May 2, 2025
By Zach Sturniolo
NASCAR.com – Special to NASCAR Wire Service
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — “Man, how come you’re not winning as much?”
Usually, Kyle Busch would be able to shrug off that question. He’s a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion. No one has won more in NASCAR than he has — 232 times.
The question is tougher to ignore, though, when it comes from your son.
Such is life at 40 for Kyle Busch, dad to the curious aforementioned 9-year-old Brexton and 2-year-old Lennix, and husband to Samantha.
Busch has had plenty of nicknames throughout his 20 years in the Cup Series. Rowdy. Wild Thing. KFB. One that feels impossible to accept, though, is “elder statesman.” And yet one of the sport’s most polarizing personalities since his ascension in 2005 now turns 40, thrust into a role as one of the sport’s most experienced drivers instead of the up-and-coming tornado he once was.
His career spans more than two decades — the majority of which has been spent winning with trophies overflowing, but now checkered flags and the victory bows are fewer and farther between.
Friday marked Busch’s 40th birthday, celebrating life as a man who remains as passionate as ever about racing — but now with the maturity and lessons of fatherhood tempering his once admitted over-the-top demeanor.
His life is a story of glorified highs and vilified lows. And with over half his life spent in racing’s public eye, there was never any place to hide. Ahead of Sunday’s Würth 400 at Texas Motor Speedway, Busch reflected on how the ugly molded the beauty, in part thanks to one guiding light: fatherhood.
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Even in his ladder climb toward stock-car glory, Busch seemed to make news anywhere he went.
By age 16 in 2001, he had already wowed enough people to convince prospective team owners to give him a shot in one of NASCAR’s three national series.
Hall of Fame team owner Jack Roush had already hired Kurt Busch, Kyle’s older brother, to drive his No. 97 Ford full-time in the Cup Series. Yet Kyle’s talent was so apparent so early that the team then signed the younger Busch for a part-time Craftsman Truck Series schedule in Roush Racing’s No. 99 Ford.
With that, one of the most electrifying NASCAR careers of the 21st century ignited.
Everything seemed to be going his way until the 2001 season finale, when Busch was ousted from the truck after practice at California Speedway due to a conflict with weekend sponsor Marlboro, which took umbrage with the 16-year-old Busch partaking in events under the tobacco company’s backdrop.
Thus the first “Kyle Busch rule” was born in 2002: No driver under the age of 18 would be eligible to compete in a NASCAR national series race moving forward. Suddenly, Busch was out of a scheduled contract with Roush Racing to pursue the Truck Series title in 2002, and Roush was short one Busch brother.
That unexpected hiatus triggered a transition from Roush to Hendrick Motorsports, marking the first seismic shift of Busch’s career. Suddenly, Busch was creating a home at Hendrick with mentors like four-time Cup champion Jeff Gordon and eventual seven-time champion Jimmie Johnson.
Success came instantly, with two wins in his rookie year of 2005 and single victories in 2006 and 2007 to follow. But it wasn’t without turbulence. As the brother of a fiery Kurt Busch, fans had already created their own opinion of Kyle by the time he ascended to Cup.
“I was mightily booed right out of the gate,” Busch said. “I was just a young kid, 18 years old, and maybe hadn’t really paid my dues of being with lesser teams and working my way into the bigger, better teams. I just started right out of the gate with Hendrick Motorsports, and so was obviously brought into the fold of the Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon era, in which you better win, especially if you’re in a Hendrick car.
“(I) didn’t quite do things the best of ways along those earlier days (or) handle certain situations in the best of light.”
The 2007 season thrust some of those highlights — or lowlights — into the spotlight.
His lone win came in a photo finish with Jeff Burton at Bristol, his first short-track victory in Cup and this time in NASCAR’s inaugural race for the “Car of Tomorrow.” He minced no words in Victory Lane, though: “I’m still not a very big fan of these things. I can’t stand to drive them. They suck.”
Eight weeks later, Busch was storming toward the front again, this time behind Burton and big brother Kurt for second place in the All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway. But a dive-bomb, three-wide move wiped out both Busches, resulting in two wrecked cars and neither taking home the $1 million prize.
“That boy’s got a lot of talent,” said FOX Sports broadcaster Mike Joy. “If only he could harness it on a weekly basis.”
In a 2022 documentary of Busch’s life titled “Rowdy,” Busch said of that incident: “That was the end, that night. That was the end of HMS (for Busch).”
Busch holds no fallacies over what led to those high-strung moments — lashing out at other competitors, reporters or even his own team. The Kyle Busch of 2025 summarized it best: “Very immature early.”
“Not having a whole lot of life experience to that (point) of getting into a professional career, one that’s in the limelight,” he added. “And you’re on TV every weekend and you don’t know really how to act in certain situations. You just kind of go through those moments, some of which you probably wish you could take back. …
“But I think that passion and drive and fire and desire of being one of the best — or wanting to be one of the best — got me to the place where I am today.”
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By 2008, Kyle Busch no longer was a second fiddle. Not to brother-turned-champion Kurt; not to Gordon; not to Johnson; not to Dale Earnhardt Jr., the sport’s most popular driver who just replaced him at Hendrick Motorsports. Instead, Busch rocketed onto the scene that year with Joe Gibbs Racing, driving its iconic No. 18 car with new sponsorship from Mars, Inc., via M&Ms and with Toyota, a new manufacturer for the team as well.
Departing Hendrick wasn’t easy on Busch, who said he was told at age 22: “Hey, you don’t really fit here. You’re not really our personality that we’re looking for at Hendrick.”
The implications of leaving a powerhouse organization could have meant the end of his competitive Cup career, and that wasn’t lost on him.
Enter Joe Gibbs Racing, which lost the bidding war on Earnhardt Jr. and needed the right fit for its No. 18 car in the midst of a trying time for the championship-winning program. Helping head that search was Dave Alpern, now the team president. The stress of recruiting Earnhardt, courting new sponsors and preparing to swap manufacturers weighed on Alpern. But if everything happens for a reason, then losing out on an Earnhardt signing was necessary to land Busch.
“You hate to say he was our second choice, but at the time, he was,” Alpern said.
This time, it wasn’t just a seismic shift for Busch; it was a move that would forever alter the NASCAR paradigm.
The wins were abundant, not just in the Cup Series but across all three national series. In the 12 seasons spanning 2008 through 2019, Busch won 52 Cup races, 85 Xfinity events for JGR, plus 50 Craftsman Truck Series contests. He also earned the 2009 Xfinity championship, then overcame severe leg injuries in 2015 to become a Cup Series champion and then snagged a second in 2019. He won so often in Truck and Xfinity competition that in 2017 officials put a limit on how many races Cup drivers could compete in annually, which was called another “Kyle Busch rule” by some.
“Kyle is a generational talent,” Alpern said.
With victories came ego, and with ego came haters. The more Busch won, the louder the crowd grew. There were some cheers. There were a lot of boos. And those boos were loud.
Welcome to the show, “Rowdy.”
Embodying the persona of fictional racer Rowdy Burns from the 1990 film, “Days of Thunder,” Busch’s intensity was unrivaled — an almost freakish devotion to doing whatever it took to be the best at every second.
“Kyle was complicated in some ways,” Alpern said. “Kyle had a switch that would flip, and it was at some point before the race started. … I would often go up to Kyle and do a picture, but he was not my first driver that I would go to on the grid because he had already flipped the ‘Rowdy’ switch on. And he was just zoned in, locked in. During the race, it was the switch.”
His frequent victory celebrations were punctuated by what became his trademark bow, snagging the checkered flag from the flagman after a smoky burnout and thanking the fans for their not-so-warm receptions.
“I think it was just through the theatrics of after races and a guy who liked to play with the haters, if you will,” Busch said. “The haters are motivators. So when you’re able to go out and win — and win a lot — you have this step. You have this character that you can play into and you can talk all the smack you wanna talk. And sometimes, that was to the haters. There was a lot of those back then. But when you had Rowdy Nation as your footprint and your backbone to be able to go out there and water-cooler talk on Mondays, they were able to go to bat for you.”
Triumph, though, was not without tribulation.
There were plenty of run-ins to highlight — the 2010 fall Texas race where a multi-lap penalty drew double hand gestures from Busch to a NASCAR official; the 2011 Southern 500 when he shoved a driverless No. 29 car out of his way after an incident with Kevin Harvick — but none were as volatile nor as public as his intentional wreck of Ron Hornaday at Texas in the fall of 2011, which resulted in a weekend-long suspension for Busch, ousting him from Xfinity and Cup competition the next two days.
Good, bad, ugly, polarizing — there was rarely indifference surrounding Kyle Busch. But for as extreme as his blowups were, he was continuously granted grace.
“Talent kind of breeds tolerance — so you tolerate a little more depending on how talented a person is,” Alpern said. “And that was the relationship with Kyle. But I think Kyle, again, generational talent for sure.”
NEXT BUSCH TO BLOSSOM
Leave it to your own kids to humble you.
At 9, Brexton Busch is finding his own success as a race-car driver. He competed in over 150 races in 2024, earning a class championship at Millbridge Speedway before a January trip to Oklahoma’s Tulsa Shootout, where he won the Junior Sprint A-Main for his most significant triumph yet.
It’s hardly a surprise these days to find Brexton in Victory Lane. His dad, on the other hand … well, it’s been a while since Kyle’s last Cup win.
The steady stream of success eventually slowed from a deluge to a trickle. On-track practice became limited during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Crew chief Adam Stevens, with whom Busch won his two Cup titles, left Busch for another JGR driver — Christopher Bell — in 2021. The Next Gen car debuted in 2022. And in 2023, Busch left JGR and joined the historic Richard Childress Racing outfit to drive its No. 8 Chevrolet.
None of that really matters when you’re 9, though. All Brexton sees is his peers — namely Owen Larson, son of 2021 Cup champ Kyle Larson — celebrating far more often than the Busch family on Sundays. In fact, the current 67-race dry spell is the longest of Busch’s career, winless since June 2023 at Worldwide Technology Raceway.
So Brexton is just wondering when his dad is going to start winning Cup races again, forcing Busch to confront the truth: Winning isn’t as easy as it once was.
“Candidly, he brings up the fact that Kyle Larson’s very successful, wins all the time,” Busch said with a pause. “And Owen gets to go to Victory Lane, gets to go out on the frontstretch and celebrates with his dad. And he’s like, ‘Man, how come you’re not winning as much?’ That doesn’t sit well with me, right? Like, that relights that fire for me to be able to go out there and run well, to be able to perform and win races so he can be there and he can celebrate and he can have fun in my success as well, not just his success.”
That shift of perspective — winning for a purpose other than his own fulfillment — is something he earned through growth as a parent. Born in 2015, Brexton has been present for plenty of his father’s success — including the 2015 title run. But those memories were too early to resonate with him.
“Brexton just doesn’t remember the days of Kyle winning nonstop,” Samantha Busch said. “And he doesn’t remember the fact that when Kyle won in 2019, he got to go along in the car. He doesn’t remember that stuff. So, not that Kyle needs any extra push or drive — he obviously always wants to be in Victory Lane — but that gives you extra motivation to do everything that you possibly, humanly can to get that win.”
In the meantime, the same fire that burns within Kyle has sparked within Brexton. Kyle admits five years later he was “probably a little harder on him that I should have” been when Brexton was 5, but he knew the potential his son had — and has — to be great.
“We’re like, ‘Hey, man, you got Busch blood. You know how to do this. This should come second nature. This is going to be natural for you to be as good as you are,’ ” Kyle said.
The fruits of that labor are paying dividends. Brexton frequently asks for film to review and study, whether on his own, with Kyle’s help or even with his friends at the track. Perhaps most importantly, Brexton wants to be at the track as often as possible.
“We’ve always been the type of parents that, just because Kyle does it, we don’t want to force anything on either of the kids,” Samantha Busch said. “And so we always took the approach of, for example, ‘Hey, Brexton, it’s your buddy’s birthday on Saturday. Do you want to go to the birthday party at the arcade, or do you want to go racing? It’s up to you.’ And 100% of the time, he’s chosen racing.”
So forgive Brexton, even if he pops the unintentionally jarring question of when his father will be successful on a regular basis again. He only asks because he’s his father’s biggest fan.
Kyle came excruciatingly close to snapping that long winless streak on March 2 at Circuit of The Americas, but a late caution brought Bell to Busch’s bumper. The two made contact in Busch’s attempt to defend, but Bell overtook the lead cleanly and drove away to the win. Busch’s dry spell continued, but a heavy dose of humility in his post-race interview offered insight into the person he has evolved into after 20 years of NASCAR Cup Series competition:
“I’ll give Christopher credit, though, where credit’s due — he ran me really hard and I was a complete butthead,” Busch told FOX Sports that day. “He did a great job working me over and just doing it the right way and being able to get by. Congrats to him. Great job by the 20 bunch, but wish it was us.”
Reflecting on that moment just five days later, Busch acknowledged that the guy who gave that interview — a father for nearly 10 years and a girl dad for nearly three to daughter Lennix — isn’t the same guy who climbed out of the car 15 years ago.
“Maybe I’m a little bit more laid back, per se, in certain situations,” he said. “Like, I would have gotten way more upset years past at COTA and throwing a race away toward the end. But definitely trying to show Brexton the way that you have to be gracious in winning and gracious in defeat. I feel like there’s definitely some different mindsets there post-race than maybe what there once was.”
It helps, too, when he gets into the family car to leave the track with his loudest cheerleaders in the car.
“He was so close to winning,” Samantha Busch said. “And we get in the car, and both Brexton and Lennix were like, ‘Good job, Dad! You were up front all day. Awesome job.’
“And sure, it means a lot from your team and everybody else, but it’s something special when it comes from your kids.”
KYLE BUSCH TODAY
Rowdy has revolved back to Kyle Busch.
That comes straight from the man himself, who has seen his persona shift into different forms over the years.
“I would say the ‘Rowdy’ nickname has certainly evolved,” he said. “Maybe not so much ‘Rowdy’ anymore — kind of back to ‘Kyle Busch,’ if you will, in my later years here.”
Don’t take that as a sign of any less fire within Busch to continue — or perhaps return to — excelling at the top of his game. The stats aren’t exceptional anymore — four top 10s in 10 races are good, not great, and Busch would tell you as much. His 17.6 average finish leaves more to be desired, but his 11.3 average start is improved by over five spots over the 2024 campaign, which marked the first winless season of his career. Since joining RCR in 2023, Busch has won three races, all within his first 15 races with the organization.
But it’s been 20 years of this. And now, the guy who was once the fresh-faced kid in the garage is 40. What still drives Busch to fight for more?
“Winning is the ultimate thing, right?” he said. “You want to go out there, and you always want to strive to win. I feel like when I first got to RCR, the cars were ahead of the curve, and everybody was doing a great job. We were fast. And as we went through that first year, we got our hands slapped a few times by NASCAR, but other teams definitely found ways of being able to get faster, and we didn’t quite do that as well. But coming into this year, I feel like things have really turned around, where we’ve gotten our stuff a little bit better, and I hope that that continues.
“Being able to win and putting smiles on your kids’ faces and going to Victory Lane and celebrating with them is what drives me. And I want to prove — you know, Brexton knows my success. He knows that I was successful once upon a time. But I want him to be able to see it as Owen gets to see it with ‘tiny Kyle (Larson).’ So, really hope that that we can do some more of that this year, that we can win four, five, six times and we can go out there and contend through the playoffs.”
That passion and that confidence are part of what makes Kyle Busch, well, Kyle Busch. Even if parts of that came from Rowdy.
But no one knows him like his wife, Samantha, who has been by Kyle’s side for over 17 years.
“Today, he is a completely different person,” she said. “He essentially grew up in the public eye of racing. And we’ve all seen Kyle — he was more of a hot head, and he was quick to blame others. That was a lot of what made him an amazing driver, too, at times. But I think as years go on, just like any other person does — but of course, his was maybe displayed more publicly — you grow up and you mature and you realize that some things aren’t worth the fight.
“You realize that your job is super important and your legacy is super important, not only for you, but now for your kids to watch.”
The boos are noticeably quieter for Busch these days. There are plenty of theories: He’s driving a Chevrolet again. He’s driving for RCR. He’s more tolerable when he’s not stinking up the show. You name it.
But maybe — just maybe — the passionate fanbase that is Rowdy Nation has grown with former haters who have since come to respect KFB for all he is — and, of course, for what he still might be.
