“I just sat there on the plane going ‘My dad helped me, we helped Kyle, Kyle and my dad and myself are helping Brexton,’ it definitely felt like a generational shift was happening,” the 42-year-old said.
Las Vegas Motor Speedway has been tough on the Busch brothers, who grew up dominating the three-eighths-mile asphalt bullring on the property. All that success on the very same grounds, yet nothing but disappointment over at the big track.
Kyle won once, in 2009, but Kurt was 0-for-21 when the Cup race started Sunday night. Kurt wasn’t all that great for two thirds of the event and then a caution flipped the race completely. He was suddenly the leader, had three remarkable restarts and finally earned his first Las Vegas Motor Speedway victory.
Perhaps the next winning Busch driver is on his way, but nobody is pushing Kyle or Kurt out of NASCAR just yet.
The brothers have had a tumultuous relationship, one where on-track feuds spilled over into lengthy silences. Never the best of friends, marriage, Brexton and the pandemic have brought them as close as they have ever been as adults this past year.
Brexton is in the infancy of his racing venture, the stage where he loves going to the track to see his friends. But his father has picked up on an enthusiasm in his son when Brexton gets in the car, when his belts are being strapped and when he’s racing.
Brexton now knows what it feels like to be a winner, and just as Tom Busch did for his boys, Kyle Busch turned it into a lesson about success.
“I was like, ‘You know, whatever that feeling is, whatever you’re feeling, however it sits in you, you know that is feasible a lot more often than one time,’” Busch said he told Brexton. “’So just don’t rest on just getting one. We’ve got to go out there and fight for more.'”