NASCAR Hall of Fame to welcome Kurt Busch, Harry Gant, Ray Hendrick, Humpy Wheeler

• Busch won the first NASCAR playoff championship in 2004.
• He raced for five different teams and won in four different car makes.

Kurt Busch’s career of considerable ups coupled with troubling downs has reached one more pinnacle. The oldest of the two Busch brothers has been selected as a new member of the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

Busch’s election and announcement came Tuesday at the Hall of Fame in downtown Charlotte.

When the formal inductions arrive in January of next year, Busch will be joined in the Hall of Fame’s Class of 2026 by Harry Gant, the other inductee from the “modern era” ballot, and “pioneer ballot” inductee Ray Hendrick. 

Also honored, with the Hall’s Landmark Award for “outstanding contributions,” will be Humpy Wheeler, longtime president of Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Meet the new NASCAR Hall of Famers

Gant — known in the racing community as “Handsome Harry” — was a 39-year-old Cup Series rookie in 1979. He won 18 races over a career than lasted to age 54. The highlight was the ’91 season when, at age 51, he won four straight races (including his second Southern 500 at Darlington) in early fall and was given the label of “Mr. September.”

Hendrick did his winning just outside the biggest NASCAR spotlights. He won an estimated 700 races in late models and, mostly, in modifieds, earning the Mr. Modified moniker.

Howard Augustine Wheeler was a combination of old-school promotions, even at the biggest of big-league races, and new-age visionary. At Charlotte, with the backing of track owner Bruton Smith (another Hall of Famer), Humpy built a condominium complex outside Turn 1, and in 1992 made Charlotte the first big speedway to install lights. 

Kurt Busch’s road to the Hall of Fame

Along with winning NASCAR’s first championship playoffs, Busch also won the first-ever playoff race — the postseason opener at New Hampshire in 2004.

There was no winner-take-all final in the early playoff years, but an accumulation of playoff points. In the end, Busch was just eight points better than Jimmie Johnson and 16 better than Jeff Gordon.

The Las Vegas native won Cup Series races for five different teams: Roush Racing, Team Penske, Stewart-Haas, Chip Gannassi Racing and 23XI, with whom he won his final race in 2022. 

Later in that 2022 season, Busch wrecked during qualifying at Pocono and suffered a concussion. He missed the rest of the year and officially announced his retirement the following season.

Along with his on-track brilliance, Busch was known to ruffle feathers at times, particularly early in his career. His testy temperament led to splits with a pair of legendary team owners — Jack Roush and Roger Penske. 

But there was never any doubting his racing ability. At age 20, he won four races for Roush Racing in his one year of full-time Truck Series racing. He began his full-time Cup career the next year, 2001, and after a winless rookie campaign, he won 14 races and a championship over the next four seasons.

Along with winning races for five different teams, he won Cup races in four different makes of cars: Ford, Chevy, Toyota and Dodge.

— Email Ken Willis at [email protected]