$1.8-Billion Sponsor Unearths Kurt Busch’s Misfortune That Led to His NASCAR Career

Kurt Busch is regarded as one of the finest drivers to have ever raced in NASCAR. The 45-year-old won the Cup Series championship in 2004. Over the years, he notched 34 wins in the Cup Series, including six at “The World’s Fastest Half-Mile” in Bristol. However, all this might not have come to pass had Busch not entered a competition back in the day—a competition that he almost threw.

From last to first, Kurt Busch’s path to NASCAR was unorthodox

After being out of action ever since he suffered a crash in Pocono in July last year, the 45-year-old veteran announced his retirement from NASCAR earlier this year, citing health concerns like arthritis and gout. The end of his full-time racing career in NASCAR was unfortunate but the beginning of it is quite extraordinary. On a recent episode of the “Kenny Conversation” with Kenny Wallace, the former Cup Series driver revealed the unorthodox beginnings of his career in NASCAR.

Wallace revealed that Kurt Busch got his big break in NASCAR after doing well in a competition organized by Jack Roush. The name of the event was “The Gong Show” and it featured the best local drivers from across the country. Wallace was given this information by Paul Mecca, who used to be part of Exide Batteries, one of Busch’s first sponsors.

Busch answered in the affirmative and proceeded to explain how the competition went. The 2004 Cup Series champion recalled how he had completely messed up the first round in Toledo but had made up for it in the second round at the Phoenix International Speedway.

“The first one was Toledo, Ohio. And I got my rear end handed to me by Toledo, Ohio. I about wrecked the truck on lap 0. But at Phoenix, I had raced some southwest tour races there and so had all the others, and my slowest lap, Kenny, I’ll tell you the truth, was everyone’s fastest lap in the practice session. And so I went out there and started ripping around in the Exide truck,” Busch said.

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His performance in Phoenix was good enough to convince Jack Rouh to give Kurt Busch a chance in the Truck Series. The 2004 Cup Series champion got the all-important phone call two months after the event and thus began one of the greatest NASCAR careers of the time. “So I got the job and my first race was Daytona in the truck and I finished second and the rest is history,” Busch concluded.

One of the most infamous moments of Kurt Busch’s career was his feud with Jimmy Spencer in 2002. The two had come together on the Indianapolis track that year but Busch wanted to clear up a misconception a lot of fans had back in the day.

Kurt Busch lifts the lid on the infamous feud

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Speaking on current Cup Series driver Corey LaJoie’s Stacking Pennis podcast, Kurt Busch said, “The whole Indianapolis thing with Jimmy Spencer. Like, when he wrecked me, he knows he wrecked me. I never wrecked him. I only moved him,” he said.

“When I got out of the car at Indy after I wrecked and I’m patting my rear-end. In short-track racing, that means you go to the back. You wreck that guy, you go to the back. 99.9% of America thought that was ‘kiss my rear end’. And I know that’s not the way it went, and nobody wanted to take in the proper truth of the story,” the 45-year-old added.

Kurt Busch and Jimmy Spencer’s rivalry reached its boiling point in 2003 when the latter punched Busch, giving him a bloody nose as a result. During the Michigan race, Busch discussed wrecking Spencer on his team radio.

This pushed Jimmy Spencer past his boiling point and he made his feelings perfectly clear to Kurt Busch. The 45-year-old really has had a career full of famous and infamous moments, and there is no question that he will go down as one of the legends of the sport.

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