Kyle Busch was the most competitive person Bill Janitz has ever met, second place so far behind, he said, you would never find them.
Busch never backed down on the race track, or even a game of Monopoly. If a win was teetering in the balance, he was going for it. He was a perfectionist, a complex individual who accepted — but didn’t always love — his black-hat role in NASCAR, the villain who speaks his mind, ruffles his competitors and their fans, and is driven for one purpose: to win.
For 15 years, Janitz had a front-row seat as public-relations manager during a large portion of Busch’s career that encompassed 234 victories across NASCAR’s three national series, including 63 Cup victories and series championships in 2015 and 2019 during his 22 full Cup seasons. He was tireless as a racer and resilient. Busch suffered a broken right leg and left foot in the season-opening Daytona 500 in 2015, missed 11 races and still managed to win the series title.
“He always felt like he was bulletproof,” Janitz told The Detroit News. “And even someone that knew him as well as I did personally, you felt like he was bulletproof, because he just kept going.”
Busch was 41 when he died May 21 from complications stemming from pneumonia, devastating his family and the NASCAR community. A private service was held Tuesday in Charlotte, N.C., to honor him, and a public celebration is being planned. He was married 15 years to wife, Samantha, and had two children, Brexton, following in his father’s footsteps as a racer, and daughter Lennix. Busch also is survived by his brother, Kurt Busch, a NASCAR Hall of Famer, and his parents, Tom and Gay.
This weekend, the NASCAR Cup series will compete in the FireKeepers Casino 400 at Michigan International Speedway, the third points race since his death. It will be the first time since 2004 that Busch will not be racing at the two-mile oval in the Irish Hills.
For Janitz, this has been a trying time trying to come to grips with the loss of someone with whom he had a deep professional relationship. Janitz grew up on Lake Columbia in Brooklyn, five miles from MIS, where he cut his teeth in public relations after graduating from Michigan State in 2000. He became the director of media relations at MIS before launching his career in NASCAR where from 2008 through the 2022 season, he worked closely with Busch as his public-relations representative at Joe Gibbs Racing, traveling with him during the annual lengthy grind that defines the stock-car series.
Talking about Busch has been cathartic for Janitz, who hopes to paint a clearer picture of Busch as not just the fierce, polarizing competitor, but as someone with many layers who grew as an individual, particularly after he married and built a family. Busch was smart, could take apart and car and rebuild it, had a sharp sense of humor, and he also wrestled with being booed because, Janitz said, he wanted to be loved, too. Still, all of that took a backseat to Busch’s ultimate goal of winning.
“You can’t put his loss into words,” Janitz said. “Nothing seems adequate, because whether you booed him or you loved him, everybody knew everybody was looking for Kyle Busch, and what he was going to do next and what kind of unbelievable move he was going to make on the racetrack, or a restart, or coming back from last place on the grid because of an engine change, or whatever it was.
“No matter whether they loved him or they didn’t love him, people were always paying attention to him, and you can never have too many of those characters, not just in NASCAR, but in sports, because that’s what makes sports fun to watch and interesting to watch, because if everybody were the same, then why would that be interesting?”
A ‘huge hole’ for sport
Denny Hamilin, who had been his teammate at Joe Gibbs Racing, wrote immediately after Busch’s death that the sport had lost “its Kobe Bryant.” Rochester Hills native Brad Keselowski was a great on-track rival of Busch. “I feel a little like the coyote with no more roadrunner to chase,” Keselowski shared on social media. “His loss is all of our loss.”
“There’s a huge hole there for sure for the sport,” Janitz said. “Look, he won’t be the last guy that has this sort of complicated personality and this attention on him, a showman in a lot of ways, but that’s what he brought to the sport. He was maybe different than most drivers over time, and I’m biased, but it’s a tremendous loss, and I feel like the things (tributes) that I’ve seen over the last couple weeks kind of tell you that.”
Busch grew up in Las Vegas, and Janitz said he always liked being the showman. After wins, Busch would climb from the car and perform a deep bow to the fans. It was a tribute to his roots, and since his death, winning drivers, like Hamlin last weekend at Nashville, have bowed in his honor.
“Maybe some people looked at it as brash, but he was from Las Vegas, and at the end of the show you walk out, you bow to the crowd,” Janitz said. “So he was like, that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to do the bow.”
During his career, Busch developed a reputation as NASCAR’s villain. He could be surly with media and fellow drivers, and his aggressive racing style created friction in the garage and among NASCAR fans, who are extremely loyal to their drivers of choice.
“He leaned into it,” Janitz said of Busch being the villain. “He didn’t shy away from it.”
Understanding his role
Busch also knew what that role meant for him and the sport, Janitz said.
“I don’t think he loved it, but he understood it,” Janitz said. “Was he actually the villain in real life? No, but certainly that was the perception for a long time, because he cared about winning more than he did anything else. If that meant that sometimes the reception wasn’t going to be as warm, he didn’t care. He wanted the trophy at the end of the day. That’s what his focus was. He wanted to be loved, too, but he wanted to win more than he wanted to be loved.”
Busch also was a perfectionist who demanded everything from himself and those who worked with him. He wanted everyone to be on the same page to reach the one goal of winning.
“Sometimes that made things difficult for him, but also I think those are the qualities that made him such a great race car driver,” Janitz said. “He wanted, he needed everybody to care as much and to be as committed and wanting to be as good as you can be, no matter what you did. He wanted everybody else to think the same way, and he would test you. He would ask questions, and he already knew the answer, but he wanted to know if you knew the answer.
“That’s a lot of pressure for some people, but I kind of enjoyed it. I knew how he was. My feelings never got hurt, because if your feelings got hurt, I wouldn’t have been able to work with him for more than a month. That’s just how he was, but at the same time you appreciated that, because he would give you answers almost immediately on stuff and cared about every little facet of his world.”
Busch often would talk and joke about NASCAR’s year-end Most Popular Driver award, something he, not surprisingly, never won. There have been so many different tributes paid to Busch the last few weeks, but Janitz believes it would be the greatest gesture to give Busch that award.
“He’d say, the most popular driver might not be the one that everybody loves the most; it’s someone that people pay attention to the most,” Janitz said. “There’s no doubt that he has that award during my time working and thinking about the last 25 years in the sport.”
Janitz said his memories with Busch have been flowing the last few weeks. In many ways, they grew up together in the sport despite Janitz being seven years older. Busch made Janitz better at his job and has imprinted on his career, and Janitz taught Busch how to better handle situations and always presented things to him straight.
“I did a lot of learning, and he did a lot of learning,” Janitz said. “To have a front-row seat to watch greatness is one of the privileges of my life.”
FireKeepers Casino 400
When: 3 p.m. Sunday
Where: Michigan International Speedway, Brooklyn
TV: Amazon Prime
Defending champion: Denny Hamlin
Tickets: Fans can purchase tickets online at mispeedway.com.
achengelis@detroitnews.com
@chengelis
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Kyle Busch’s death leaves ‘huge hole’ as NASCAR returns to MIS
Reporting by Angelique S. Chengelis, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Angelique S. Chengelis, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
