The NASCAR community has dealt with hard losses before, but nothing quite prepared people for the sudden death of two-time Cup Series champion Kyle Busch. In his first network television interview since his brother’s passing on May 21, 2026, Kurt Busch sat down with Craig Melvin on the TODAY Show and talked openly about losing his younger brother. It was a rare and difficult conversation from a family that shaped stock car racing for two decades.
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Kurt broke into tears as he talked about the hours he spent at his brother’s bedside, the demands of the sport that kept drivers pushing through illness, and the quiet bond he and Kyle shared both on and off the track.
“I was there at the hospital,” Kurt recalled, fighting back tears. “I was there all day, hoping, praying, hoping for a turnaround. My dad wanted to remember him in the way that he wanted to remember him. That’s how people could choose if they wanted to or not.”
Their father, Tom Busch, decided he didn’t want to see Kyle in that condition. Kurt chose to stay in the room instead, holding onto his brother in his final moments and trying to offer whatever comfort he could. Wiping away tears, Kurt Busch recalled his final words to his brother, “I said, ‘I got you, man. Come on. I got you. I got you. Come on. Be strong.’ Just wasn’t fair.”
The conversation then turned to something bigger than family loss: the pressure drivers feel to race through sickness or injury rather than lose their seat. “To be bluntly honest, yeah,” Kurt said when asked whether drivers push through illness. “I mean, we’re independent contractors. We don’t have a union. So there’s a concern that if you don’t get in there, someone else fills in for you.”
While tributes to Kyle Busch have shown up at tracks across the country, the ones that mean the most to Kurt are happening at small local tracks, where he’s been spending more time watching his 11-year-old nephew, Brexton, race. Kurt has taken on more of a mentor role with him. “He’s a prodigy and he was on the gas even before all of this,” Kurt said. “He can be a big star in the world of motorsports. He’s 11, but he’s already racing like an 18-year-old. So it’s time to be around a bit more.”
For Kurt, staying close to Brexton is a way of keeping his brother’s presence alive in the sport, both through Brexton’s name and through the instincts he clearly picked up from his father.
Away from the track, Kurt further admitted that grief hasn’t gotten much easier. Racing is where he and Kyle grew up together, competed against each other, and understood each other without needing words.
“I loved on track,” Kurt said. “Him and I were carbon copies of each other. I just miss the on-track camaraderie. We could speak on track without saying a word. Like, ‘you pass me here, I’ll draft with you here.’ You know, short track, like, ‘hey man, did you change that shock?’ Yeah, I miss the words that we never spoke to each other and the vibe that we had on track. There’s usually going to be a discussion when I see someone, but it’s all right. We’ll get through it. Time heals.”
Grief like this doesn’t just go away. But through Brexton’s racing career, and through two decades of memories built on the track, Kyle Busch’s presence isn’t going away from NASCAR.