CHARLOTTE, N.C. — For a brief, anxious moment Tuesday afternoon, Kurt Busch said he felt like he was back behind the wheel. The stomach butterflies that would crop up before the green flag rushed back for the 46-year-old, who sat front and center in the NASCAR Hall of Fame as the names were read for the newly elected Class of 2026.
“I felt like it was race mode,” Busch said, admitting to those nerves. “I had to put the emotional blinders on.”
Busch’s name was the last to be called Tuesday, ushering him into the stock-car shrine with fellow new members Harry Gant and Ray Hendrick alongside Landmark Award recipient Humpy Wheeler. When the video montage of his career highlights flashed in front of him, Busch said the flood of emotions mixed the past, present and future all together.
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The past, he admitted, was one dotted by rough patches in his life and marked by a swift rise into the sport’s upper ranks. His future now includes a celebration with his fellow honorees come next January.
“For me, as just a blue-collar kid out of Vegas, I never would have imagined this,” Busch said. “We were a family where it was just a hobby. It’s like a hobby to race, you know. It was just fun to go to the track as father and son. My dad had his car, and he helped me build mine, and you meet this guy or you meet this sponsor or you say thank you to this person, and the next thing you know — I mean, I’ll talk about this later on at the speech — but I’m running a Legend Car in 1999 at the (Las Vegas) Bullring in September of 1999. September of 2000, I’m in Jack Roush’s Cup car qualifying at Dover. Jeff Gordon’s next to me. Dale (Earnhardt) Senior’s behind me. I mean, that’s how fast things happened for me. I don’t know how. I don’t know why.
“There was no template. There wasn’t the ladder that you see a lot of the kids these days that have a system where it’s ‘we’re gonna do this, we’re gonna do this.’ A lot of mine was being in the right place at the right time, and the universe smiled down on me.”
Busch had been in a reflective mood in the days leading up to Tuesday’s Voting Day, using his social media channels to share the highs and lows from his nearly three decades in racing. Busch’s driving days at the Cup Series level ended in the summer of 2022, when an injury in a crash during qualifying at Pocono Raceway short-circuited his career.
That career was marked by brilliant highs — 34 Cup Series wins, the 2004 championship and a Daytona 500 victory in 2017. But that long tenure also included dramatic lows that ruffled the feathers of team owners, racing officials and media — many of whom were in the voting room. After Tuesday’s announcement, Busch offered a note of thanks, especially expressing his appreciation to the car owners who took a chance on him, “even after I’d stubbed my toe a few times.”
“I think the late Jim Hunter said it best to me once when I was in some trouble,” Busch recalled, singling out the longtime NASCAR communications rep and a past Landmark Award winner. “He said, ‘Son, you can get in as much trouble as you want because you have that much talent to dig yourself out of these holes you keep putting yourself in. But wouldn’t it be better if you didn’t dig those holes and you could just stay on top, riding with your talent?’ So it took a lot of lessons, but this was a fun announcement, and can’t wait to tell more stories to everyone on what this sport has meant to me and how I’ll still be around.”
There was a long line of well-wishers for Busch in the NHOF Great Hall. Former teammate and fellow nominee Greg Biffle was among the first to give him an embrace, followed by greetings from the Class of 2025’s Ricky Rudd and Landmark winner Wheeler. Seven-time Cup champ Jimmie Johnson (Class of 2024) waited to give his own special salutation.
Busch and Johnson had plenty of overlap in their major-league careers, and that meant a handful of noteworthy run-ins given their tendency for close side-by-side racing at the front of the pack. From those mutual competitive natures developed a mutual level of respect, one that Johnson says has grown in recent years.
“We certainly had strong opposing feelings for one another at different points, but it’s wild, man,” Johnson told NASCAR.com. “You put the helmet on and just kind of become a different person, and he and I have always gotten along really well outside of the car, and certainly in these last five, eight years, I don’t know, our relationship has gone to new levels. With his injury, the role that he’s playing now, I know it’s filling him up in a different way. He’s been very supportive of me. He came to my Hall of Fame induction and the after-party, we’ve seen a fair amount of each other over the last little bit of time and happy to see him go in.
“For me, ultimately from my seat on the bus, an amazing career. He unfortunately didn’t go out on his terms, but he has stayed engaged, he’s found new purpose, and then this moment and experiencing it and knowing how he’s going to feel in January after he leaves that stage, he didn’t maybe get the finish he dreamed of, but I think he’s going to end up with a finish that would greatly exceed that dream he had as a kid.”
For his part, Busch said he was at peace with how his career ended, driving hard for the pole position and still performing near his peak as a veteran of the sport’s highest level. He said that Pocono officials had invited him to come back as a dignitary for next month’s race weekend, which would mark his first trip to the 2.5-mile track since his crash there.
But Busch said that now as a Hall of Famer, he planned to stay active in promoting the sport, consulting with teams and serving as an ambassador. “There’s no way that I’ll be stepping away,” Busch said.
Whether that means a potential return to the fires of competition, perhaps on a recreational level, Busch didn’t rule out the possibility.
“We’ll see. We’ll see. I see my nephew tearing up the dirt tracks,” Busch said, making reference to brother Kyle Busch’s son, Brexton. “I think his first Legends race is this Thursday, up at Hickory Motor Speedway. I’ll be there. He’s going to be the one to get me back behind the wheel.”
