No one has ever questioned Kyle Busch’s demeanor on how to drive a racecar. No one ever questioned his talent, nor did they question how successful he has become. However, it is all beginning to come full circle for the 30-year-old driver as he has made the transition from teenager to young man.
Rick Hendrick was so excited to grab Busch following the 2003 season that he had to wait because of the age limit to drive a car in NASCAR competition until he was 18. Back when he raced part-time for Roush Fenway Racing in the Camping World Truck Series, Busch could only drive at certain tracks because of his age, such as the rule is today after disappearing for nearly a decade.
Since then, that rule has changed. Drivers are getting into high-quality racecars at a younger age. For Busch, the wait was worth it and now he is soaking in the glory as the 2015 Sprint Cup Series champion.
He has always been successful, acquiring 34 Cup Series wins, 76 Xfinity Series triumphs and 44 Truck Series victories. He has been able to write his name in the history books as one of the best pure racers in the history of NASCAR as he will race whatever it is, car, truck, dirt car or even a Late Model.
When Busch took over the No. 18 ride back in 2008, he was a young 22-year-old kid, exceeding expectations. He went on to win eight times that season, but once the Chase started, the No. 1 seed fell like a rock, as did much of his career in the Chase.
Until Nov. 22 at Homestead-Miami Speedway, Busch had never won a race while being a part of the Chase. He could win countless races throughout his career, but could never stamp his name into contention for the title until 2015.
The injury:
Busch faced as much adversity in one season as many drivers do in the entirety of their careers. After a vicious crash in the Xfinity Series at Daytona in February, he was forced to miss the biggest race of the season, the Daytona 500.
The driver broke both his leg and foot in the process. He was unable to move from a Daytona Beach hospital for the first 10 days after having surgery. He then went to rehab, and it was a game. This game was a mental game between him and his mind to get through the rehab and see how fast he could get back in the racecar.
“I guess you’re a lot tougher than you really realize whether it’s physically or mentally,” Busch said of overcoming his injury. “I had to put everything I had into rehab and everything I had into being able to walk and to get through everything that I was going through. Going through the rehab, it was hard. It was really, really hard.”
He missed the first 11 races of the season, including watching the Daytona 500 from a hospital bed at the Halifax Medical Center. While undergoing rehab, his wife, Samantha was six months pregnant.
The return of Busch was on May 16 at the Sprint All-Star Race. It was a test for what was to come in the following week during the longest race of the season, the Coca-Cola 600. Busch finished sixth in his return during the preliminary race, but was quickest in his first practice session back. In his first full race back, he finished 11th.
Brexton:
The biggest victory of Busch’s career came when he was able to see the birth of his son, Brexton. Self admittedly, he wanted to be at the hospital for the birth of his son, but to not just sit there, but to be active in the approach.
In a way, Busch believed that he was injured for a reason and it was to be able to stay home with his wife in preparation of the couple’s first child after getting married in 2010.
Busch and his wife Samantha fought a battle of their own in previous years. Samantha was unable to get pregnant for a lengthy period of time because she was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome. PCOS haunted the couple as they tried for several years to get pregnant, but just could not have a baby. Perception became reality when Samantha’s doctors recommended for her to take a drug called Clomid. The risk of Clomid is that it increases the chances of having multiple children at once.
Clomid did not work either. The only other option for the couple was an IVF treatment. IVF is a process in which eggs are removed from the ovaries and mixed with sperm in a laboratory culture dish. This enabled for there to be a baby Busch.
“One day I found out that seven of my friends were having babies, and that four of my Pinterest announcement ideas were taken,” Samantha said in a blog last December. “I promptly had a Stage 5 melt-down and am impressed my iPhone survived a long trip across the room. Don’t get me wrong: I was so happy for my friends but, at the same time, I have to admit, I was so jealous! It’s such a terrible mix of emotions.”
Following Busch’s injury in February, he was looking forward to spend more time with his wife at home while she was on the tail-end of her pregnancy. Busch was a firm believer that his injury partially happened so that he could stay home and be with Samantha during that hard time.
“It stinks to be sitting on the sideline, but to be honest with you, the silver lining is to be home, to be with Samantha and to prep for our son coming,” Busch said in April at his first press conference after the wreck. “I think that’s been the most fun.”
This was exactly what Busch did, and being able to see the birth of Brexton allowed for Busch to mature and grow even more as a person.
Leading up to the Chase:
The No. 18 team had a huge hurdle to overcome in order to make the Chase, let alone be in contention for the championship. He began 190 points in the hole and had just 15 races to make it up.
After having a respectable finish at Charlotte, the No. 18 car wrecked out of Dover while running in third. This put the team in a much bigger deficit with such a bad finish. At Pocono, Busch picked up his first top 10 of 2015, but it was two races later that changed the season for good.
On June 28, Busch won at the Sonoma Raceway, thus making him championship eligible if he could crack the top-30 in the season standings. This was just the beginning for Busch.
Prior to the Chase cutoff race at Richmond, Busch picked up three more wins and had nine top-10 finishes. He cracked the top-30 in the championship standings after Watkins Glen, four races before Richmond. He was locked into the Chase following the race at Darlington changing his outlook on the rest of the season.
“We set forth and did the path that was given to us from NASCAR to go out there and score points and win races to become eligible for this Chase,” Busch said. “The time in which it really set forth in me was after Michigan (June). We had a couple of good races. We were going to finish top-five out first nine races out. We weren’t finishing where we needed to be finishing, it was getting a little disheartening.”
After Michigan, Busch didn’t seem for it to be feasible to make it into the 2015 edition of the Chase. He had set aside racing for points and began to try and find momentum for 2016. Good thing for Busch, his results began to sway after three consecutive wins at Kentucky, Loudon and Indianapolis.
The Chase:
Once getting into the Chase, Busch became one of the favorites for the championship, and was almost definite for Homestead based on the points structure and the way it is formatted. But with recent struggles in the Chase, could Busch overcome all of the adversity that 2015 threw at him and elevate his game to the next level?
He could. After barely squeaking by each of the first two rounds, Busch was solid in the Eliminator Round that ended at Phoenix. After the points were calculated, he was among the four to fight for the championship at Homestead.
Post-Phoenix, Busch admitted that he would have to lean on his teammates leading up to Homestead, a track that he had an average finish of 23.6 prior to 2015. All three of his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates have found success at the 1.5-mile track and Busch wanted to pick their brains to see if he could improve his mindset heading into the championship race.
Of the four competitors competing for the championship, he had the worst average finish during the Chase at 10.7. That was part of the growing up process for Busch, going to tracks that he has struggled at and approaching them in a different way, a way that could result in popping champagne.
Everyone knows what happened at Homestead. Busch won the race and his first Cup championship.
There were many factors that caused Busch to grow up and overcome adversity. The old Busch would have folded. He wouldn’t have been able to handle the pressure, and either got upset with himself or his team and threw a temper tantrum over the radio.
Not the new Busch.
Wisdom comes with age. Busch has always been one of NASCAR’s smarter fellows and is very outspoken about how he feels regarding situations. With time, he has been able to mature and even won over some of the fans as he was once the most hated man in NASCAR.
In winning the championship he ties his brother Kurt Busch at one title a piece, and has become the first pair of brothers to win Cup titles since Terry and Bobby Labonte.
There were a lot of growing pains as Busch’s career went on. He went through multiple aerodynamic changes, and went through a handful of crew chiefs to find the right one, Adam Stevens.
The duo had worked together for multiple seasons in the Xfinity Series, winning 19 times. When Stevens moved up to the Cup Series he was able to find some of that success right away with Busch that they had together in another division of NASCAR. They have chemistry and that is exactly what a crew chief needs with his driver. Stevens led Busch to their first championship.
“I leaned on Kyle Busch pretty heavy,” Stevens said. “You’ve, just got to get him close, that’s the beauty of Kyle. His talent, his skill and his dedication, his feedback is so good. I think anybody could have adjusted on his car today.”
No one can take away the fact that Busch is now a Cup champion. He will go to his grave knowing that he accomplished something that only 30 other men have done in NASCAR history. But his career isn’t done. He is only 30 years old and still has a lot to prove to himself and to his team that he can go down as one of the best drivers of all time.
“I think that when we talk about those past times that we missed off in the Chase and fell out for one reason or another, I think a lot of that was us, the race team broke apart,” said car owner Joe Gibbs. “Last year we couldn’t avoid that, it was just two cars hit us and we were trying to be real conservative. I think in a lot of ways he was ready, but our race team probably wasn’t ready. It take so much to get this, it really does. In pro sports what you learn is if you have a weakness you aren’t getting there at the end.”
The fact that Busch is now a champion is scary for his competition. He has always got the most out of his racecar. Prior to this season he was probably the most talented driver to have never won a Cup title. Now that he has won a title it could lead to an outbreak.
“This is a dream of a lifetime, a dream come true,” Busch said after winning the championship. “It’s something that happens every so often. I just can’t believe it with everything that happened this year. All of the turmoil and the things that I want through, that my wife went through, that my family went through. This championship is all of these guys and everyone who sacrificed to get me here.”
Even his closest rivals were there to congratulate him after picking up his first title. The retiring Jeff Gordon was one of the first competitors over to his car to give him words of wisdom.
“What a great driver,” Gordon said. “With all that he has been through this year, nobody is more deserving than him.”
Now that he has got the first title under his belt, Busch is going to be hard to stop. He stands over the motorsports world as a champion in its most competitive series.
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