The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Concussion lingers for former NASCAR champion Kurt Busch
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Kurt Busch might have received a proper sendoff this weekend in Las Vegas, where his hometown track treated him cruelly over 21 tries until he broke through for a win in 2020.
Busch could have been feted with gifts as part of a season-long farewell tour. His parents who helped mold him into a ferocious stock car driver would have cheered him on. Little brother Kyle would take him on in one of the final brother vs. brother battles in the desert.
Yet, those scenarios are implausible now for the 44-year-old Busch, his career prematurely curtailed because of lingering effects from a concussion suffered in a wreck during qualifying last summer at Pocono Raceway.
Busch instead is now a de facto consultant for his old 23XI Racing team and Toyota. He counseled Travis Pastrana at the Daytona 500. He championed crew chief Billy Scott as the next Chad Knaus, and Busch has thrown his arms around anyone in the garage who needs advice. He’s chatted up sponsors and is doing the grunt work needed to make the gears turn on the team co-owned by Michael Jordan.
He just can’t race. Busch is still walking out of a fog from the blunt impact his brain absorbed
in the crash. He’s vowed to race in a competitive series again even if a Cup Series ride is out of reach but he has not yet been cleared by doctors.
“When you look at the therapist, and he’s looking back at you, there’s work to be done,” Busch said. “That’s really all I can give you.”
Busch is hopeful a new physical therapy program designed to strengthen balance and eye movement will aid in a full recovery. Until then, Busch keeps pushing in a journey without a true finish line in sight.
“Go-karting has been fine for me, the simulator has been fine,” Busch said. “It’s just when I had my head in the headrest and there’s that movement, that bothers me.”
NASCAR’s dramatic safety upgrades that included
SAFER barriers and head-and-neck restraints in the wake of Dale Earnhardt’s death in the 2001 Daytona 500 lulled fans into thinking drivers were bullet proof inside their modernized cars. NASCAR has not suffered a racing death in its three national series since 2001 and most drivers think Ryan Newman surviving a fiery crash at the 2020 Daytona 500 escape even the scariest wrecks relatively unscathed.
Jeff Burton, an NBC Sports announcer and former driver, said Busch “was still as good as he’s ever been” when the 2017 Daytona 500 champion took his No. 45 Toyota out last July for what should have been a routine qualifying lap on the 2½-mile track in Pennsylvania. Busch, though, seemed to
lose control as the Toyota slid up the track and the right rear slammed square into the wall.
The car whipped around and the nose violently tagged the wall, as well.
Looked bad, yes. But certainly not any worse to the naked eye than most wrecks. Busch apologized over the radio and then waved to the crowd to signal he was “OK” as he walked to the waiting ambulance and hasn’t been inside a Cup car for a race since.
Busch told The Associated Press he was told the rear hit registered at a brain-rattling 30 G’s consider, modern fighter pilots pull a G-force of about nine and the front smacked the wall at 18 G’s, numbers that raised concerns about safety in the Next Gen cars.