CONCORD, N.C. — There were smiles and some laughs after the end of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race among those on pit road on Sunday morning. It was a nice change of pace from the somber tone of the weekend that led up to that point.
The loss of NASCAR legend Kyle Busch put a damper on the tone of the Memorial Day weekend, and it’s affected everyone in the garages at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Among them were celebrity racers Travis Pastrana and Frankie Muniz, who finished 21st and 24th, respectively. Both were thinking of Busch in their Truck race bid on Sunday morning.
“It never goes away,” Pastrana told the media post-race. “Every time coming around the backstretch, see the American flag at half-mast and also thinking, Memorial Day weekend, it’s a heavy weekend just in general, but it gives you, makes you want to go out there and live every day, living the American dream as much as I can and being appreciative for every single second that we have to be able to do what we love to do.”
For the celebrity daredevil Pastrana, who entered the Charlotte race under the Kaulig Racing banner this weekend in the team’s No. 25 all-star entry, his interactions with Busch were greatly fond memories of them sharing a track together.
But that’s not referring to a NASCAR track.
“The only time I got to race alongside of him was at Rally Cross and on the dirt with all-wheel-drive,” Pastrana recalled. “What I loved about Kyle was that he was competitive. Like the word ‘competitive’ is an understatement. ‘Passionate’ is probably even an understatement. ‘Obsessed’ might even still be an understatement. When you’re around someone like that, it inspires you to want to be better every second of every day.
“I think, Kyle, love him or hate him, the people that were close to him, were really close because he pushed them to be their best selves, and my heart’s out to his family.”
For famous actor-turned-racer Muniz, it was seemingly the opposite. The 40-year-old had plenty of experience with Busch on the track. However, most of it was watching his rear bumper.
“My experience with racing with Kyle Busch was him lapping me, you know what I mean?” Muniz joked. “When I’d watch him go by, like even at Dover [Motor Speedway] last week, he’d passed me, and I was like, because we were pretty racy there too, I was like, ‘I don’t get it.’ Like he’s on another level. I didn’t have too many side-by-side battles with him.”
On the other hand, Muniz had plenty of interactions with the two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion off the track.
“We had the same sponsor with Morgan & Morgan, so we did a lot of stuff together,” Muniz recalled. “I spent a lot of time with him years ago before I even started racing NASCAR. I went to dinner with him a bunch of times, and obviously, our kids would play in the MRO in the driver/owner lot and stuff like that.”
“It’s just, yeah, it’s wild.”
With constant grey skies and wet conditions, the two had to wait over 40 hours to reach the finish of what turned out to be a shortened Truck race. It made for a gloomy ending to what was already a gloomy weekend.
Muniz will head to Nashville Superspeedway next weekend for the next Truck Series event. Pastrana doesn’t have any additional races announced.
Regardless, both drivers will certainly be looking forward to getting away from what was a very grey weekend.
“Mix that in with the weekend in general, with the rain and kind of how gloomy it was,” Muniz said. “We’re going to start the race, didn’t start the race, we’re going to start the race, didn’t start the race. It just kind of kept a tough weekend lingering.”
Dalton Hopkins began writing for Frontstretch in April 2021. Currently, he is the lead writer for the weekly Thinkin' Out Loud column, co-host of the Frontstretch Happy Hour podcast, and one of our lead reporters. Beforehand, he wrote for IMSA shortly after graduating from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in 2019. Simultaneously, he also serves as a Captain in the US Army.
Follow Dalton on Twitter @PitLaneCPT