“We were right there in the Chase races. It was pretty wild,” Busch says. “I mean, the plan was unfolding perfectly. The pressure had melted. I literally would spend the week going out to the land that I bought outside of Mooresville, N.C. and I would just get on my tractor, and mowed my grandma’s grass almost every week. I did it just to stay busy, but also to try to release from the focus and the intensity of the next nine weeks.
“As the weeks progressed, when we got the points lead, that’s when I went into see all the crew guys that next Monday for our meetings and everything. I think it was four weeks to go in the season where I said, ‘This is where we don’t look back. This is what we planned for. This is what we’re doing. I know our tongues are hanging out right now as we’re testing during the week and racing on the weekends, but this is part of our plan.’ And our plan all along was just to be consistent and to wear them out with those little extra bonus points from leading a lap or leading the most laps. We were going after a solid average finish.”
Busch and Fennig excelled with speed and consistency in the Chase, reeling off six straight top-six scores to start the series.
“Top-five or top-six consistency, that was the game plan,” said Busch. “I mean, an average finish of seventh in the NASCAR Cup Series — for decades — will help you win a championship, so we were going into Atlanta with a huge buffer of points.”
Good thing, because Atlanta brought the effort its lone major Chase setback in the form of a blown engine and 42nd-place finish.
“I was kind of all down and out,” he admits. “All of our points and that lead that we had were gone.
“Then we caught a lucky break. We were sitting there on the team plane coming home from Atlanta, listening to the race on the radio. There was a huge wreck with Junior, Jeff Gordon and even Jimmy Johnson. I think everyone just kind of gave us a bunch of points back. To me, that’s where everyone saw that the dinner table was open and that they were all going after it hard with us having that problem early in the race.”
Still, Busch admits the effect of his setback lingered.
“Yeah, I was feeling the pressure,” he says. “It was tough. Martinsville was one of my toughest tracks. We got out of there with a fifth-place finish. We barely survived Darlington. I was nervous in the situation, and lost track of where I was in my surroundings going into Turn 3 and ran over another car and got some right front tire damage and fender damage and so we had to come back from that.
“One bit of advice that I think made the most difference was [from] Jimmy Fennig. His leadership and his experience was so helpful, and a quote from him that I’ve lived by since was when he said, ‘Kurt, you’re young. You’re in this tough situation. I’ve been here many times and was just as nervous as you and you have every opportunity to fold and not come through. However, you’re going to have more of these opportunities. This won’t be your last one, so just relax a little bit going into Homestead, and things will fall our way.’
“I think that eased a lot of the tension. I thought, ‘You know what? I made it this far in my first chance at a championship run.’ That really helped the mindset and the focus to be the team leader that I knew I could be. And I was only 26 years old.”
Leading into the finale that November, Busch was 18 points ahead of Johnson and 21 ticks ahead of Gordon. Busch explains what came next.
“We sat on pole and led a lap at Homestead-Miami. But a secret weapon we had that day was Greg Biffle. He was dominant, and he led so many laps that day that others didn’t get bonus points for leading laps,” Busch recalls. “And he ultimately was able to hold off Jimmie Johnson at the end.
“The way that that last sequence of the race went, I mean, ignore the wheel falling off, ignore the pit crew blunder and whatever else happened the rest of the day. I remember a big moment with about 52 laps to go. Our fuel window was 48 laps. Something was happening. I said to myself, ‘If Jimmie Johnson and Jeff Gordon pit and we’re back here, too, that’s going to put us on the same sequence. We’re all going to race back up to the top five together, or we’re all going to run out of gas together.’ I clearly remember that moment. Ultimately, we pitted, worked our way back up, and we followed Jeff and Jimmie through the traffic to make our way back up with fresh tires.
What does Busch recollect most from the Homestead drama?
“I’d be lying if I didn’t say I don’t remember a lot because you’re in this zone — you’re in this this blur of numbers that are running through your head because of what your points lead is,” he says. “You know, I got these guys breathing down my neck on the restart. It’s like, ‘Guys, just give me a little space here,’ you know? I did just enough with my nerves, with car speed and making sure that we brought it home in the right position. We used that points cushion to our advantage in the closing laps of the race — it wasn’t like I had to charge and move somebody out of the way to grab some extra points.”
And when it was all over?
“The checkered flag fell and it felt like all my energy was expunged. Just totally left it all out on the track,” he relates. “Some of my interviews, I almost passed out. I saw white coming in from the left and the right, because I just left everything I possibly could out on the track. There was the hoisting of the trophy and the team and my family were there and some of that stuff. You close your eyes when all the confetti is in the in the air and the lights are hitting you and you just go off into outer space, man. You feel like you’re on top of the world. It’s an amazing feeling of teamwork and accomplishment.
“It was a challenge. Nothing is easy and some people would fold under that pressure. I tried to do the best I could to find support. My dad was just a local racer. He didn’t know anything about the pressures of the professional big time. Jack Roush had a strict type of demeanor in how he operated the team. I can only grab so much information from a teammate like Mark Martin. However, I look back on some of the other little things, and you just piece together some puzzle pieces. It was Matt Kenseth winning the year before that I looked back at — I followed a lot of his strategy with Robbie Reiser. And, you know, I went back to when I won a Southwest Tour Championship, or a local track championship. You try to go into those moments with as much mental preparation of, ‘I’ve done this before, and I know I can do it again.’
“Looking back on it all, it just happened so fast. People that I raced against at the local track, I never saw them again after 1998. And with the Southwest Tour, I was in and out of there in two years. The Truck Series, I was only there for one year. I get the Cup ride, and I made it so fast that I didn’t realize that this is the ending point. So that’s where I was going to all these new tracks for the first time and meeting all these new people. I was living in an apartment in North Carolina and yes, I just felt like I was out on an island trying to sort it all out. The only thing that made sense to me was the gas pedal on the right side.”
What did it ultimately mean to have won the Cup title after all that?
“It was so much fun, I mean, to be treated like NASCAR royalty, and to have different morning shows to talk about the sponsors to talk about the events that had happened was awesome,” he says. “I was able to thank people and go to New York and I got my own limo all week long. I was feeling like a baller with all the events and parties, There were the morning shows when you’re up at 6 a.m. It was such a fun week.”
“There’s the chance to sit there and go, ‘You know what, I did something pretty special and I hope I’m able to do it again with the team and figure out the new challenges of what comes up next.’ Because when you’re on top of Mount Everest, it seems like it’s easy to get knocked off. That’s one thing I should have prepared a little better for.
“It was an amazing opportunity. Again, just to be the young, blue collar kid out of Vegas, I lived a dream and that dream was to drive race cars for a living and get paid to do it. To do it with so many teams and so many different manufacturers, and to win everywhere I went, it was fun.
“However, I wasn’t prepared for the big time of professional racing and it took me a while to settle in. I think the second half of my career really was a nice reset and worked my way back up to a top-tier team. We won the Daytona 500! What made that even more incredible was that Monster Energy was a sponsor of mine — we were together for 12 years. That was the whole second half of my career and I’m so very grateful to them and for what they provided for me with the sponsorship stability.”
After a wicked crash at Pocono Raceway on July 22, 2022 in which Busch suffered major head injuries, he announced his retirement from the sport in August of 2023. Although he’s recovered, Busch admits he is still feeling some ill effects from that wreck.
“I’m feeling much, much better since the summer wreck in 2022 and all of the different physical therapy, different neurologist visits,” he says. “It was taxing for a while. Basically every other day it was a doctor visit somewhere and going to get hearing checked, eyes checked, balance checked. The vestibular movements were what was greatly affected. I still feel the lingering effects but it has calmed down, and it has been through all the physical therapy and all the great doctors who have helped me.”
Although he’s no longer racing in Cup, Busch notes that he’s still actively involved in the sport and NASCAR culture.
“In 2024, once I knew I wasn’t going to be racing full time, I took a little bit of break and took a step back,” he says. “It was great to just be on the sidelines coaching a little bit with 23XI Racing and helping Tyler Reddick make the Final Four with just some of the little things that I can add. Bubba Wallace was also playoff-bound for a long while during the season in 2024. It’s great to have a home and a place in 23XI Racing to dump some of my years of experience on and to coach the next generation of crew chiefs and engineers, and the marketing team, the licensing team, and the sales team. It’s fun to have a PhD in the sport of NASCAR at this point.”
And, just maybe, we could yet see Kurt Busch back behind the wheel.
“Right now for 2025, I’m still endorsed with Monster Energy. I’m hopeful to get a light duty type of clearance to race with my neurologist, which would then open up some opportunity for me,” Kurt explains. “Whether it’s late model races, or I was invited to Race of Champions, which will be in Sydney in 2025. I’d love to go and represent the USA. This would give me an opportunity to go back for my third time.
“I still have to get through some more steps with the neurology. I still need to push my doctors to get that approval. And then too, you can’t just jump back in and go ride like a bull rider. If you get hurt, you don’t go jump back in and ride the biggest bull, right? You start with a little guy and work your way up. So go-karting, driving with friends, racing schools, using some of my brother’s race cars that are current. That would be the way to really step it back up and just see what 2025 can bring behind the wheel. We just have to keep it realistic and to keep it one step at a time.”