Kyle Busch and his elder brother Kurt Busch have carved out extraordinary careers in NASCAR. Kurt won a Cup championship in 2004, while Kyle secured two titles in 2015 and 2019. Despite a seven-year age difference, their similar features and names often lead to confusion. Kyle once humorously revealed that even their parents have occasionally mixed them up.
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In 2015, during the season where he won his first championship, Kyle spoke to Jeff Gluck about the frequent mix-ups. “I get mistaken for my brother (Kurt) all the time. For some reason, it’s easy for fans to do. I don’t understand it,” he said.
Gluck pressed on, asking if it was due to the similar names, or the looks. “Sometimes they really think I’m him, and I have to convince them that no, I’m not. Then they’re like, ‘OK, whatever’. But other times people just want to spit out ‘Kurt’ when they mean ‘Kyle’. My parents are plenty guilty of that, too,” Kyle explained.
Apart from the surname and an uncanny resemblance, the brothers share similarities in terms of careers as well. Both have achieved over 30 Cup Series victories, making them the siblings with the most combined wins in NASCAR history. Besides that, in 2023, they were both honored and included in NASCAR’s 75 Greatest Drivers list, cementing their legacies in the sport.
The feud between the Busch brothers
Kyle and Kurt’s relationship has had its moments of sibling rivalry and friction, before transforming into friendship over time. Despite their current close relationship, with Kurt frequently attending dirt races to cheer on his younger brother, their history includes some big conflicts, including a clash during the 2007 All-Star race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Competitive spirits led to a costly collision at the time. Kyle was behind the wheel of the #5 HMS Chevrolet, and Kurt was piloting the #2 Penske car. The tension peaked when Kyle dove to the inside of his brother’s car, going three-wide, vying for a second-place finish. It resulted in both brothers wrecking their cars and forfeiting the chance at a one-million-dollar prize.
The racing incident strained their relationship. They refused to talk to each other for over a year, and it took them over a decade to fully mend the relationship. Reflecting on those turbulent times, Kyle once shared:
“He blamed me for the wreck for about 10 years and then finally he came around and admitted that he crashed me in that wreck, that it was his fault… I hated him. We finally came to somewhat of an agreement to disagree.”
Their longstanding feud was ultimately quelled by their grandmother, whose intervention helped bridge the communication gap.
