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Kyle Busch embraced being ‘Rowdy’ — and NASCAR needed him

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Thumb through the dictionary and it’s easy to find a slew of adjectives to describe Kyle Busch.

Polarizing? Absolutely. Fearless? Check. Exceptional? Yes. Unapologetic? Also yes.

Some called him a jerk, aggressive and controversial. Indeed, Busch could be all those things on and off the racetrack.

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But the word that described him the best was the nickname bestowed upon him when he broke into NASCAR and started dominating tracks with an unabashed style: Rowdy.

It came from the character Rowdy Burns, the villain in Tony Scott’s 1990 racing film “Days of Thunder” portrayed by Michael Rooker. It was a persona that Busch fully embraced as his career started taking off, and after rivalries with Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Brad Keselowski went from simmering to boiling. Busch even drove the No. 51 in the Truck Series, the same number Rowdy had plastered on his door in the Hollywood movie.

“You come to the point where you’re like, ‘Okay, I’m going to wear this black hat. They want me to be the villain? Let’s do it.’ I went full in just being Rowdy,” Busch said. “I’m not going to say it wasn’t fun being the villain, because I was also winning. I don’t care. I’m going home with the trophy and I’m going home with the check.”

Ultimately, professional sports are drama and entertainment. They need heroes and they need villains. They need good guys and they need bad guys. And during an era when NASCAR’s popularity was waning in the late 2000s and 2010s, it needed unique personalities.

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It needed rowdiness. It needed Kyle Busch.

At just 41 years old, Busch died on Thursday after he had been hospitalized with an unspecified severe illness. He leaves behind a wife, two children, and a singular impactful legacy in NASCAR that was full of winning.

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Remembering Kyle Busch’s life and NASCAR career in photos

Kyle Busch’s career left a lasting mark on NASCAR, with achievements and moments that defined his time in the sport.

Above, Kyle Busch, driver of the No. 7 HendrickCars.com Chevrolet, celebrates with daughter, Lennix Busch son, Brexton Busch and wife, Samantha Busch in victory lane after winning the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Fr8 Racing 208 at Echo Park Speedway on Feb. 21, 2026, in Hampton, Georgia.

(Sean Gardner, Getty Images)

If someone were building a Mount Rushmore of the greatest stock car drivers of all-time, there’s a compelling case to be made that Busch should be on it.

He is ninth all-time in wins in NASCAR’s top-tier Cup Series and captured a pair of championships while driving for Joe Gibbs Racing. One of those titles, in 2015, came after Busch missed the first 11 races of the season due to a broken leg. He returned and won five races and placed inside the top 10 in 11 others to secure his first Cup Series title, showing off the determination that made him one of the greatest ever to get behind the wheel.

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Busch is also NASCAR’s all-time leader in victories in the Truck Series with 69 wins and the second-tier O’Reilly Auto Parts Series with 102. Combined across all three of NASCAR’s national touring competitions, no driver in the history of the sport has as many victories as Busch’s 234. The only other driver with 200 is The King, Richard Petty. That’s pretty good company.

He’s also the only driver to win at least one Cup Series race in 19 consecutive seasons, doing so from 2005 through 2023.

In another example of the pure, raw racing talent that Busch possessed, he is the only driver ever to win each of the three races — the trucks, the O’Reilly Series and the Cup Series — in the same weekend. Busch did it twice, in 2010 and 2017, at Bristol.

While Busch was piling up all those wins, he made a lot of enemies.

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He turned Dale Jr. at Richmond. He clashed with Kevin Harvick at Darlington. He spun Martin Truex Jr. at Bristol. He got bloody in an attempt to fight Joey Logano in Las Vegas. He tangled with Ricky Stenhouse Jr. at North Wilkesboro. He battled Brad Keselowski on tracks and in the press. He was longtime frenemies with Denny Hamlin. He gave NASCAR officials the double birds from pit road at Texas.

These are the moments that made some NASCAR fans love to hate Busch — the same way some of them loved to hate Dale Earnhardt Sr. in previous decades. Busch was aware of that sentiment and never shied away from it. He embraced the jeers as he took his celebratory bows after each victory. If NASCAR was a theatre, Busch was often its headlining act, sporting a sarcastic grin through it all.

Busch was a throwback to the drivers of the 1970s, 80s and 90s — drivers like Earnhardt — who only cared about winning and didn’t care whose feelings they hurt or whose cars they wrecked along the way. But Busch was also perfect for this new era where internet memes and social media soundbytes rule the day.

During driver introductions one year at Bristol, Busch told the crowd, “If you love you some Rowdy, let me hear you go BOOOOOO!”

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After sending Kyle Larson into a slide to pave the way for his victory in the 2018 race at Chicagoland, Busch hopped out of his car, grabbed the checkered flag, balled his hand up and rubbed his eye to look like a baby crying as he looked into the camera, taunting his haters.

“I don’t know what y’all are whining about,” Busch told the crowd. “If you don’t like that kind of racing, don’t even watch.”

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Drivers with the most NASCAR Cup Series wins all time

2. David Pearson, 105 career wins.

(DAYTONA RACING ARCHIVES)

While some of the drivers Busch competed with across a NASCAR career that spanned more than two decades detested him, they also not only respected him — but chased him. When it came to driving a race car, Busch was the standard for a long period of time. Just ask those drivers.

“What people may not realize is how much that rivalry drove us both,” Harvick said. “Kyle made me better because you had to be at your absolute best to beat him.”

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“I’d like to think that somewhere deep down there was an appreciation that we pushed each other to perform at the highest level, even if neither of us would’ve admitted it,” Keselowski said. “Tonight, I feel a little like the coyote with no more roadrunner to chase.”

“Kyle was one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history,” Dale Jr. said. “No one can deny that.”

Indeed.

When NASCAR needed highlights, Busch was there waving the checkered flag. When it needed storylines and ratings, Busch was there, holding a microphone. And when NASCAR needed a villain, Busch was there, pushing his car into someone else’s, then laughing all the way to victory lane after racing away from his competition.

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Whether Busch was more loved or hated is debatable. What’s inarguable is that he was one of the best racecar drivers to ever do it, and a one-of-a-kind talent and personality that racing may never see again.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kyle Busch was polarizing and wildly talented, and NASCAR needed him

Read the full article here

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