It’s been almost four months since the world lost Kyle Busch.
The unexpected passing of the two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion meant that the motorsports community lost one of its fiercest, no-nonsense competitors, the NASCAR garage and industry lost one of its all-time greats and most beloved humans, and Samantha, Brexton, and Lennix Busch lost a loving husband and father.
This weekend, with the NASCAR Cup Series returning to Bristol Motor Speedway, the racetrack that was considered one of Busch’s favorites and the place where he made NASCAR history on two separate occasions (2011 and 2017), his former team Joe Gibbs Racing, long-time sponsor M&M’s, and Ty Gibbs, have prepared a moving tribute to the NASCAR legend.
For Saturday’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race, the No. 54 Joe Gibbs Racing Toyota Camry XSE will have sponsor M&M’s on-board for the first time since Busch’s departure at the end of 2022, sporting a paint scheme that the 63-time Cup Series winner carried, in some form, for 15 years. Embedded into that paint scheme, is a mosaic of pictures from Busch’s illustrious career in NASCAR, which spanned more than two decades.
There’s bound to be no dry eyes in “The Last Great Coliseum” when the green flag drops on Saturday, as tens of thousands of fans watch the M&M’s Toyota Camry hit the racetrack one last time, in honor of Kyle Busch, and most (if not all) will have Ty Gibbs as the sentimental favorite for victory in the iconic Bristol Night Race.
…and there are so many levels to this tribute that make Gibbs the perfect person to carry it.
While it’s hard to imagine the four-car juggernaut of Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) being considered a family-run organization, that’s exactly what it is to Ty Gibbs. His grandfather (Joe Gibbs) is the team’s namesake, his father and uncle (Coy and J.D. Gibbs) had significant roles with the team before their passing, and now, his mother (Heather Gibbs) is a team executive, plus, he’s got cousins that work throughout the organization.
Joe Gibbs Racing is a family, and for most of Ty’s life, Kyle Busch was a part of that family. Even after Kyle’s passing, Joe Gibbs Racing, and especially Ty Gibbs, have acted as a family would.
In a social media video leading up to this weekend’s Bass Pro Shops Night Race, where the tribute scheme to Kyle Busch will hit the racetrack, Samantha Busch, Kyle’s wife, explained exactly how Gibbs, at 23 years old, has been there to support 12-year-old Brexton in the months after his father’s passing.
“Ty [Gibbs] has been – I can’t even put into words how wonderful he’s been to Brexton, he’s been like a big brother, and he’s been a source of comfort for him,” Samantha Busch said. “I mean, Ty’s still young himself and he has come over, he’s taken Brexton to lunch, he’s rode karts around our neighborhood with him, he came and picked him up and took him to breakfast and took him to the track to race carts, and like, NASCAR is family.”
Having been through the grief of losing his own father, Coy Gibbs, the night after winning the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series championship in November 2022, Gibbs knows exactly what it’s like to experience a loss of this magnitude, let alone in a public-facing industry like being a race car driver.
“I just think for me, being there for him for whatever he needs, obviously, but just being cool, we can be friends,” Gibbs told the media Friday at Bristol. “I think the thing that sucks about people passing, is people just want to talk about how much they feel bad for you. Like, I just want to have a good time, especially, I know Brexton does too, and people just don’t really understand how to handle grief because they haven’t ever gone through anything like that.”
“Ty knows what it’s like, it’s kind of funny Coy and Kyle were so similar, they were just blunt, shoot you straight, you know, and gosh, I think Brexton to have Ty to understand exactly what he’s going through, you know, he came home one day from hanging out with Ty and he was like ‘we talked about our dads’ and he just comes home so much happier,” Busch added.
None of this is an act. This is real.
This isn’t, as some on social media have suggested, some kind of publicity stunt concocted by NASCAR and Joe Gibbs Racing to boost Gibbs’ profile amongst NASCAR fans. In fact, If Gibbs had the option, this probably wouldn’t be getting the amount of attention that it is, this week. The 23-year-old doesn’t want anything from this – he doesn’t need people to like him, he doesn’t need followers, he doesn’t need people to tell him he’s a good person. This isn’t about him.
“It doesn’t really matter how I feel,” Gibbs said Friday when asked about seeing the No. 54 M&M’s Toyota Camry XSE for the first time. “It’s just about the family and what they have, personally, there’s no PR person here telling me to say that, so you can say the same thing, but it’s just for the family, it doesn’t matter what I think, I’m glad to be a part of it.”
Gibbs will look to pull off an emotional victory on Saturday for himself, no doubt, but moreso for the late Kyle Busch, his family, M&M’s, Joe Gibbs Racing, Toyota, and everybody who was involved in making the M&M’s No. 18 as iconic as it has become over the last two decades.
