NASCAR team owner Richard Childress had pointed to this weekend at Michigan International Speedway to announce that two-time series champion Kyle Busch would be back with Richard Childress Racing (RCR) next season.
Busch died unexpectedly May 21 from complications related to severe pneumonia, devasting the NASCAR community. Childress spoke Saturday at MIS in his first public comments since Busch’s death and shared how emotional the situation has been. Childress and his team also experienced the loss of seven-time Cup champion Dale Earnhardt, who died in a crash at the Daytona 500 in 2001.
The NASCAR Cup series is competing at the two-mile MIS oval on Sunday in the FireKeepers Casino 400, the third points race since he died. Austin Hill is driving the RCR car, which has been renumbered to 33 from Busch’s No. 8, at MIS.
“It’s challenging,” Childress told reporters. “You lose two of the greatest drivers that’s ever driven a car in NASCAR, and now having to go through it again. I just feel so bad for the family and the RCR employees.
“I haven’t slept very well. I’ll leave it at that.”
With General Motors located in Detroit, Childress said MIS was the perfect location for his plan to announce Busch would be driving a Chevrolet for his team next year.
“I talked to Kyle Tuesday night, before everything went down Wednesday night and Thursday, and we had a great conversation,” Childress said during the news conference. “He said, ‘You give me cars like you gave me the last three weeks and I will make the Chase this year.’ We were that confident. Both of us had a lot of confidence in this team. We haven’t had the year that any of us expected or wanted. We started out like gangbusters, and it just didn’t go as we expected. We’ve had a lot of opportunities, and we just didn’t finish them off.”
Busch had 234 victories across NASCAR’s three national series, with 63 in the Cup series, 102 wins and a championship in the Auto Parts Series and 69 Craftsman Truck series wins. He won Cup series titles in 2015 and 2019. Busch won two Cup races at MIS.
The track plans to honor Busch before the race with a moment of remembrance, a No. 8 logo in the infield grass and a tribute on Lap 8.
“Kyle Busch was a totally different person when he was away from the track,” Childress said. “He wanted to win. He was driven by winning, hard work and doing everything that he could do to help the team.
“We had other plans. The sad part for me looking back, knowing what Dale Earnhardt had in mind and the plans he had for his future, and then sitting and talking to Kyle at different times, knowing his plans and what he had in the future for him, (his son) Brexton and his family and the many things that we all could have done together, that was probably the toughest part of this whole thing.”
Kurt Busch, Kyle’s older brother, was a first-ballot inductee into the NASCAR Hall of Fame, class of 2026. He had 34 Cup victories and won the 2004 series title.
Kurt Busch is a member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame, having been inducted as part of the Class of 2026. He was enshrined as a first-ballot Hall of Famer in his first year of eligibility, honored for an illustrious 23-year Cup Series career that includes the 2004 NASCAR Cup Series Championship and 34 Cup Series victories.
Kyle Busch, undoubtedly, will join his brother among the sport’s elites.
“Kyle Busch will go down in history as one of the greatest drivers there’s ever been,” Childress said. “He’ll be in the Hall of Fame. I’d love to see them put him in it right away. He helped RCR when we needed him. He came right in, and we won three races the first part of the year. We had a lot of opportunities to win other races, but we just didn’t finish and capitalize on them.
“He was a man that a lot of people thought he was tough to deal with and that we wouldn’t last long, but he was a man that loved this sport. He loved it so much that he wanted to see his family carry it on. To watch what he had going on with Brexton — I would go to Millbridge and watch them race together and just see the enjoyment in Kyle’s eyes watching his son race was just unbelievable. His legacy will be in history. He’ll go down as one of the greatest drivers of all times. He’s won over 200 races. All of us are going to miss him. You all are going to miss having him in here after a win.”
angelique.chengelis@detroitnews.com
@chengelis
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: NASCAR team owner shares his heartbreak after Kyle Busch’s death
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
