Just heartbreaking.
It’s been nearly four months now since NASCAR legend Kyle Busch sadly passed away at the age of 41, on May 21st, 2026, due to pneumonia that progressed into sepsis. It was very sudden, and he left behind his wife, Samantha, and two children, Brexton (11) and Lennix (4), as well as his parents and fellow race car driver in his brother, Kurt Busch.
And this week, Kurt is the guest on CNN host Anderson Cooper’s All There Is with Anderson Cooper podcast, where he opened up on grief and shared details about Kyle’s last day on earth. Kurt explained that he didn’t know Kyle was even sick, and they’ve both dealt with sinus issues over the years.
In fact, Kurt talked about everything Kyle had going on in the days leading up to his passing, from winning a race that Friday before and opening a go kart track with his son, Brexton, the day before he died:
“I didn’t know that Kyle was sick. I had heard that he asked for a shot at the Watkins Glen race… two weeks before. I know through my physicals, and his physicals with NASCAR, we both have arthritis and gout, and struggle with sinus issues. I struggled quite a bit, needing prednisone, needing a steroid shot. So I know he probably went through the same thing.
It was most likely a sinus shot of some sort, but I didn’t know he was sick. People around him said he had a little cough here or there. He won a race the Friday before, he was opening a go kart track somewhere in North Carolina with his son Braxton on Tuesday, the day before. There was no signs of what this led to.”
Cooper asked about how Kyle went from a Wednesday afternoon practicing in a simulator the hospital. In brand new, never-shared details, Kurt revealed the interaction Kyle had with his crew chief that led to him making the decision to call an ambulance.
They got Kyle to the hospital, where Kurt says his brother was “stabilized,” so he went home to get some sleep. At 4 AM the next morning, Kurt got a call from his dad that Kyle had passed away:
“It’s a normal routine now for Cup Series guys on Wednesdays to spend a couple hours in the simulator. He’s just doing his normal session, session ended around five. He gets out, and goes to the bathroom and starts coughing. His crew chief, the crew chief is kinda like your wife at the track, your best friend, and you take care of each other and you share a lot of secrets with your crew chief.
His crew chief is like, ‘You alright?’ He went into the bathroom, Kyle was sitting on the floor with his back up against the wall. He’s like, ‘You don’t look so good.’ Kyle’s like ‘No.’ ‘You need me to call an ambulance?’ Kyle said yes. That’s something that athletes don’t do. Nobody shows weakness, that type of person. For him to say that, something was wrong. an ambulance gets him, gets him to the hospital, things are stabilized.
Meanwhile, I turn my phone off that evening, and I didn’t hear about anything until my dad is calling my girlfriends phone at 4 AM. And that’s when I learned, I rushed straight to the hospital.”
Kurt understandably got very emotional as he talked about how unfair it was that Kyle was taken that way, likening that 12-hour period of his life to a “horror movie,” calling the whole situation “one in a million”:
“How fast things changed, man. It’s not fair. What I saw happen in a 12-hour period is unfathomable. The sight of a horror movie. It wasn’t like we lost time, it wasn’t like we didn’t have good care. It’s just one in a million, it’s like, no. No.”
I just can’t even imagine how heartbroken Kyle’s family is to lose someone seemingly so healthy so quickly and unexpectedly.
Kurt and Kyle seemed to be very close, they grew up racing together in Las Vegas and had a unique bond due to their racing careers, both making it to the top series of the sport and racing against each other there for years.
It’s still hard to believe he’s gone, and our thoughts and prayers are still with the Busch family as they continue to navigate life without Kyle.
The full episode is available below.
