Analysis: Daniel Suárez, Spire victory reflect lasting legacy of Kyle Busch

CONCORD, N.C. — Daniel Suárez spent the 72 hours before Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600 grieving a friend, a mentor and a personal role model in the wake of Kyle Busch’s death.

Five hours later, Suárez climbed as the race leader from his No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet — a car prepared in the shop that previously housed Kyle Busch Motorsports — as rain began to fall harder at Charlotte Motor Speedway. And in that moment, when NASCAR race control decided the competition was over, Suárez masked his tears in the falling precipitation, celebrating his first crown-jewel victory in the NASCAR Cup Series’ first race since Busch’s passing on Thursday.

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The through lines connecting Suárez and Spire Motorsports back to Kyle Busch are inseparable to those on the Spire team. That’s how Suárez wanted to honor Busch in victory.

“I want to make sure that the focus and the most important thing about this victory is not Spire Motorsports. It’s not Daniel Suárez. It’s Kyle Busch,” Suárez said, “because he was a very, very important piece for me to be here and for Spire Motorsports to be where it is right now.”

Suárez’s immigration from Mexico to the United States came in pursuit of stock-car racing glory. But when he arrived stateside in the early 2010s, he was a young man with a lot of talent but no ability to speak the English language. Nevertheless, his ability to drive and his work ethic in his rise through regional ranks caught the eye of none other than Busch. So when the two became teammates through Joe Gibbs Racing in 2015, when Suárez landed in what is now the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, Busch opened his playbook to the up-and-coming Suárez.

“Back in 2015, Kyle and I, we used to be on the phone every single week because he was helping me, trying to understand what I needed to look for, trying to understand the race track,” Suárez said. “Back then, we didn’t have SMT, we didn’t have data, so everything was by feel. If you had experience, you had an advantage. So he didn’t have to help me. He didn’t have to help this Mexican kid that can barely speak English. He was already a legend of the sport. And he took the time every single week to help me.

“And that, for me, spoke very, very highly of not who he is as a driver, but who he is as a person. And most people didn’t know that side of him. I got to know that side of him. Those are the kind of things I want to remember about him. And honestly, because of those things, he made me want to want to be like him, wanting to help others, wanting to give a hand to those upcoming drivers that need a hand. He was a role model.”

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Daniel Suárez receives advice from Kyle Busch in 2016.

Spire’s shop today in Mooresville, North Carolina — about 20 miles northwest of Sunday’s celebration in Concord — was the house Kyle Busch built for Kyle Busch Motorsports and then sold to Spire Motorsports in 2023 along with other assets. Spire co-owner Jeff Dickerson served both as Busch’s spotter and business manager when Busch was at Hendrick Motorsports, driving the No. 5 Chevrolet as a teammate to Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson. And Spire Motorsports president Bill Anthony worked alongside Dickerson through their agency, Motorsports Management International. Dickerson traces Spire’s racing DNA directly back to those days in the No. 5 car.

That the Spire team earned just its second Cup victory Sunday since moving into that shop for the 2024 season was poignant. Busch earned his last NASCAR victory May 15 in a Craftsman Truck Series race at Dover Motor Speedway driving the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet. Sunday, the No. 7 Spire Motorsports Chevrolet was back in Victory Lane, this time on one of NASCAR’s grandest stages in a crown-jewel event at Charlotte.

“There’s a lot of symbolism in that,” Anthony told NASCAR.com in Victory Lane. “When we represented Kyle back in the Motorsports Management days, we were there when he built this shop. And how it started out, it was going to be a small late model shop, and then at the same time he was buying and expanding his Truck team, and that was a very important moment in his life. So we were there a lot for that journey, and there were some really hard parts and some really good parts. But obviously he built something that was totally amazing.

“When we moved into that building, and you look at the 100-plus trophies that he put in there, he had more trophies than he had places to put them. And we’ve emptied those cases out, and we’re starting to fill them, But to be able to comprehend what he accomplished over two decades is unbelievable.”

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Walking through the halls of Spire Motorsports today, remnants of KBM still persist both physically and visually. Where KBM’s legacy lives in reality, though, is within the team’s identity, its mission statement in the pursuit of victory.

On Sunday, Dickerson recalled a story from his spotting days, when Busch was following Kevin Harvick’s Chevrolet around the same 1.5-mile Charlotte oval some 20 years earlier. Busch took the opportunity to relay everything he could see mechanically back to his crew chief, Alan Gustafson, who today sits atop Chase Elliott’s pit box.

“I just remember [Busch] driving around telling Alan exactly where the track bar was on the 29, how much you know rake was in it,” Dickerson said with a smile. “And you’re just like, ‘he’s only going like 200 miles an hour into the corner.’ But he was just so gifted. He just strived for perfection, and you just had to meet it. And it just made everybody better. And he was just so maniacal about it.

“I think that’s that through line for all of us, I think, that worked with him along the way. I mean, I don’t think that story’s just original to me. I think anybody that ever worked with him on a race team or in business, right — because I mean he just wants to know every detail. He wants to tell you how you’re screwing it up and doing it wrong, and he just wants to know. But yeah, I think the thing that carries on in our place, and certainly some of these other teams here, too, it’s just really just that high bar, and you had to meet it.”

There are numerous people who today work at Spire who once worked at KBM. Among them is Andy Gee, Spire Motorsports’ vice president of partnerships. Gee began working for Busch’s program in 2011 as its communications director, a role he held until 2022 when he became its director of marketing operations.

“When Spire purchased KBM in the building,” Gee joked of the 2023 transaction, “I think he got an extra dollar for me to be included in the sale.”

When Busch won the Truck Series race this February at EchoPark Speedway near Atlanta, it marked his first NASCAR win in a full calendar year, his 68th total in the series and 44th since Gee showed up in 2011.

“Gee comes up to me in Victory Lane,” Busch recalled in his winning press conference, “and I was like, ‘you want a photo?’ He goes, ‘Yeah, I’ll take a photo. It’s been 14 years, might as well get another one. We don’t have enough, right?’ And I said, ‘Well, you never know when the last one is, so you better freaking get one today, OK?’ And I mean, that’s true, the honest truth. I think I said that for years, even when I was clipping them off at 25 at a time. You just never know when the last one is going to be.”

Gee’s emotion in Victory Lane Sunday was palpable, reflecting on a heavy day, a heavy weekend, a heavy absence emphasized during pre-race ceremonies Sunday as the NASCAR community honored the Busch family, including his wife Samantha and children Brexton and Lennix.

“It was just an unbelievable moment to see the whole NASCAR community come together for Brexton and Samantha and the whole family and Lennix,” Gee said. “So then to have it end here in Victory Lane with Daniel, who means so much to Kyle, and Kyle means so much to him, it’s just been a tough week. There’s still some toughness coming in the coming weeks. But this is a moment, I’m sure, Kyle’s looking down — he might have been the one helping out with a little bit of the rain to get Daniel to Victory Lane.”

Suárez will now forever be known as a Coca-Cola 600 champion, and Spire a winning team in a crown-jewel event. But they also remain reflections of Busch’s lasting legacy as a mentor, a competitor and a racer.

“One of my goals this week and weekend is for people to understand these stories of him,” Suárez said, “because a lot of people didn’t know who he was as a person. Many people, fans, they knew him as a racing driver. But the person, the person who is behind that fire suit, behind that helmet, that’s what counts the most, that family man. Every time that you talk to Kyle about Brexton, his eyes light up. He was a family man. And because of that, this race is so special.”

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