Yesterday should have been merely a Memorial Day weekend Sunday for me to simply reconnect with the wonderful world of motor sports. With 1100 miles of top quality racing taking place pretty much from sunup to sundown it’s a great time to take advantage of lesser competition and a lazy cadence to remind one’s self than man in a machine is often more compelling than man vs. one. The day’s annual tentpones definitely did not disappoint. That was particularly true at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, aka Brickyard, as the hometown trio of Chris Sims, Scott Horner and Zion Brown from the Indianapolis Star enthusiastically reported:
Felix Rosenqvist (won) the closest 1-2 finish in Indianapolis 500 history, taking a one-lap shootout on the 2.5-mile Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval…Rosenqvist passe(d)David Malukas on the last straightaway and (got) to the line 0.0233 seconds ahead.
The wild finish comes after a late red flag and a later caution that left 1 lap of all-out racing. Malukas passed Marcus Armstrong at the restart of Lap 200 and held the lead until the last instant. The race had a record 70 passes for the lead, breaking the mark of 68 when Tony Kanaan won in 2013.
And while not quite a dramatic a finish, there was further excitement ahead come dusk, per yet another Gannett-affiliated troika–USA TODAY’s Ellen J. Horrow, Mitchell Northam and Jon Hoefling:
Daniel Suarez won his third career NASCAR Cup Series race and snapped an 82-race winning streak taking the Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Suarez was leading the race when the rain that was predicted all night finally arrived. When it started coming down hard on Lap 373 of 400, NASCAR brought the cars to pit road and then called the race one lap later, declaring Suarez the winner.
Suarez held off heavy hitters Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell on back-to-back restarts and then played masterful defense on the 1.5-mile track until the rain halted the race.
Were those the most significant events of the day, I’d probably be in a more celebratory mood myself. But as racing fans already know that was hardly the case. NASCAR.com’s Zack Albert cemented that sobering reality Thursday:
Kyle Busch, a generational talent who rose to become a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion and one of the sport’s greatest drivers, died Thursday. He was 41. Busch was in his 22nd full-time season in NASCAR’s top division, where he won two Cup Series titles (2015, 2019) and 63 races — a figure that ranks ninth on the circuit’s all-time win list. His numbers across the other two national NASCAR series are record-setting, with 102 victories in what is now called the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and 69 wins in the Craftsman Truck Series.
Busch’s death, which was announced by the Busch family, NASCAR and Richard Childress Racing, marked a sudden, staggering blow to the motorsports community. His team had indicated earlier Thursday that Busch had been hospitalized with a severe illness. The Busch family released a statement on Saturday morning with more details, indicating that “the medical evaluation provided to the Busch family concluded that severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis, resulting in rapid and overwhelming associated complications.”
It’s that word in bold that stuck in my craw. That’s exactly the diagnosis I got when I came with nine hours of dying on a fateful final day in my office before the holiday break, having just wrapped up packing up my office in preparation for a department relocation. HEAVY.com’s Jonathan Adams filled in a few more details yesterday morning that gave me further pause:
The medical evaluation provided to the Busch Family concluded that severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis, resulting in rapid and overwhelming associated complications,” the Busch family detailed in a statement to Fox Sports’ Bob Pockrass. A 9-1-1 call at 5:32 p.m. ET on Wednesday from the Chevrolet motorsports center that houses its racing simulator reported that the 41-year-old Busch was on the bathroom floor, still conscious but overheated and coughing up blood,” Pockrass wrote in a May 23, story titled, “Family Statement Says Kyle Busch Died Of Pneumonia Complications.” The star competed in the All-Star Race at Dover on May 17. Days earlier, Busch won the truck race on May 15, less than one week before his unexpected death. Busch had asked for medical treatment during a recent race.
When I had my symptoms, I went home to an wholly unforgiving spouse who scoffed at my increasing agony and was unwilling to even drive me to the emergency room when the pain I would typically ascribe to severe indigestion not only did not dissipate as usual but intensified over the next three days. It finally got bad enough for me for once to not try and appease my ever-agitated and distracted “life partner” and call an Uber. I couldn’t even sit up in this poor driver’s back seat. Once I staggered into Cedars Sinai Hospital after laying on a gurney on an atypically cold December night, a morphine drip already administered, the matter-of-fact physician on call provided me the above timeline and prognosis.
My fear delayed my own taking action sooner. I have to wonder if some similar level of macho and/or arrogance might have been in play in Busch’s case that kept him from heading to whatever facility in Charlotte is comparable to Cedars Sinai on Monday or Tuesday. Or if his family was as distracted or, heaven forbid, disbelieving as mine was.
On one Friday Kyle Busch was winning a race. By the next Friday he was dead.
That could have been my epitaph, and given the fact he was substantially younger and in far better shape than I am the odds were heavily stacked toward that reality being true in my case.
The memorials yesterday seen by the millions watching nationally on FOX and globally on Prime Video were impressive and moving. Per the USA TODAY trio:
Sporting Kyle Busch’s No. 8 hat, Suarez was emotional on pit road as he honored the driver who became both a close friend an mentor. Suarez drove for Kyle Busch Motorsports in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series in the early stages of his racing career.
And per the INDY STAR threesome:
Busch …raced in No. 18 for most of his career and No. 8 this year. The teams using those numbers in the Indy 500 (Kyffin Simpson is No. 8, Romain Grosjean No. 18) will honor Busch.
I took note of those tributes with an extra bit of chill and a touch of survivor’s remorse. If you ever experience anything close to what I or Kyle Busch did, I cannot urge you more strongly to call 9-1-1 yourself no matter where you are or what you are doing. I’ve seen the ratings trajectories of NASCAR and INDY CAR races outside of tentpole events like these and the Daytona 500 so far this year–they’re not all that great. FOX and Prime Video could use our help. Do your darndest to stick around a little longer to possibly offer it?
Courage…