Why Kyle Busch Needs To Be In The 2027 NASCAR Hall of Fame Class
- Dominic Konareski
- 9 minutes ago
- 4 min read
Kyle Busch has passed away at the age of 41. He is the all-time winner across all three major levels of NASCAR with 234 wins. Busch is the winner of two Cup Series championships. Most importantly though he was a husband and father of two children.
Richard Childress Racing, the team Busch raced for in the Cup Series, will be suspending the use of the No.8 car. Busch last drove in the Cup Series during the NASCAR All-Star race not even a week ago, and has been piloting the No.8 since making the move to RCR in 2023. The team will now run the No.33 in place of the No.8 effective immediately, reserving the No.8 for Busch's son, Brexton when he reaches NASCAR.
A.N: I myself am 21-years-old, I was born in 2004 and followed NASCAR my entire life. I have never experienced life without Kyle Busch racing. I, as many people are feeling today, feel as if he lost a family member or a close friend. For many, Kyle was their Dale Earnhardt. That is how special Kyle Busch is to so many and the effect he had in auto racing. I live and breathe NASCAR, I have covered NASCAR through my podcast and here on my website and even had the honor to sponsor Cup and O'Reilly cars. Kyle Busch played a huge part in my life and staying interested in the sport. I myself was never the biggest Kyle Busch fan, but I also didn't hate it when he won either. I knew I was watching something special when he was dominating all those years, and now that he has left us -- well it even feels more special and frankly an honor to see a driver as great as him.
Busch won the inaugural Car of Tomorrow race at Bristol in a car that so many would end up hating. In his post-race interview he was the first and also the loudest critic in the CoT. That’s who Kyle Busch was. Kyle Busch wasn’t afraid to ruffle feathers or have a filter. He was unapologetically Rowdy.
Kyle Busch was the definition of great and having determination. His dominance will likely never be replicated in what was a once in a generation athlete. Undoubtedly, Busch would have been a first ballot hall of fame inductee and likely would have gotten that honor unanimously.
The biggest career feat for Busch (in the author’s opinion at least) is when he won his first of two Cup Series championships. Busch suffered a devastating crash at the O’Reilly Series season opener at Daytona in 2015, causing him to suffer multiple broken bones in both of his legs. Busch would miss the first 11 races of the Cup season – nearly a third of the season. NASCAR would end up granting Busch a medical waiver for the playoffs, allowing Busch to make it into the playoffs if he won a race and finished the regular season top-30 in the standings. Busch returned in May and won at Sonoma in June and would win four more races before the playoffs. Busch made the playoffs and would ultimately win the championship finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
Bush’s Truck team, Kyle Busch Motorsports, dominated the NASCAR Truck Series for over a decade. From 2010 to 2023, KBM was the team everyone would want to drive for. A total of 322 truck Series races would span its entirety before Busch sold it to Spire Motorsports before the 2024 season. In those 13 years, Kyle Busch Motorsports would garner 70 poles, 100 wins and 2 drivers championships in the Truck Series alone. The team competed in the O’Reilly Series and ARCA, where its drivers found pole awards and victory lane as well.
It was the truck team though that stood out. So many Cup drivers got their national series start with KBM. Erik Jones, Christopher Bell, Todd Gilliland, John Hunter Nemechek, William Bryon, Noah Gragson, Riley Herbst, Bubba Wallace and Harrison Burton, are just several of world-class Cup talent that raced for Kyle in the lower series.
Most famously, Kyle Busch Motorsports brought Greg Biffle out of retirement for a one-off race in 2019 at Texas. Biffle dominated and won in what would end up being his last win.
After selling KBM to Spire, Kyle Busch still raced as a Spire driver and most recently won not even a week ago at Dover on May 15th. This was Busch’s second win this season in four Truck Series races he has competed in. “You never know when the last one is going to be, so cherish them all,” said Busch post-Dover win.
Now, I can put all of his mini stats in this article and talk about how he was the youngest pole winner in Cup history at the age of 19 and the youngest to make the Chase in 2006 – but none of that adds up to what was already listed. Those are just mere stats to a 100-page resume.
When Roberto Clemente passed away Major League Baseball immediately placed him into Cooperstown. Normally, MLB players would have to wait five years after retirement before becoming eligible for the Hall of Fame. Clemente died tragically at 38-years-old in a plane crash while delivering earthquake relief supplies to Nicaragua on December 31st of 1972.
The Hall of Fame board decided to waive the five-year waiting period for several reasons. To name a few, Clemente was part of the 3,000 hit club, he was a multi-time World Series champion and MVP, he also had 15 All-Star selections and overall was one of the first Latin American superstars in baseball.
With that said, NASCAR should announce that Kyle Busch will be in this year’s Hall of Fame class for 2027. NASCAR announced earlier this month their 2027 Hall of Fame class, featuring Jeff Burton, Kevin Harvick and Larry Phillips. Adding Kyle Busch to a place he already belongs just makes sense.
Busch has been an icon and one of the faces of American auto racing for well over a decade at this point and has been constantly dominant for over two decades. Kyle Busch is a hall of fame driver and putting him in the upcoming 2027 class would pay homage to one of the sport’s greatest drivers.
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