Tragedy Strikes Racing's Greatest Weekend

This is supposed to be the greatest weekend in motorsports.  A celebration, with a marquee race in all three major series back-to-back-to-back.  Monaco, then Indy, then Charlotte.  Instead, Memorial Day Weekend will take on a different meaning after the unbelievably sad news that shocked not just the racing community, but the entire sports world.  Suddenly and unexpectedly, Kyle Busch is gone.

The announcement on Thursday that he would miss the Coca-Cola 600 didn't seem that out of the ordinary.  His having to take a week off because of a health issue surely shouldn't be a cause for alarm.  Drivers miss races because of injury or illness all the time, so why would this be any different?  Sure, sitting out of a crown jewel event like the Coca-Cola 600 is uncommon, but sometimes you can't control the timing of these things.

It was only a couple hours later that they made the second announcement informing people of his passing.  Which was jarring on so many levels.  First, how quickly it happened.  The "serious health issue" that he was hospitalized with took him within a few hours.  While no official cause of death was given initially, details began trickling out about how he had a sinus infection and how he started not to feel well on Wednesday and what was said on the 911 call.  But, still, this was an otherwise healthy, 41-year-old racecar driver who died merely hours after being admitted to the hospital with what his family later revealed was severe pneumonia that turned into sepsis.  How could it not shake people up?

Driving a racecar is obviously an incredibly dangerous job.  You take your life in your hands every time you get behind the wheel.  Every driver knows that and is willing to take that risk.  That's part of what's so shocking here, too.  It wasn't a racing crash.  Had it been, it would've been no less shocking and no less tragic, but it would at least be easier to understand.  But it wasn't.  It was a sudden illness that acted fast and without warning.

He was in the car doing what he loves literally last weekend!  In fact, he won the truck series race at Dover.  In the winner's circle, he made the seemingly innocuous comment that "you never know when it'll be your last."  The cruel irony of what those words mean now.  Because he was exactly right.  Only not in a way anybody could've seen coming.

And I get that Kyle Busch wasn't everybody's cup of tea.  To say he was polarizing would be an incredible understatement.  So many fans (including my friend Joyce) loved him.  He was their favorite driver.  Just as many couldn't stand him and hated his antics.  Yet, whether you loved him or hated him, you couldn't deny how gifted Kyle Busch was.  A truly special talent.  A legendary competitor.  He was motivated by one thing--winning, which he did a lot.  And that drive is what made him so great.

Another part of his greatness is that it truly didn't matter what type of car he was in.  He won in all of them, sometimes in the same weekend!  He was a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and took the checkered flag 63 times at the sport's highest level.  Busch also had 102 wins and one series championship in the Busch series, which came in 2009...when he was competing in both series on the same weekend pretty much every week (now's not the time for my diatribe about Buschwhacking, which NASCAR later made a rule change to prevent).  Throw in 63 truck wins, including last weekend at Dover, and that's 234 victories in NASCAR's top three series.

Kurt Busch was inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame this year.  There was never any question that his brother will one day join him.  He was going to be a slam-dunk first-ballot selection someday down the line.  That was supposed to be years from now.  After he'd broken every record there was to break.  After he'd capped perhaps the most dominant career across all three series in NASCAR history.  Instead, we're left wondering how much more he could've accomplished in what was already a historic career.  A career that could've been right there at the top among the Pettys and the Earnhardts and the Johnsons as one of the all-time greats.

In a cruel twist of fate, this is the second time Richard Childress has had a NASCAR legend who was a member of his racing team die during the season.  Childress, of course, was Dale Earnhardt's car owner when Earnhardt lost his life on that final-lap crash in the 2001 Daytona 500.  He took Earnhardt's No. 3 out of circulation immediately.  When Kevin Harvick took over the car, it was rebranded as the No. 29.  No. 3 continued to be held out until Childress eventually gave it to Austin Dillon.

So, Childress retiring Busch's No. 8 not only wasn't a surprise, it was an appropriate tribute.  Austin Hill was already set to drive the No. 8 at Charlotte this weekend.  That was when he was just keeping the seat warm.  Now it'll be the No. 33.  No. 8 will be held out of circulation until Kyle Busch's son, Brexton, is ready to follow in his father's footsteps.  Brexton Busch is currently 11 years old.

Once the news of Kyle Busch's death got out, the tributes came pouring in from across the sporting universe.  The Carolina Hurricanes had a video montage and moment of silence before Game 1 of the Eastern Conference Final.  Since Busch was from Las Vegas, I wouldn't be surprised if the Golden Knights do something similar before Game 3 in the West, which will not only be their first home game of the series, it'll be on Sunday night at the same time as the Coca-Cola 600.

NASCAR will obviously honor him this weekend, as well.  At the truck race on Friday night (which he was originally planning on racing in), two teams added the Kyle Busch Motorsports logo to their trucks, and the pit crews did his salute as the trucks passed by on pit lane.  I would imagine similar tributes are in store for the rest of the weekend in Charlotte, from other drivers, fans, and NASCAR itself alike.  And, I'm sure they'll also at the very least observe a moment of silence for him in Indianapolis, where Kyle Busch was a two-time winner of the Brickyard 400.

My original plan for this post was for it to be my annual Indy 500 preview, but it took an obvious (and understandable) pivot.  The racing community is so tight that this devastating loss will be felt all over.  The great celebration of auto racing that is Memorial Day Weekend has taken an incredibly sad turn.  This isn't just NASCAR's loss.  This isn't just racing's loss.  This is the entire sports world's loss.

You know what the best way to honor Kyle Busch is, though?  To go out there, give their all, and race their asses off.  Just like he did.  That's what they'll do in Indianapolis, and that's certainly what they'll do in Charlotte.  Kyle Busch wouldn't have wanted it any other way.  Because if he was out there, you know he'd be going full throttle to be the first across that finish line.