Kurt Busch says he ‘wouldn’t change a thing’ as he prepares to enter NASCAR’s Hall of Fame

By Canadian Press on January 22, 2026.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Success and fame came quickly for Kurt Busch.

In hindsight, maybe a little too fast for the driver known as “The Outlaw.”

Busch won his first dwarf car race at age 15 in a small Nevada town, setting him on a meteoric rise. He went on to win the Cup Series championship just 11 years later in 2004 and finished his 23-year professional career with 43 victories across NASCAR’s three national series before a concussion ended his time behind the wheel in 2023.

On Friday night, the 47-year-old Busch will be inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame along with fellow drivers Harry Gant and Ray Hendrick, culminating a drama-filled career that had more twists and turns and momentum changes than your typical Sunday stock car race.

There were run-ins with NASCAR. Clashes with owners and crew members of his own race teams. Altercations with other drivers and reporters. Suspensions and firings became synonymous with the Busch name.

There were highly-publicized relationship issues away from the track, too.

“There is definitely the knowledge and wisdom thing that youth doesn’t have,” Busch said with a laugh Thursday when asked if he would do things differently during an interview with The Associated Press. “And so if I could, I would have told my younger self to have more patience and to not get so animated or so excited when things went wrong.

“It was like I was on too high of highs and too low of lows,” Busch went on to say. “If I could have just mellowed it out a little, I think, that would have made for an easier path for me, so to speak.”

Getting to the Hall of Fame was not an easy journey for Busch, who burned his share of bridges and made plenty of enemies along the way, often bringing unnecessary negative attention upon himself because of his short temper.

In 2005, his tumultuous six-year stint with Roush Racing, one that included several on-track flare-ups, came to an end when he was suspended for the final two races of the season by the team after he was detained by police near the Phoenix track on suspicion of drunken driving for being uncooperative and belligerent with officers.

During a 2007 race at Dover for Team Penske, Busch recklessly clipped a crew member for Tony Stewart’s team on pit road and was parked by NASCAR for the remainder of the race.

His time with Penske ended in 2011 following a confrontation with a member of the media. One year later, racing’s governing body suspended Busch for another incident in which he threatened another reporter following a race at Dover.

Busch was suspended again prior to the 2015 season by NASCAR after a judge said the former champion almost surely choked and beat a former girlfriend and there was a “substantial likelihood” of more domestic violence from him in the future.

Busch was never charged in the incident and later reinstated by NASCAR.

As Busch aged, he began to mellow some.

He drove his Stewart-Haas Racing Ford to his only Daytona 500 victory in 2017 and later helped lay the foundation for 23XI Racing run by Denny Hamlin and former NBA star Michael Jordan, driving the No. 45 Toyota Camry and serving as a veteran leader for the team’s expansion to a two-car operation.

Busch said Thursday that his fast ascent from winning the second competitive race of his life in a dwarf car in Pahrump, Nevada as a teenager to racing in the Cup Series at age 22 — he bypassed what was then known as the Busch Series and went straight to the big leagues because of his talent — never afforded him the time to mature as a person.

He called his rise “uncharted territory” at the time.

“That journey, and how fast it went — that’s why I wasn’t ready to be a professional,” Busch said.

Busch, who followed his father Tom into auto racing and paved the way for his highly successful younger brother Kyle, said he was raised with a burning desire to win.

And that never went away.

“My dad, when he raced, he went to the track and he was not there to make friends,” Busch said. “He wasn’t there for social hour. It was ‘We’re here for the trophy.’ So when you’re raised in that mentality, that’s the tenacity and that’s what pushed me.”

Busch doesn’t look back on his tumultuous career with regret, though.

Despite the troubles, despite the ups and downs along his journey to the Hall, Busch said he “wouldn’t change a thing.”

“It was my ride, and I have to be happy with it,” Busch said. “I am very complacent with how it all ended up.”

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AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing

Steve Reed, The Associated Press

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