It’s been a little over three months since the death of Kyle Busch, and while the racing world still reels and tries to find a place of normalcy without him at the track, a lot of people have shared some great memories and thoughts of Busch.
Two of them — former NASCAR drivers Bobby Labonte and Todd Bodine — have weighed in on a special edition of Raceline.
Labonte and Busch were both drivers of Joe Gibbs Racing’s No. 18 in the NASCAR Cup Series. He had a lot of praise for Busch and set the scene of the moment he had heard the news of the legend’s death.
“I was in Lime Rock, Conn., at a Trans-Am race when it all happened,” Labonte said. “It’s like the garage went silent at 5 o’clock and nobody said a word, and I think the impact that it has on our sport and the young racers coming up, I don’t know if we know it just yet.”
Bodine’s description of his time around Busch had a wide variety of emotions both good and bad, mostly from their time as two titans of the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series.
Even with all of the battles and also harsh words between the two, Bodine still holds Busch in high regard.
“To me he’s gonna go down as the best in history of NASCAR,” Bodine said. “There’s been a lot of great drivers, don’t get me wrong, but Kyle to me stands head and shoulders above ‘em.”
Catch the full episode above.
I won’t listen to it. Many retired drivers hated KB and spoke negatively about him often. In the last two weeks before Kyle’s death one such driver had disparaging remarks, but when Kyle died and that driver saw the positive outpouring he changed horses and spoke about how wonderful Kyle was and how he admired him as a driver and I’m sure deleted posts on social media.