Kyle Busch revealed what Tony Stewart had told him in an ice-breaking conversation after making the NASCAR legend mad for two months. A young and hungry Busch, 20, got on the wrong side of Stewart at Las Vegas in 2006 after cutting him off a couple of times.
Stewart tried to retaliate but ended up missing and fencing himself off at Turn 2. Busch, who has suffered similar annoyances in recent years with the likes of Christopher Bell and Joey Logano, went on to finish third, while Stewart slipped down to 21st. Stewart’s annoyance with Busch lasted around two months before the NASCAR champion sat down with the young hotshot and talked it out. It took a lot longer to settle compared to Busch and Logano’s differences, which resulted in an instant brawl in 2017.
“I think it was Vegas. I made him mad at Vegas. It was in the last 25 laps of the race, but I cut him off a couple of times, and he tried to get back at me, and he missed, and he ended up fencing himself off at turn two,” Busch told Kevin Harvick’s Happy Hour.
“And I think I finished third. I think he ended up like 15th or 20th [21st] because he killed his car. Steel body cars. And he was not too thrilled with me, but it was like, he was mad at me for like another two months. And then, finally, we had a run-in with one another again.”
“Eddie called me over to his bus. He goes, ‘Hey, Tony wants to talk to you.’ And I’m like, ‘Okay.’ So, like, you’re on pins and needles. Like you’re, you know, you’re waiting to hear,” Busch continued.
“We went in the bus, and he was like, ‘Look, man, you’re young. You’re fast. You can do this. You’re going to be a winner, multi-time winner champion one day. Like you’ve got it. You’re going to be fine. You just got to figure out how to reign it all in and be in control or under control,’ and all that sort of stuff and do the things of like how that era of racing was done.”
Busch, who’s not scared of confronting his junior Cup Series drivers, says it’s impossible to do today what Stewart did to him. In a stunning assessment, Busch says the drivers of NASCAR today would rather crash than win.
“Like that was the Mark Martin era, the Jeff Gordon era, the Tony Stewart era. You were there, the Harvick era, like that was a different era than where we’re into today,” Busch said.
“So people ask me all the time. They’re like, ‘Well, why don’t you take these kids under your wing and like teach them and tell them?’ I’m like, ‘We are in a completely different era now.’ Like, there is no fixing what we’ve got going right now with everybody running over everybody. They would much rather crash than win a race.”
Busch has recorded three top-ten finishes in the 2025 campaign, but he is still yet to snap his unwanted winless streak. The 63-time Cup Series race winner has gone 62 races without making it to Victory Lane.
In his hometown race in Las Vegas, Busch suffered a monumental error when he lost his rear right tire following a restart from a caution. Busch hit the wall but returned to pit road for repairs before finishing the race.
