Q: When you were a young guy at out of there doing Dwarf races and bouncing around in and out of different pieces of racing machinery, when did you know how good you were? And did you know how good you were?
KB: It’s always tough to brag or to feel that moment of, ‘Oh, I got this.’ When we started to travel, me and my dad would race against each other and our competitors, and I started to hear when our trailer pulled up, ‘Oh, the Buschs are here. We’re all racing for third.’ That was a cool moment. You know, I was a teenager and I really didn’t know and digest it all in that way.
The moment where I felt like I needed to figure out life was when I was flunking out of college. My mom wanted me to go to school and get a degree and racing would just be a hobby. When I was flunking out of college I came back and won my first ever Late Model race in Las Vegas in the April of 1997. That moment in victory lane I went, ‘This is what I want to do with life. This is where I want to go.’ And I just got done leaving college and I wrote down on everybody’s markerboard on their dorm rooms ‘2004 Winston Cup Champion’ as I left, and that was back in 1997! So it was a seven year plan that I manifested. Number four is my lucky number. It’s my birthday. I just love that number four. That’s the first thing that came to my mind when I wrote on those boards. I was kind of like ‘peace out’ to everybody.
Q: Did you have the confidence that you could make it in Cup?
KB: I did. Once I got there, I did. My first race in the Trucks, I finished second in Daytona. I almost won my first Truck Series race. I finished 18th In my first race at Dover in a Cup car. And I remember being the fastest in practice my rookie year at Rockingham in the November of 2000. Well of course I’m burning up tires, but I was like, ‘I have the speed. I just got to sort this out.’
Q: Can you talk about Jack Roush? .I’m thinking he was probably one of the most influential people early on in your NASCAR career..
KB: First, I believe each of the team owners I raced for had equal influence on me. There were five years or six years at Roush. Five or six years at Penske. There was one year with James Finch. There was one year with Barney Visser. Five or six years with Tony Stewart and Gene Haas. I had three years at Chip Ganassi. And then now, one year cut short with Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan. Every single one of them has made an impact on my life. Every single crew chief, I can text them right now and say thank you and they would text back we’d all go to dinner and have a beer. It’s really a unique sequence of events for me.
Q: When you raced for James Vincent and Barney Visser, how were those races for you? Can you talk about that period of your career?
KB: Yeah, that’s when I was digging deep, for sure. I would dig deep every week. But that one was a spiritual journey. The way I started with Finch was because I basically said to Richard Petty Motorsports that I wasn’t going to accept their contract. And I was going to take myself on this journey to reset and to put the fun back at racing and work my way up. Man, we almost won Sonoma with Finch… We won some Xfinity races together. And then with Barney Visser, we should have won three or four races. We just had oddball stuff pop up here or there. We had so much speed and we just didn’t quite capitalize on all of the categories, but that catapulted the team at the end of the day. All those guys worked on those cars and they knew they can do it. We just had to get all the puzzle pieces to fit together the right way. It was so, so much fun.
Q: There certainly more than a few significant ups and downs during your career. Can you talk about some of that?
KB: Yeah, I think there’s a few moments that, whether it’s rehashing it or opening up the truth… I mean everybody has versions of truth on some of this stuff. It could be maybe one version versus another person’s version, right?
But as far as my departure from Roush Racing, I had already signed with Penske. And you know, there wasn’t a big traffic issue out in Phoenix in 2005. It was my attitude that led to the traffic issue. That’s something that I’ve always had in the back of my mind; my attitude at Penske when we had issues two years in a row from the team. I mean, we were messing up pit stops, or we’d run out of there would be a part failure. I didn’t handle those emotions very well, and so that’s why I put myself on that journey with Visser and with Finch. Those were moments, those were the fun times where you make mistakes and screw up and it’s fun. I’d admit to it.
Then the next thing you know we are celebrating in victory lane at Daytona. It was a dream situation to win Daytona in that race in 2017. So I feel like my career kind of looks like the Golden Gate Bridge. That’s the way I I’ve explained it to a lot of people. It’s like where you have the cables going up to the to the first bulkhead and then the cables come down and they go back up to the second bulkhead and then you get over to Sausalito and you have your cables on the way out. And that’s kind of my 22 years at the top NASCAR level.
Q: All along the way you were kind of a polarizing guy. Some fans loved you and some fans hated you. You wore your heart on your sleeve, didn’t you?
KB: Yes, and that’s the best description. I did wear my emotions on my sleeve and I just went out there. I have those facial expressions of this was right and that was all part of it. Now there’s some guys that are a bit more stoic and some guys a bit more reserved, but for me as a blue collar kid out of Vegas, to have had this opportunity and to make it and then to have my brother make it and basically double all of my statistics… We are now the two winningest brothers in NASCAR history. That’s something that I’m very proud of.
Q: The Busch brothers surpassing the Allison brothers for NASCAR Cup wins had to have meant something huge to both of you guys.
KB: It was big. You don’t expect it to happen. You just go about your business and work. And that’s what they did. And they had a tough road, too. It wasn’t given to them, right. There are plenty of stories I’ve heard where they were just living on peaches. Driving from one track to the next in the Southeast to kind of just get to the next place to pay the bills. Those are different times in NASCAR, of course, but it’s just so cool that we’ve developed a relationship with the Allisons through all this.