Kurt Busch won’t be racing full-time in NASCAR next season.
The 2004 Cup Series champion and 2017 Daytona 500 winner announced Saturday morning that he would not be able to race full-time in NASCAR in 2023 after a concussion during a qualifying crash at Pocono in July. Busch hasn’t raced since that crash.
Busch made the announcement in his hometown of Las Vegas, the site of Sunday’s Cup Series race. He said he hoped to race in select races next season if he was medically cleared.
“I know I’m not 100% in my ability to go out and race at the top level in the NASCAR Cup Series. These are the best of the best drivers, and lately, I haven’t felt my best.”
“The doctors have come to the conclusion that it is best for me to ‘shut it down’ for this season. Even though I have made solid gains since I have been working with top specialists and the team at Toyota Performance Center, I’m still not 100% and I’m still not cleared to compete.”
“As I continue to focus only health and work towards being cleared, I will be stepping away from full-time NASCAR Cup Series competition in 2023.”
Busch, 44, was set to enter his second season with 23XI Racing next season and it’s fair to wonder if he’ll return to the Cup Series again on a full-time basis. Busch has 34 wins in 776 races and is a surefire NASCAR Hall of Famer. Busch’s consistency throughout his career was remarkable; he won a race in all but three of his full-time Cup Series seasons from 2001-22.
He was the first driver to get a Cup Series title in NASCAR’s playoff format. After Matt Kenseth won the 2003 title before the end of the season, NASCAR instituted a 10-race postseason format in 2004.
Busch took over the top spot in the standings after he won the inaugural NASCAR playoff race. He briefly dropped down to second after a fifth-place finish in the second race but got back to the top spot after another fifth-place finish and never relinquished it over the final seven races of the season. He clinched the title in the final race of the year at Homestead after finishing fifth in a race where his car lost a wheel as he was coming to pit road.
Busch will be replaced at 23XI Racing next season by Tyler Reddick.
Busch’s qualifying crash
Busch’s crash at Pocono at the end of July quickly became a clear sign something was wrong with the Cup Series car that NASCAR introduced at the beginning of this season. The car was designed from scratch and is built with spec parts from NASCAR-approved single-source vendors.
Drivers started saying early in the 2022 season that the car was more rigid than its predecessor and they were feeling crash impacts much more significantly. This feedback came after the car’s implementation was delayed a year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and as other safety issues have cropped up during the season like unreliable tires and cars catching fire for bizarre reasons.
Busch became the first driver seriously hurt in the new car when he backed into the wall off Turn 3 in what looked like an innocuous crash on his qualifying attempt. The next day, 23XI Racing said Busch had suffered a concussion and that he would be unable to race.
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After winning at Kansas in May, Busch was in a position to make the playoffs if he was able to return to the track. As his slow recovery progressed, Busch announced in August that he was forfeiting his spot in the playoffs ahead of the last race of the regular season. The announcement made it clear that Busch wasn’t going to be returning to the cockpit of his No. 45 car anytime soon.
NASCAR, however, didn’t make any public overtures regarding the safety of the new Cup car in the wake of Busch’s crash. It took another concussion for that to happen.
Alex Bowman suffered a concussion in a similar crash during the Sep. 25 playoff race at Texas. Bowman said over the radio after the wreck that it was the hardest hit he’d taken in his life but was able to finish the race because the car was still drivable.
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Days after the wreck, Bowman and Hendrick Motorsports announced that he would be sidelined indefinitely. Bowman has still not returned to the track and could also end up missing the rest of the season.
Bowman’s crash caused drivers to become even more outspoken than they had been about the issues with the new car and NASCAR took the step of meeting with drivers about their safety concerns last weekend. The “tense” meeting — according to Charlotte winner Christopher Bell — came after the Associated Press reported that at least two other unnamed Cup Series drivers believed they had suffered concussions in crashes over the course of the 2022 season.
The concussions seem to stem from a car that’s built much more rigidly than previous versions. As the car absorbs less impact during crashes because of that rigidity, the impact is passed onto drivers. NASCAR said that it will be implementing a new rear clip on the car for 2023 to help the car absorb more impact than it currently does in rear-first crashes. It is unclear if the car will still be more rigid and less shock-absorbing overall than previous cars have been.
A successful and tumultuous career
Busch won the 2004 Cup Series title at the age of 25 in his third full-time season for Roush Racing. He spent just one more season with the team after that Cup title and that was even cut short by two races.
He sat out the final two races of the 2005 season after he was pulled over near Phoenix Raceway and cited for reckless driving. The Maricopa County incident report said Busch was unhappy he was asked to take a field sobriety test and Busch’s citation led to a premature departure from his first Cup Series team. Busch was already leaving the team to head to Team Penske in 2006. In his statement announcing that Busch wouldn’t race for the team in the final two races of the season, Jack Roush said that his team was “officially retiring as Kurt Busch’s apologists.”
Busch spent six seasons with Team Penske and parted ways with the team after Busch berated an ESPN cameraman in an angry incident during the final race of the season. Busch was upset his car had a mechanical failure and took his frustrations out on those around him.
Team Penske announced in the weeks after the season that Busch would no longer be part of the team and he was forced to get a ride with the small Phoenix Racing team for 2012. Busch then missed the first Pocono race of 2012 after he threatened a physical altercation against a reporter. Busch made the comments while he was already on NASCAR probation for a pit-road incident with Ryan Newman earlier in the season.
After one season with Phoenix, Busch moved to Furniture Row Racing for a season and got the team’s first playoff appearance when he finished 10th in the standings. He then moved to Stewart-Haas Racing for the 2014 season and scored his first win since 2012 at Martinsville.
Busch missed the first three races of the 2015 season thanks to another NASCAR suspension. The sanctioning body suspended Busch after a woman he had dated was granted a protective order against him for alleged transgressions during their relationship. Busch, who testified during a hearing that she told him she was a trained assassin, never faced criminal charges relating to the protective order.
The woman who filed the protective order against him was later convicted on charges of wire fraud, fraud and tax evasion relating to her work with a now-defunct non-profit. She’s currently awaiting a new trial on those charges after an appeals court ruling.
Busch went on to win two races during that 2015 season after NASCAR granted him playoff eligibility and finished eighth in the standings. He spent five seasons with Stewart-Haas Racing before moving to Chip Ganassi Racing in 2019. Busch qualified for the playoffs in all of his three seasons with Ganassi and scored a win in each of those seasons. He left the team for 23XI Racing ahead of the 2022 season after Ganassi sold his team and the team co-owned by Denny Hamlin and Michael Jordan added a second team car to pair with Bubba Wallace’s No. 23.