Editor’s note: Review-Journal reporter Jeff Wollard covered the early portion of Kyle Busch’s career from his early days as a 16-year-old racing at the Bullring at Las Vegas Motor Speedway through his first five years as a Cup driver.
Kyle Busch was a man who didn’t like to wait.
Long before his days as a champion NASCAR driver who spent most of his time at the front of the pack, he was just a kid out of Durango High School who was in a hurry to become the best.
He was already cocky back in 2001 at the age of 16. But it wasn’t an offensive kind of cocky. It was the type of cockiness Michael Jordan exuded in the NBA. He knew he was better than everybody else, and he couldn’t wait to prove it.
Busch sat up in the press box of the LVMS Bullring one fall evening that year, watching mere wannabes rush around the three-eighths-mile track and explaining to fans over the loudspeaker why he wasn’t already a NASCAR champion despite winning 10 late-model races on the small track that season.
He reiterated some points he had already made on national television.
“I’d say that this kills Kyle Busch’s pride, his parents’ pride, as well as the whole crew,” Busch had explained to ESPN. “They were all looking forward to it. We were on top of the sheets in practice and looking forward to qualifying and, right before we went out, we got turned down.”
Busch had just been given the boot from the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series. Signed earlier in the year to drive the No. 99 Ford for Roush Racing, he had been disqualified because of his age. Tobacco ads on the track precluded him from participating.
That prompted a new NASCAR rule, and from then on, drivers had to be 18 to race in the big leagues.
Busch was critical of the new rule, and he would remain highly opinionated throughout his career. He never held back. He said what he wanted or needed to say at any moment it needed to be said.
He couldn’t even wait to be done with school, graduating with honors a year early to focus on achieving his racing goals. Though he was competitive from the start, championship dreams would have to wait a few years.
In 2006, Busch and Tony Stewart tangled coming out of Turn 4 after a late restart in the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 at LVMS. Busch had some choice words about his opponent heading into the straightaway.
“That (expletive) is trying to kill me!” he shouted over his radio.
Only it was not a private conversation. Fox NASCAR happened to be broadcasting Busch’s radio at the time, and the statement eventually contributed heavily to the bad-boy image that would earn him the nickname “Rowdy.” The name stuck for the rest of his career.
He and his brother, Kurt, went on to become a duo that no member of the media wanted to interview after a crash or bad race.
But Kyle Busch was too busy for that. Too busy to dwell on setbacks. He always had his eye on the prize, and the inevitable finally happened when he won the Nationwide Series crown in 2009. That was followed by Cup championships in 2015 and 2019.
Busch finally had reached that pinnacle he knew he would one day earn. He didn’t like the wait, but he never doubted the day would come.
Though still direct with his conversation, Busch finally did acknowledge that his fearless, aggressive style of racing in his younger years may have extended that wait.
“I kind of felt cool because I got away with it for so long,” he told ABC7 NY last spring. “My younger days were all about instinct and raw speed, but my mindset took time to catch up.”
It all paid off in the end. He started on go-kart as a kid, ripping up and down his neighborhood streets, and unexpectedly finished his career ranked ninth in all-time NASCAR Cup Series wins with 63.
He won’t be present for the dedication due to his death on Thursday, but the wait for his induction into the NASCAR Hall of Fame will be a short one. Kyle Busch is a shoo-in, and he will forever be remembered as a legend in his sport.
Contact Jeff Wollard at jwollard@reviewjournal.com.
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