Imagine racing so well that there was a $100,000 bounty on beating you. Or imagine laws being written after you to stop you from winning.

Or here’s a simple one: imagine being the winningest driver in the history of NASCAR’s three national series. That’s how good a driver he was.

“Was.” Even writing that word feels shocking. NASCAR, fans, and the entire motorsports world are still processing this heartbreaking news that Kyle Busch, the two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and one of the most decorated drivers in NASCAR history, is no more with us.

On Thursday, May 21, we lost a driver whom an entire generation grew up watching and admiring. Or just like Denny said today, “We’ve lost our Kobe Bryant.”

Kyle Busch was sitting in a racing simulator in Concord on Wednesday when he suddenly became unresponsive and was immediately taken to a hospital in Charlotte.

According to a 911 call obtained by NBC News, Busch was coughing up blood and lying on a bathroom floor when someone from the General Motors training facility in NC called for help.

His participation in the coming Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte was already canceled by Richard Childress Racing when he was hospitalized. But little did NASCAR know that it was about to lose its most beloved "villain."

And that makes last weekend at Dover a very bittersweet one for Rowdy fans. Though he left the sport with a win, it was his last.

“You never know when it’s the last one,” a line that is hitting differently for everyone right now.

And if this is affecting the NASCAR world so deeply, it’s cruelly hard to imagine how devastating this must be for Busch’s survivors: his wife, Samantha Busch, and their children Brexton and Lennix, whose birthday they celebrated just days ago.

In fact, whenever Busch’s retirement talks surfaced, many felt he stretched his career to win the elusive Daytona 500. But there was more to the No. 8 driver’s ambition.

Busch’s incomplete dream

“I would retire from Cup racing when Brexton is 15 years old, and I would go run a year of truck. I would go run a full Truck Series season to see if I can win a Truck Series championship, because I would be the first one to have ever won in all three series of NASCAR.”

And the most heartfelt part, now the most heartbreaking, came next.

“So I would do that, and then when Brexton turns 16, him and I can split that truck where he can run the shorter track races and I can the bigger track races.”

Sadly, while the father and son cannot share the Truck, Richard Childress Racing is making sure to honor Busch and his legacy in the best way it can.

“Richard Childress Racing has elected to suspend use of the No. 8 and will run the No. 33 at Charlotte Motor Speedway and beyond…The No. 8 is reserved and ready for Brexton Busch when he is ready to go NASCAR racing,” the team tweeted.

Thank you, Kyle Busch

Just like no one imagined the 41-year-old leaving us so soon, 25 years ago, no one imagined a 16-year-old rookie entering the sport and changing it forever.

When his brother and Hall of Fame inductee Kurt Busch was asked about him, Kurt had said, "If you think I'm good, wait until you see my little brother."

And how the world saw it.

Kyle entered the Truck Series in 2001 and went on to win 69 races, the most ever in the sport. Winning the 2004 Rookie of the Year, Busch won 102 races in the Busch Series (now O’Reilly Auto Parts), again the most by any driver.

In 2010, Kyle Busch won 13 NASCAR Nationwide Series races in just 29 starts. This dominance forced the sport to change its rules the next year, setting a cap on Cup drivers running in lower-tier series, something that infamously came to be known as the 'Kyle Busch Rule.'

The next year, in 2005, he entered Cup, again winning the Rookie of the Year, and never looked back from there, winning 63 races and ranking ninth on the all-time win list.

With 234 combined wins, Kyle Busch remains the winningest driver across NASCAR’s three national series. Throughout his Cup career, Busch raced on 32 different tracks and won on 25 of them.

For someone who gave the sport more than it could’ve asked for, thank you, Kyle Busch. Or as he himself would put it, "If you love you some Rowdy, let me hear you go boooooo!"

Read more on the Daytona Racing Digest

Written by

Suyashdeep Sason

Edited by

Suyashdeep Sason