As NASCAR mourns Kyle Busch, the show goes on at Nashville Superspeedway | Estes
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LEBANON – It’s “still tough,” said NASCAR’s Bubba Wallace.
Sadly, it’ll continue to be.
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Thoughts will wander to what happened. To his absent friend. To Kyle Busch’s family. To those “conversations that you wish you had” with Busch when you could, Wallace said.
And, also, to advice Wallace once received from racing royalty.
“Richard Petty told me this when we were driving for him: ‘It's not work when you get in the car,’” Wallace said. “That's where we come to life and have fun and get to be ourselves. … Throughout all the stuff going on last week, on the racetrack, off the racetrack, you just wish you could hit the fast-forward button to Sundays and to be able to escape it all for a couple of hours.”
So it was on the cool, pleasant evening of May 31 at Nashville Superspeedway. This year’s Cracker Barrel 400, ultimately won by polesitter Denny Hamlin, had a cathartic feel.
Middle Tennessee welcomed NASCAR back at an especially unfortunate and emotional time. The sport, clearly, was still grieving the tragic death of Busch, one of its most successful and well-known drivers. Busch died suddenly on May 21 from pneumonia that progressed into sepsis.
In a world accustomed to the risks drivers take on any track in every race, it was more difficult to wrap minds around an otherwise healthy 41-year-old having that happen.
“It just reminds you that there's more life outside of just racing,” Kyle Larson said, “and there’s more risks outside of just racing as well. Enjoy your time on this earth, because you definitely never know when your time is up.”
Three days later, the show went on for NASCAR. The Coca-Cola 600 went off as planned in Charlotte, which is what Busch would have wanted, drivers agreed.
Had they not run? Wallace imagined Busch’s criticism would've been with words unfit for a family newspaper. “So, yes,” Wallace added, “I think it was good (to race).”
“It was really weird not having Kyle there (in Charlotte),” Chase Elliott said. “It's still weird not having him here again this weekend, and moving forward, I think it always will be.”
Indeed, there will be few places NASCAR can go without traces of Busch’s racing legacy. Nashville’s revitalized track over in Wilson County certainly held plenty of those memories.
This Superspeedway was where Busch famously smashed a Les Paul guitar after a win in 2009. Then, 12 years later, he playfully mimicked like he’d do it again (but didn't) after a NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts win that was his 100th series victory.
“I love racing in Nashville,” Busch said in 2019, and that love was tangible at the track all weekend.
Reminders of Busch were everywhere, from hats to shirts to decals to the No. 8 near Turn 4 to the paint scheme of Ricky Stenhouse Jr.’s No. 47 car to the honorary silence from the track’s public address system during the eighth lap of the NASCAR Cup Series race.
On May 30, the two previous race winners Layne Riggs (NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series) and Justin Allgaier (NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series) each bowed to the crowd, a clear nod to Busch’s celebratory style.
Even country music’s Gavin Adcock, the honorary pace car rider, noted how he’d been a Busch fan for most of his life.
“It’ll be kind of bittersweet going out there,” said Adcock beforehand.
He was wearing a black “Rowdy” tank top.
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at [email protected] and hang out with him on Bluesky @gentryestes.bsky.social
This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: As NASCAR mourns Kyle Busch, the show goes on for Nashville's race