11-year-old Brexton Busch caps emotional tribute to his father Kyle in Charlotte
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At the end of an emotion-filled hour celebrating the life of Kyle Busch on Friday night at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Brexton Busch climbed into a racecar.
Read more 11-year-old Brexton Busch caps emotional tribute to his father Kyle in Charlotte
Brexton, who is 11 years old, has a goal to follow in the very fast footsteps of his father. Kyle Busch was a two-time NASCAR Cup champion and is widely regarded as one of the best to ever drive a car.
If what Brexton did next was any indication, he is going to have a long career at the track himself.
Expertly piloting one of his father’s former racecars down the track away from the fans, Brexton then applied the brakes and began to spin the car in burnout fashion, to the delight of 10,000-plus who had shown up to honor his father. Smoke filled the air and everyone’s nostrils, too, just as it always did when Kyle Busch won a race and then did one of his major-league burnouts.
Then, as the smoke gradually cleared, Brexton climbed atop the racecar and grabbed a checkered flag. He paused, then did a slow bow to the fans, just as his father had done after so many wins.
It was a perfect, poignant ending to a fitting tribute to his dad.
Kyle Busch died suddenly, on May 21st. He was 41 years old — husband to Samantha, father to Brexton and Lennix. He had won a race only six days before in Dover.
But then came an illness, and a rapid downward spiral and suddenly, somehow, the racer everyone called “Rowdy” was gone. His cause of death, the family said in a statement at the time, was “severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis, resulting in rapid and overwhelming associated complications.”
Friday’s memorial service was meant to allow Busch’s fans to celebrate his life at his favorite track. The emotions are a little less raw now — this celebration of life, after all, wasn’t held until 141 days after Busch’s death.
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The distance from May to October meant that people probably felt a little freer to applaud Busch’s life, without concentrating too much on the details of his tragic and unexpected death.
Still, some tears flowed as one speaker or another talked about Busch’s evolution, a story you could tell in the many nicknames he had: from “Shrub” to “Wild Thing” to, finally, “Rowdy.” It was that last one that stuck with him the longest, as Busch won an astonishing 234 races in NASCAR’s three national series — a record that may never be broken.
Older brother Kurt Busch, team owner Joe Gibbs and Kyle’s wife Samantha Busch were among the speakers, as well as current NASCAR drivers Kyle Larson and Austin Dillon.
Said Samantha Busch: “I keep thinking how lucky I was to know every single version of him: the young racer who took me around Indianapolis Motor Speedway when I was just 21 years old — and little did we know it knew the ride of our lifetime. The fierce competitor who basically thought second was last and who threw our kids ridiculously high in the air, a tradition that they loved and I feared every single time. The team owner who gave others a chance. Rowdy, who loved his fans more than anything — and of course stirring up things. And the dad who found so much joy and pride in his children.”
Samantha Busch and several others also said her husband was “stubborn as heck, and apparently he was the only person in our household that knew how to load a dishwasher.”
Kurt Busch, a NASCAR hall of famer himself and Kyle’s older brother, told the audience about the family’s early days in Las Vegas. Said Busch: “We were six years apart. … I mean, here I am, 16, starting out racing, and he’s 10 already trying to jump in the car, of course. But at a young age, I knew right away he was going to be fast. By the time I was getting into Late Models, he was starting out in Legends, and it was tough to beat him, even though I had five years’ experience on him. He was that fast, right out of the box.”
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