kyle Busch’s story, while sadly final, is an example of a journey, the maturation of man. How people can truly commit to change and become who they want to be. He was a modern day Intimidator. Equally good on and off the track. A brash and aggressive driver on the track, a loving man off it. Change doesn’t happen quickly, mind you. It requires effort, belief, and commitment. It also requires an open mind. A lot of athletes will say that they fell in love with the grind, with the constant pursuit of perfection. Perfection isn’t something that we can achieve on this Earth, as much as we’d like to think, but getting better every day in some way is certainly something that everyone is capable of. I think everyone has the ability to be who they want to be, it just takes time and occasionally an opportunity.

I look back on my youth with an understanding that I didn’t know it all, and I still don’t now. However, I do think that as I’ve continued to commit myself to a path of growth, of positive change, I’ve become more comfortable in my own skin. For so long, I tried to hide my flaws, my weaknesses. I wanted to be perfect, I wanted to be complete. Neither of those things are particularly attainable in this life. This life that we have is so fragile, as the death of Busch shows us. But it reminds us to be better, to do better. That we are all capable of change, that time heals wounds, that we have the time to reflect, understand, and move on. To know that even the best and the worst are still human, still deserving of love and respect. That life still goes on even when we have to pick up the pieces, or take on more responsibilities. That we’ll still be here next season, remembering those we’ve lost and cheering on those who chase perfection.