Dale Jr reveals heartbreaking final text message from Kyle Busch, NASCAR gets a win & driver teases revenge
Whew. What a race. What a finish in Nashville!
Sure, it happened around midnight and we were all tucked in and tuckered out, but still ... it's Nashville. The best things usually don't happen around there until after midnight.
Feels like NASCAR needed a moment like that in the waning laps Sunday night. A restart with four to go. Denny Hamlin, Christopher Bell and Chase Briscoe beating and banging all the way to the checkers. Dale Earnhardt Jr. in the booth narrating the whole thing. A Kyle Busch bow at the end from Hamlin, who is now one of the last remaining members of the "old guard" in the garage.
After a really rough 10 days, NASCAR needed a win. They got it at Nashville. We'll get into it, obviously.
What else? We'll unfortunately stay on the Kyle Busch beat today, because we have some new updates since we last spoke.
We'll also get to Dale Jr.'s last conversation with Busch and how it would've potentially blown minds across the sport, and did Austin Dillon intentionally wreck Brad Keselowski at Nashville?
The footage ain't great, but I'm not sure. You'll see. We'll figure it out together.
Four tires, enough fuel to get us to Michigan, and maybe an ice-cold beer for Brad and Austin on the way out of town ... Monday Morning Pit-Stop — the "NASCAR finally got a win" edition — is live!
Like I said in the opening, NASCAR needed something to go right last night. Anything. Just a break.
The Kyle Busch death has been hanging — and will continue hanging — over this sport for well over a week now. It's just been dark cloud after dark cloud after dark cloud.
And, at the same time, there have been literal dark clouds everywhere they've went! Last weekend's Coke 600 was a washout from start to finish. They squeezed in just enough miles to make the race official. It was brutal.
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This weekend's trip to Nashville wasn't looking great, either. Friday and Saturday were absolute slogs. Rain. Rain. And, of course, more rain.
That's what tends to happen during these May/June/July/August races, you know. It rains during these months in the good 'ol US of A. Has for as long as I can remember.
Just one of them deals, as DW would say.
KYLE BUSCH TEXTED NASCAR CEO TWO DAYS BEFORE DEATH WITH SPECIFIC REQUEST, AND IT WAS PERFECT
So THIS finish late last night (or was it early this morning?) was very much needed for a beaten and battered racing series still trying to dig out of this awful hole:
Denny, for those who weren't locked in for the green flag, was the polesitter last night for about 10 seconds before he jumped the start of the race and was sent to the back by NASCAR.
How does the polesitter ... jump the start? Don't they control the start? That's a new one.
Anyway, he spent the first half of the race in the back, finally worked his way back towards the front at the halfway mark, and was clearly the car to beat at the end. Not a bad look for Joe Gibbs Racing, either, when all three guys are up there fighting for the win on the final lap.
And then Denny gave us the Kyle Busch bow? I'm not sure I want everyone in the garage doing that the rest of the year because at some point it'll lose its luster. But Denny Hamlin is absolutely one of the very few who can pull it off. He has free rein to do whatever he wants, not that anyone cares what I say.
Nor should they!
As for Kyle ... again, I don't want to keep doing this every week, but I have to talk about Rowdy a bit before we get back to Nashville.
Since we last spoke, his death certificate became public information, which feels odd to me. Don't love that. But, it's out there, and it does offer some insight to his final hours.
Again, I'm not sure we need that insight, but we have it, so I'm passing it along:
Look, this was just a really bad series of events. I know that's putting it in overly simple terms, but it's what it seems like to me. This was the perfect storm in the worst possible way.
Officials called Busch's death a "chain of events." He was suffering from bacterial pneumonia for "days to weeks" before things got really bad on that fateful Wednesday morning.
It turned into sepsis, and Busch later died.
We knew Kyle was sick for a while leading up to the week he died. He needed medical attention after the race at Watkins Glen, and was coughing after winning at Dover the week before he died.
Fans unearthed that clip over the weekend, and it's a tough watch. It's all a tough watch right now, which is why Denny's win — and the show it gave us at the end — was so important.
OK, a couple more on the way out. First up? Dale Jr., who continues to be just excellent in the Prime broadcast booth, spoke to Kyle Busch mere days before his death and the two were cooking up something special for NASCAR fans:
"He's texting me and he was like, 'What scheme are we going to run?' I said, 'You can run any scheme that you want. We can run 51 or whatever you'd rather have him say.' He literally said, 'The Dale Jr. 8.'
"And he's giving my head an exploding emoji. And then he says, 'Race fans.'"
So, Kyle was going to run the Dale Jr. 8 scheme during a Cars Tour race this summer. Goodness gracious. Imagine telling that to NASCAR fans 15 years ago? Imagine telling it to Dale Jr. fans 15 years ago?!
These two didn't get along great for a long period after Kyle wrecked Junior at Richmond. That's probably putting it mildly.
We went from that, to Kyle Busch driving Dale's late model in the Cars tour. Shows you how much respect Kyle had earned in the Cup garage.
OK, one more quickie on the way out ... and it has to do with the actual race last night! I know. Stunning.
What do we think, class? Did Austin Dillon intentionally punt Brad Keselowski here?
I don't believe we heard from Austin Dillon last night, but I'm gonna assume he's going to say he did NOT wreck Brad on purpose there.
Brad, naturally, doesn't see it that way, and then teases some revenge.
"So, turnabout is fair play."
Love that. We THRIVE on revenge in this class. We need it like we need oxygen. Go get 'em, Brad!
PS: I'm in Junior's camp on this one. I don't think Austin wrecked Brad intentionally. If anything, he should've been pissed at Chris Buescher, not Brad. I know the video doesn't look great, but it just seems odd to me.
Then again, those two haven't historically gotten along, so perhaps Austin did punt him into next week for no apparent reason.
Either way, it's a win-win for us!
Let me know: Zach.Dean@OutKick.com.
OK ... that's all I have for today. I'll see y'all at Michigan. Good weekend for NASCAR. They needed it.
Let's try to keep that up this week.