DirtonDirt exclusive
Dirt Late Model world touched by Busch's passing
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Kyle Busch won the Prelude to the Dream in 2012. (Jeremey Rhoades)
Kyle Busch was only tangentially connected to Dirt Late Model racing, just dropping in to dabble in the motorsports discipline was different from his usual NASCAR stock cars.
But when the shocking news came late Thursday afternoon that Busch, a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion with more more victories across the organization’s three national series than any driver in history, died at 41 after being hospitalized for a “severe illness,” the tragedy hit the Dirt Late Model world as hard as other segments of the sport. He might not have grown up, or ever competed regularly, in the class, but he was an all-time great racer who respected the division, and the division’s community respected him back.
There were some Dirt Late Model people who had crossed paths with Busch more closely than others. His passing touched them.
“I’ve been thinking about it all day,” Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., who three years ago ran one Dirt Late Model event with Busch as his teammate, said while competing in Thursday’s Show-Me 100 opening at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo. “It sucks. I mean, it makes me think about life, right?”
Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., who raced as a teammate to Busch some five years ago, was also left reeling by the news that he learned shortly before the start of Thursday’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series action at Wheatland.
“I was actually about to change clothes, put on my suit, and my wife called me and she said, ‘Have you heard?’ ” said Davenport, who considered Busch an “acquaintance” whom he’d speak with periodically. “I’m like, ‘Heard what?’ She said, ‘You ain’t been on your phone?’ I’m like, ‘No.’ She said, ‘Kyle Busch died.’ I’m like, ‘Bulls---.’ I heard he had to go to the hospital (earlier in the day), so I started looking at my phone and saw it.”
Davenport paused, and then added, “You just … you never know.”
Actually, among Dirt Late Model competitors, Davenport had as long-standing of a connection to Busch as anyone. The 2021 XR Bristol Dirt Nationals at the dirt-covered Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway brought them together with Busch driving a car from Davenport’s Double L Motorsports stable, but their initial contact came two decades earlier when they were both teenagers tearing up the pavement legends car scene.
“Me and him knew each other, kind of, from when we raced against each other way back when in legends cars,” said Davenport, who at 42 was a year older than Busch. “I went out there to his home track in Las Vegas. I was probably 16 or 17.
“Funny story, we met his dad, and then we kind of talked about (those days) when we started talking about him running a dirt car with us (at Bristol).”
That early-season Bristol event in ’21 provided Davenport an up-close look at Busch’s ability behind the wheel. Busch entered two races alongside Davenport and, despite having fewer than a dozen Dirt Late Model starts, ran competitively, finishing 13th in a 25-lap preliminary feature and 11th in the 40-lap headliner.
“He’s a natural talent,” Davenport said. “We didn’t go test. We didn’t do nothing. He came in day of, sat in the seat — like we knew that we were pretty close to the same size — and he said, ‘Everything’s good enough,’ and then he just went out there and he got up to speed pretty fast. He didn’t do too great the first day and then he had to leave and go race somewhere, and then he came back and got there late and jumped right in the car and, like, he was really good in the B-main there and won it. He done a great job.”
Overton was equally impressed with Busch’s adaptability when they paired up for April 2023’s Kyle Larson Presents FloRacing Late Model Challenge at Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tenn. Busch piloted one of Overton’s Wells Motorsports machines to a pedestrian 16th-place finish, but Overton saw the competitor in Busch show through.
“I know how he was when he drove this thing, like how much he wanted to do good,” said Overton, who stayed in touch with Busch since the Volunteer event mostly through periodic text messages. “Obviously he had a hard time, but he never races the damn things and it was Bulls Gap, you know, so it wasn’t easy.
“I could tell how bad he wanted to do it. Like when we left, he was like, ‘Man, I need to get in there and make laps.’ It makes me think about how much he cared about that racing, and what’s important and what’s not.”
Overton enjoyed racing with Busch. He'd gladly agreed to supply a car for Busch after Larson had asked if it would be possible. He also had a good time joking with the superstar driver whose nickname, “Rowdy,” signified his rough-hewn reputation.
“I remember, the one thing that sticks out my brain, I said, ‘Man, you’re not as big of an asshole as everybody says you are, you know?’ ” Overton said, looking back with a smile. “And that was really the last thing I said to him that night, and he said, ‘Yeah, I work hard for that. Don’t tell nobody.’ ”
Busch made similar Dirt Late Model appearances with several other division stalwarts over the years. There were, of course, his six starts in the Prelude to the Dream, the annual event at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, that pitted nationally-known stars against each other in Dirt Late Models. Busch was a participant every year from 2007 through its final edition in ’12 — the last four driving for late Hall of Famer of Scott Bloomquist — and tallied five top-five finishes, including a victory in ’12 and runner-up in ’07. He also ran a Dirt Late Model in the Kasey Kahne Foundation benefit event at Williams Grove Speedway in Mechanicsburg, Pa., in 2009 (finished second in a Rick Eckert car) and ’10 (placed 11th in a Barry Klinedinst-owned machine as a teammate to Jason Covert) and in August 2023 steered a Brandon Thirlby vehicle to a 22nd-place finish in a special at Merritt Speedway in Lake City, Mich.
In those one-off Dirt Late Model outings, Busch always seemed to leave a positive impression on the teams he joined. Eckert, the former World of Outlaws Late Model Series champion from York, Pa., was one.
“I really didn’t want to do it but Scott (Bloomquist) called me and said he wanted (Busch) to run the Grove so he paid me to do it,” said Eckert, who was campaigning Bloomquist’s Team Zero Race Cars at the time. “I wasn’t sure what to expect, but when he got there (Busch) was all business. He wanted to learn. He asked a lot of questions and ran really good.”
Covert, a veteran regional standout from York Haven, Pa., looks back fondly on his night at Williams Grove with Busch.
“You couldn’t have asked for a better experience,” Covert said. “We got to sit and talk after the feature for 20 minutes, and you could tell why he was a professional race car driver from his input, his intensity. I didn’t do a good job on our heat race setups and he said, ‘Just do what you would do for the feature and I will learn to drive it that way.’
“He really treated my guys and my family like he knew us forever. Samantha (Busch’s wife) also was so kind and appreciative, and so were we. We are so saddened with his death, but him and Sam being a small part of our life will never be forgotten.
Racing against Busch in the 2009 feature at Williams Grove also provided Covert one of his career highlights: he overtook him to win the race.
“We were there testing a new carburetor from Baker Carbs and Hoghead (longtime crew chief Robby Allen) says, ‘Hey, I am coming up. We need to try some things on the car, too,’ ” Covert recalled. “He was on my trailer on the backstretch, and he said that when I passed (Busch), that was one the biggest roars from the crowd he ever heard. I also could hear the crowd over my car.”
Outrunning an iconic motorsports figure like Busch — even though, in ’09, was not yet a NASCAR Cup champion and was green to dirt racing — was unforgettable for Covert.
“My opinion, he was a generational talent, ranks up with the best ever,” Covert declared. “He hated losing more than he liked winning.”
Rocket Chassis co-owner Mark Richards only had a brief personal brush with Busch back in 2011 when his son, Josh, made several starts for Busch’s NASCAR Truck team, but Busch’s single-minded traits that Covert described stood out in his interactions.
“Kyle was a very focused guy. That's what I can say from being around him,” Richards said before Thursday’s hot laps in Wheatland. “I will say, Kyle Busch was one of the most determined drivers to win I’ve ever seen.”
Busch had been teaching the focus and desire necessary for motorsports success to his 11-year-old son, Brexton, in recent years as he mentored the youngster in go-kart and micro-sprint racing. And, perhaps in the near future, Busch might have begun frequenting Dirt Late Model races with Brexton as well.
According to Davenport, Busch was very interested in using the Dirt Late Model ranks to further Brexton’s budding driving career.
“We talked back and forth for several years about different stuff,” Davenport said. “I’ve talked with him in the past couple years about doing something with his son. He wanted to get a Crate car or whatever. He had talked to (former NASCAR driver) Mark Martin (a friend and business partner of Davenport’s team owner Lance Landers) about it and then he’d talked to me and Dale McDowell about it some. He was wanting us to take Brexton to a couple races where I could driver coach him and everything.
“I hadn’t talked to him about it for several months now, probably four, five, six months. That was kind of in the works a little bit, something he wanted to do with his son … so man, it’s just awful.”
