Holding A Pretty Wheel: NASCAR’s Last Goodbyes Change the Sport Forever

We live a life of endings. In the universe, very little is permanent, and in our lives, less still. In racing, most endings are predictable. Time in the sport is finite. Careers begin, play out, and come to a conclusion. It happens all the time, sometimes without fanfare.

How many times have you seen a driver’s name and thought, “I remember him. I wonder what became of him?”

The lucky ones walk away on their own terms. They choose the last time they will climb into the car, tighten their belts and hear the roar of the crowd. They’re remembered in stories and images, or, for a select few, on the walls of halls of fame and in the pages of books.

Many, maybe most, fade into time. Rides aren’t easy to come by, and the driver doesn’t always hold the reins. The seat is filled by someone else, and there’s simply not another one. The quiet walk into yesterday is unheralded.

Endings are simply a part of the rhythm of the sport, tolling under the growl of the engines and the cheering masses.

Except for the ones when nobody gets the chance to say goodbye. 

Those endings hurt. There’s no answer to the “why?” that lingers in the air between us. 

For a generation of fans, that kind of ending didn’t exist outside of stories and history books. The sport is safer than it used to be, and thank the stars above for that.

Then, on Thursday, May 21, the news filtered its way into the NASCAR community. Kyle Busch, the sport’s winningest driver ever when you add up all his national series victories, was hospitalized with what was only called a “severe illness.” Reading between the lines of the statements, it sounded ominous, like this might be something serious.

We still weren’t prepared for what came next. Busch, who won a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race just six days earlier, was gone. Just like that. Not on his terms, not on anyone’s terms. No retirement tour with rocking chairs and grandstands named for him. Just… gone.

It didn’t feel real. It felt as if we could get to Sunday, it would be OK, because there would be that No. 8 Chevrolet, racing as aggressively for 20th place as for the race lead. But Sunday came, the car was unloaded alone with a new number, though that number was now on just about every car at the track and on the cap on just about every head in the garage.

Before the race, Busch’s family stood, surrounded by the NASCAR community, while his older brother, Kurt, laid eight white roses in the infield grass. The engines roared to life, a comfort to everyone who understands that this is what racers do: they race. And as the race went on, maybe they looked for that No. 8 a little less, but they still looked. It will be a long, long time until they don’t look anymore.

It was a feeling that the NASCAR community hadn’t experienced in a long time. Many had never experienced it at all. But many more still remember a February day, a quarter of a century ago, when the sport stood still.

As the new millennium began, the sport was still reeling from a string of tragedies the year before: Adam Petty. Kenny Irwin. Tony Roper. All three lost in on-track incidents. Petty and Irwin in the same corner at the same racetrack.

And then came February.

Dale Earnhardt was larger than life. It sounds so cliché, but there are no other words for it. We all expected him to race forever, and when he finally hung up his helmet, to continue to be involved in the sport through his budding racing empire.

When his black car impacted the wall on the last lap of the Daytona 500 as his son pushed his friend to victory, we waited for him to climb out, mad as a hornet despite his car winning the race. We expected him to celebrate with his team in victory lane.

We never suspected, at first, that we’d never see him again. Even when it slowly became clear that it wasn’t an ordinary crash, when Ken Schrader was the first to his window, frantically urging the medical team to hurry, when Dale Earnhardt Jr. raced down pit road toward the ambulance, everyone expected an injury, maybe even a bad one, but not the end.

Even when Mike Helton spoke those words, “We’ve lost Dale Earnhardt,” it felt like a mistake. Surely when we went to Rockingham Speedway the next week, there would be that black No. 3 terrorizing the field. When it finally felt real was when it wasn’t.

What happened next wasn’t unlike what unfolded this past Sunday. The Cup Series raced at Rockingham because racers race. Up and down pit road, No. 3 hats replaced the usual sponsor-approved headwear on crews and drivers. And when it was all over and the engines were silent again, Steve Park, who drove for Earnhardt, was standing in victory lane.

We all healed a little bit that day. 

That didn’t mean you stopped looking for that No. 3. I was in the stands at Loudon that summer, and when the green flag fell, I looked for it until I remembered. 

Just last night, Daniel Suarez, who drove for Kyle Busch Motorsports in the Truck Series, won the biggest race of his career, his first crown jewel. His team, Spire Motorsports, operates out of the old KBM shop that Busch built. Busch’s last NASCAR win was in a Spire truck with the same number.

And the healing began.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt, or that it makes any more sense than it did on Thursday night. The truth is, the hurt never goes away completely. They all hurt: Adam and Kenny and Tony and Dale and Blaise still hurt.

Busch wasn’t always easy to like. He was prickly and sarcastic. He hated losing and took it out on everyone when he did lose. If you were in his way on track and didn’t yield like he thought you should, he’d run you over. He’d berate his team openly on the radio and to the media when things didn’t go his way. He raced in the O’Reilly and Truck Series, driving the most expensive equipment, in what he openly admitted was “trophy hunting.” He was good and he knew it.

Everybody knew it.

Watching Busch drive a racecar, especially when its speed matched his skill, was a master class in racing and winning. It’s easy to draw parallels with Earnhardt because there have been few drivers since Earnhardt’s death who have matched his passion or his temper.

There was more to Busch, though, than his on-track persona. He worked just as hard to build his Truck Series team. He knew many fans resented him taking a seat from youngsters, but he also knew that his driving in the series brought sponsors to his team that might not have signed up just for a development driver… but they’d sign if Busch drove a few races too. 

Busch helped those young drivers get better, mentoring them and offering advice. He saw talent in young grassroots drivers and helped them find success on the national stage. He was especially impressed when he raced them at their own tracks and they beat him.

When he became a father, Busch mellowed a bit. He taught his young son to race but also to hold himself accountable for his on-track mistakes, something Kyle himself often had not done, and it was sometimes to his detriment. He tried to help his son be different. 

And because he and his wife, Samantha, had struggled to have children, the couple started a fund that helps other couples with the expense of infertility treatments.

Busch’s legacy looms large, and it always will. No, he wasn’t universally loved (and neither was Earnhardt), but he was universally respected. He was one of the best drivers to ever climb through the window of a stock car, and he made other drivers better, even the few that were as innately talented as he was, simply by racing with them.

The ending to his chapter in NASCAR’s story came too soon. I wasn’t ready for it. Nobody was; how can you be? As a community, as a family, we will heal. We live a life of endings, but also of new beginnings.

But it will be a long time before we no longer look for that No. 8 in the Cup field on Sunday, just for a split second before we remember.