Transcript of NASCAR's Kurt Busch Remembers His Brother Kyle

Wherever you are in the world, and in your grief, I'm glad you're here. You're not alone. My guest today on the podcast is NASCAR champion and Hall of Famer Kurt Busch. He's grieving the recent death of his younger brother, NASCAR champion Kyle Busch. On May 21, 2026, Kyle died from severe pneumonia that progressed quickly into sepsis. He was just 41 years old. Kurt was born 6 years ahead of Kyle. Their dad, Tom, worked as a mechanic and raced locally, passing on his racing knowledge to his sons.

You were 6 when Kyle was born.

Yeah, we're 6 years apart.

Yeah.

And I was like, "Oh, man, I thought I was going to be an only child. Now you're here."

Were you always interested in racing?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Our life, cars. Cars, cars, cars. My grandfather, who I never met on my dad's side, he was a used car salesman.

I didn't know that. That's cool.

And then my dad, he was an auto mechanic and a tool salesman. So, and then he had his street rods, and then we had his race car in the garage. So there's always cars to touch, feel, and work on. In the '80s, all my buddies in Vegas, I grew up in Las Vegas, they all had dirt bikes. I'm like, "Dad, Dad, can maybe Christmas, can I get a dirt bike?"

I really wanted a dirt bike too.

Right. On Christmas Day, so I go out in the yard, and there's this go-kart. It's all shiny and orange and looks awesome. I'm like, "Man, I want a dirt bike." And he said this to me, and I didn't quite comprehend it at that age. I was 7 or 8. And he said, "Son, you're going to live a longer life on 4 tires than you will on 2." And that's where it started.

How did you actually start racing?

My dad let me drive his race car when I turned 16. And then we built a car, and then me and my dad raced together. And I was like, "Just father-son."

You would race against your dad.

Yeah. And I beat him in my second race ever. We started traveling around, and it was like when the Bushes showed up, everyone's like, "Oh, we're running for 3rd now." Right? I mean, when we went to the track, my dad, it was no social hour. It was, "We're here for the trophy. We're not here to make friends." And so that was instilled in me, and it got instilled in Kyle as well. Just all those years, it was like he was putting me through this racing education that I didn't even think that it would turn out the way that it did.

When was your first professional race?

I was 19 years old. The race was live on ESPN. Like, this was the big moment. And I won that race. And then my name just, like, you feel this aura of, "Who's this kid? What's going on?" And I'm racing in the Cup Series by 22 years old.

Wow. When did you notice Kyle's interest? Or was it just always a given?

Everything that I did, he wanted to do just as good at the same time. Right?

Even though he's 6 years younger.

Yeah. I'm 19, and he's watching his older brother on TV winning races, and he's just starting out. Age 12, I think, is when things opened up with the little Legend Car races.

What are Legend Car races?

They're motorcycle-powered cars. It's a great, great spec division car to learn how to race in. I mean, they'll go over 100 miles an hour.

Wow.

I mean, my nephew, Brexton, he's 11.

This is Kyle's son.

He's Kyle's son. He's already racing in those Legend Cars.

Wow.

Just imagine, your older brother's doing all this, and he's 12, and he was just as fast as me when I'd come back and race a few of those Legend Car races.

At 12, he was just as fast as you in racing Legend Cars.

Yes.

How was that for you?

He was watching me. Like, I mean, he's working on the cars, he's doing everything, but he's doing everything just at turbo speed, following me. I got him in the Truck Series at age 16. He's racing in the professional ranks at 16. So that's where we're a little different. For me, I was flunking out of college, got an opportunity to race, and I won in this race at Vegas. And I just got out in Victory Lane, and I'm like, "This is what I got to do." For him, it was just fast track just to get to where I already was, which was in the NASCAR Cup Series.

In 2001, you had won a race, and I think you said something to the effect of, like, "You think I'm good? Where do you see my younger brother?"

I did what I could everywhere I went to leave a bridge open and to leave a road paved for him to go through. There were times when we would have some, like, heart-to-heart talks, and he'd be like, "Man, my first-ever NASCAR race, they booed me because of you." And I'm like, "Well, you'll make your own name, bud." So there's a little bit of that friction of the sibling rivalry when he first got to Cup.

He felt like he was in your shadow.

Yeah. And I gave him a tainted name because I was having some feuds with some rival drivers, and the fans, they were booing me. It was all right. But his friction with people and his tenacity, mine was aggressive. His was doubly aggressive because he knew he was that good.

For people who don't know racing, he was known for his attitude. He was known for saying what was on his mind.

And he had no recoil with it. He was fine with it.

He didn't care.

He didn't care. He took the black hat and rolled with it.

There's a video of you two. This was in 2012. I just want to place.

The engines stayed together as we were overheating all day long. Just all the guys, man. This is a great day for Monster Energy. And this guy right here, I'm so proud of you. You proud of me? Did I do all right as a driver?

You scared the hell out of me, but you made it happen. That's all that matters.

He told me what to do driving like at lap 40. And I was like, "Here we go. Here's the owner, Tom the driver."

Get on the wheel.

How to drive. So no, I just got to thank Monster and TAG Heuer, our guys at Toyota. This was an unbelievable race. And the fans here nationwide, it's a great series to run, and I'm happy to run here this year, half the season with Kyle.

You can feel all that joy, right? And then I turn and see you, and I'm like, "Damn it, yeah, he's gone." I keep trying to go back to those memories of good when people ask me about things or want to talk. That's one of our biggest highlights together, just that project of building a team, building it from scratch. That's where it really starts hitting, is that was the start of something very special.

In 2015, Kyle narrowly beat you in a 1-2 finish.

Sonoma, yeah.

In Sonoma, yeah. Was this after his accident?

Yes. He broke his right leg and left foot at Daytona.

And the crash looked really bad.

Oh, dude, it was horrendous. I mean, it was like 100 yards that he got to run at a straight-up concrete wall that wasn't protected by a safer barrier. So he gets hurt in February, and then his son is born in May. And he goes to rehab, and he pushes himself, and he's back on the track in June. I think it was like his third race back. I was on the gas to catch him, and I ran out of laps. I got to his rear bumper on the last lap, and I probably could have, like, thrown it in there just to try to see if I could wreck him.

To wreck him?

Yeah. Yeah.

Like, actually wreck him?

Yeah. And then I get the win. But it was one of those moments of, he went through all this, and he's already back to winning. It was like a slingshot moment of just, now he's going to the stratosphere on who he wanted to be in this sport and ended up winning the championship that year.

Let's just watch that end.

I mean, you have to admit, this is.

Yeah. So there's Kyle, and then I'm in the red car chasing him down.

Red car.

Yeah.

For this young man.

And this road course, you're pushing hard on the brake pedal. You're on the gas. Road courses are very physical.

And his foot was one of the things he was operating.

Yeah. It was still in somewhat of a soft cast.

Last chance at Turn 11. Watch his foreign of 15 back there.

Yeah, I guess it wasn't that close. I needed one more lap.

The final turn. No crutches necessary. Kyle Busch wins at Sonoma.

That was the first time you finished 1-2.

Can you believe that? Only 4 times that we finished 1-2. I'm close to 800 starts. He was going to get to 800 4 times. I would have thought there would have been dozens of opportunities for the 1-2 finishes.

There was a race where you guys collided.

Yeah, that was back in '07.

And I read that you stopped talking to each other for, like, a year afterward.

Yeah. He said that I wrecked him. I'm like, "You wrecked me." And then you look back at the footage, and you can take it from both sides.

I read that it was your grandmother who kind of said, "All right, enough. You guys got to get back."

Yeah. Grandma did want a peaceful Thanksgiving. She's like, "You guys need to just bury the hatchet."

She didn't want punching at Thanksgiving.

Yeah. We were able to get through Thanksgiving, but it was still a little bit of friction. That's when he was starting to come into his own. He was just dominating. That's when I think we found another chapter in our relationship that he's going to big time. And I was proud of him. I was starting to concede, like, "All right, he's going to double my stats. He's going to triple my stats."

How was that realization for you?

That was tough. Like, I had to grow up and go, "You know what? You helped him, but you're not as fast as him." Every athlete goes through it. But here we are, just two blue-collar kids out of Vegas. My mom and dad, they have Kyle will be in the Hall of Fame one day. They have two Hall of Famers. When all this started out was, it was just a hobby.

When you were inducted to the Hall of Fame, which was in January.

January of this year, yeah.

Kyle introduced you. I just want to play what he said.

I couldn't be more proud of my brother Kurt, as we're just two kids from Las Vegas, Nevada, raised in a blue-collar, hardworking family, where hard work wasn't optional. We were taught to grind it out and to make it happen. None of this came easy, and in this sport, it shouldn't. And watching Kurt believe in himself long before the results ever showed up has been an incredible experience for me to learn from. He earned every bit of this, and I'm so proud to call him my brother. It is now my honor to officially induct Kurt Busch into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Again, this is so tough to see him and hear his voice. And he did it so well, and I'm just very thankful that we had the ride that we did, you know? For me this year, I mean, these highs of Hall of Fame induction, the lows of my brother, and even last year in December, I lost a good friend, Greg Biffle, and his family.

His entire family was killed in a plane crash.

In a plane crash, yeah.

So in the last year, you were inducted to the Hall of Fame.

Yeah.

Your brother died, and your best friend.

Just I'm trying to grieve in ways to help people. I want your mom, my dad, and Samantha.

Samantha is his wife.

Samantha Busch, yeah. And, you know, our crew guys, Kyle's crew that's around, it's just I try to do it where I'm not biting off more than I can chew and then back off a little bit. Like, I'm doing another extracurricular race in Washington, DC, and running a different old car of mine. And when you race your old cars, you have all those old memories of what that car drove like and what it felt like. And so it gives me that release. But then I'm just trying to help everyone get through this and share stories.

You haven't talked much about him.

No.

Because it's too painful.

I mean, I'm 600 texts behind, and I'm a guy that usually goes to bed at 0:00.

Wow.

And I try to connect with people that reached out, and, you know, I can do so many in one day.

And some of those are from months ago.

Yeah.

From right after.

I have a nice therapist that I worked with towards the twilight of my career on just things sports-wise, and, you know, retirement is approaching.

Has therapy helped?

It has. I embraced it a few years back, whereas the young Kurt, you know, a teenager, 20-year-old, 30-year-old, nah. But I've had a really good group of people around me since, and it gives me that advice to help others.

Did you know that Kyle was sick?

I didn't know that Kyle was sick. I had heard that he asked for a shot at the Watkins Glen race, I think, like, 2 weeks before. I know through my physicals and his physicals at NASCAR, we both have arthritis and gout and struggle with sinus issues. I struggled quite a bit, needing prednisone, needing a steroid shot. And so I know he probably went through the same thing.

So it was because there was that race where he was driving, and he said on his radio, "I'm going to need a shot after."

Yeah. It was most likely a sinus shot of some sort. But I didn't know he was sick. People around him said that he had a little cough here or there. He won a race the Friday before. He was opening a go-kart track somewhere in North Carolina with his son, Braxton, on Tuesday the day before. There was no signs of what this led to.

He was in a simulator practicing.

It's a normal routine now for Cup Series guys on Wednesdays to spend a couple hours in the simulator.

And what happened?

So he's just doing his normal session. Session ended around 5:00. He gets out and goes to the bathroom and starts coughing. And his crew chief, crew chief is kind of like your wife at the track. It's your best friend. You take care of each other, and you share a lot of secrets with your crew chief. And crew chief's like, "You all right?" And then when he went into the bathroom, Kyle was sitting on the floor with his back up against the wall. He's like, "You don't look so good." Kyle's like, "No." He goes, "I need to call an ambulance."

We'll be right back with more of Kurt Busch. Were you able to be with your brother at the end?

I was. You know, Samantha, my mom. My dad didn't want to go in. My dad wanted to remember him in his eyes the way he wanted to see him. I respected that.

I understand that.

When other team owners started to come to the hospital, NASCAR executives came, and then a couple of his best friends came, that's when it starts getting real. It was tough.

Did he know how bad this was?

None of us knew. It happened that fast.

You didn't know that that was the end?

Mm-mm. The sequence of events is just terrific. He didn't deserve this. I'm here to help with where I can. Samantha's got the toughest job right now.

Were you able to talk with him at all?

No. No. I know he could hear me.

I read a number of people in the NASCAR and the driving community said it made them kind of rethink their own attention to their own health and just taking it more seriously.

It's a big eye-opener. All of us feel the pressure of making sure that we stay in the seat or stay in the car to race because if we're out, you know, a young driver might jump in and win the race or do better. We're all independent contractors in NASCAR.

If you're not in the race, you can't win it.

I mean, early on, my second year, I hadn't won yet, and I felt like I was just going to get cut, and I'd be out. It's pretty tough in certain situations.

Kyle was already thinking about his own retirement and turning to coaching his son.

Yeah, we talked about it quite a bit. He was on a nice 5-year plan because Braxton is 5 years away from being 16 and racing professionally in the truck series. That was the goal. And Kyle wanted to drop back off of Cup and run trucks full-time. And actually, he wanted NASCAR to change the rules so that as a Cup driver, he could still be eligible for a truck series championship. If he could have won the truck championship, this one gets tough, he would have been the only driver in all of NASCAR's history to be a 3-time champion in the top 3 series.

What's it like to see Braxton racing?

It's so cool. His racing craft and how he talks, it's like Kyle. I see a lot of him in him.

You do?

Yeah. He's going to be a ball of fire. He's on the fast track more so than even Kyle.

Really?

Yes. And he loves it. He's into the data. He pulls up his little tablet, and he's like, "Uncle Kurt, check this out. I went above 100 miles per hour my first time."

And he's going through, and he pulls up the setup.

I told him, like, "Hey, what happened with that purple car, you know?" I'm like, "Isn't that the kid that's 15?" And he goes, "Yeah, but I'm better than him." Like, something Kyle would say. You know, Samantha and Kyle have raised a great young man. And with their daughter, Lennox, as well. Kyle and I talked years ago that when Braxton was going to be getting a little older and racing more on the asphalt tracks, I said I'd be more involved. And this was his first year of racing on asphalt.

You want to be involved?

Oh, absolutely.

NASCAR did a tribute of the Coca-Cola 600, and I just want to play some of that video. This is the missing man formation.

I've never seen that before. Literally, I've never seen that before. It's just like, wow. It's like our family grew by millions right there in that moment, it felt like.

With all the people watching.

Yeah. And that formation, I've never seen that before done anywhere. And then with the 8 that they sprayed into the infield grass, you know, with my brother's date on there, just I didn't want to go.

You didn't want to go?

I didn't want to go to the track. It's too soon. It didn't feel real. I'm glad we went. I needed to be there for my mom and my dad. Samantha, Brax, and Lennox, it's just I was thankful for that moment with NASCAR. As soon as I turned around after this, all the drivers wanted to come up to me, and I'm like, "Of course, you know, thank you." It's just this was rough.

It's a lot.

Yeah.

It's a lot to deal with.

Yeah. I didn't even realize, you know, I didn't want to look back. I could feel the presence of everyone behind us. I just didn't want to look back. Like, it was still just in shock. Like, it was just like we're all in disbelief. And I think we're all finding the best way we can to battle through this.

Does it feel real now?

It yes. Yeah. And that's where I've had some conversations and went and grieved and went and raced some races. And then seeing Braxton race, you know, that was tough.

What helps?

Different conversations help, you know, therapy and going to the track and people give you a hug. And some people want to talk, and then some people just give you that soulful feeling of condolences without saying anything.

It helps to go to the track, though? It's not too painful?

It helps, yeah. Can't go too much. Like, too much exposure to it is like just being out in the sun. You get sunburnt type feel. I had that happen a couple times. Now I've learned, OK, it's enough. I need to go home. It's just so vivid at the track because everybody has a number 8 or an 18 or I was at a Cubs game recently, and this little guy has an M&M's jacket, and my brother's racing sponsored jacket. And I had to go up to him. And he goes, "Your brother personally gave me this jacket."

No kidding.

7 years ago or so. And he pulls it up on his phone.

Wow.

This nice little guy, like, 70 years old. And he's like, "I wear this everywhere." I'm out on a tour on the mall here in Washington, DC. And this young girl comes up, and she says, "Sorry about your brother. My father was one of his first Jack men on his professional race team."

Wow.

So there's going to be those signs. And it's a matter of just taking it in and just take a deep breath and be OK.

The first time you got in a car after he died, a race car, was that difficult?

I actually got in the car, like, a half hour before our practice session just to sit there and have a little chat.

Chat with?

With myself and with a prayer with him.

Do you talk to him?

It's when I'm getting in the car, I just check in. Yeah. Because racing, what I'm doing right now and these vintage races and these extracurricular style races, I'd love for him to be out there with me. Once Braxton gets to be that age, I would have loved for all three of us to go out there and race.

I wonder if getting into a car will be the place where you feel your brother.

It's primarily been around the car.

It has been?

Yeah. And it's almost like if I make a mistake on the track, I'm going to get scolded because he would have seen it, you know?

Stepping into a vehicle, getting on a racetrack, you can feel him there.

The three or four times so far this year, yeah, it's just because it's so strong right now. It's so new and still so much of a feel of disbelief.

It's only been a few months. What do you hope the grief becomes, like, in your mind?

I already know that he's the winningest driver in NASCAR. Everyone knows it. And the legacy that he's left behind with the amount of drivers that he has coached and the amount of crew members that have worked for him or raced with him. And when people tell me stories on how he affected their life in a positive way, it helps me move forward.

You like that?

It helps.

Yeah?

Yeah. But only so much at a time. It feels like dinners have been more intimate with my parents, advice that they had heard from a racing team owner that lost their son, that holidays are tougher, birthdays are tougher. August 18th, it's now Kyle Busch Day, 8/18. Yeah. It's just going to hit harder for a while and different.

Is there anything else you want people to know?

I just love the phases that we went through as brothers, you know? We're 6 years apart. And when you're teenagers, 6 years is an eternity of being apart. And then you get to your 40s, 6 years is like 6 days. You're the same, right? I loved how we went through these phases even on the racetrack of the sibling rivalry was real, then helping each other with sponsorships and, you know, the key things to make us stronger that we didn't tell other racers, you know, about this track or this moment or this.

But you knew it.

He yielded. And I was able to win that race. And I called him afterwards. I said, "Thank you." And he goes, "I know. I know." Those are the things I miss the most. And that's my last NASCAR win. He helped me win it.

I didn't know this until you were just talking. It's like a secret language or a feeling that only you and Kyle could understand between you on the racetrack. It wasn't spoken, but through the.

The brotherhood, yeah.

The brotherhood and the feel you just knew you were communicating with each other. It's a form of communication without words. And that's a bond that you and he share that no one else does.

Yeah. Thank you. You picked up on it. It's hard to describe. And.

It's beautiful.

It is. It's poetic in a way.

To feel that and not even see, like, him, but just know it's like a mind meld that you can't share with anybody else.

It is an unspoken language. We're pretty tight on track, and I could feel it.

What a beautiful thing to have had.

It was pretty special. But thank you. I haven't really talked about him much, and I appreciate it. It's therapeutic in ways.

It's really lovely to learn about him and about your relationship.

Winning his brother's in NASCAR history took two of us to figure it out.

Thanks so much for listening.