The late Kyle Busch’s 11-year-old son, Brexton, shared a heartbreaking tribute to the NASCAR legend one day after his death at age 41.
On Friday, May 22, Brexton changed his profile photo on both Instagram and Facebook to a shot of his dad hugging him on a racetrack. The powerful picture was taken moments after Kyle won the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series Fr8 Racing 208 event at Echo Park Speedway in Hampton, Georgia, on February 21.
Brexton is the older of Kyle and his wife Samantha Busch’s two children, with the couple having also shared daughter Lennix, 4. The boy has already followed in his dad and uncle Kurt Busch’s footsteps by competing in junior racing leagues.
In January 2025, Brexton won his first-ever Golden Driller Championship at the 40th annual Smiley’s Racing Products Tulsa Shootout powered NOS Energy Drink.
Kyle often expressed pride over his young son’s junior racing success, telling FOX8’s Kevin Connolly and Danny Harnden in his last-ever interview that he hoped Brexton would someday surpass his record-breaking NASCAR Cup Series success.
“All records are made to be broken, right? So maybe it’ll stick around for a long, long time. Maybe somebody out there one day will break it,” he said on May 13. “Maybe I’m training that young guy that’s going to break it, my son Brexton.”
Kyle was by his son’s side when Brexton celebrated his 11th birthday on Monday, May 11, a mere three days before the NASCAR driver died.
Alongside an Instagram photo of the whole family gathered around his birthday cake, Brexton wrote on Monday, “Thank you to all of my friends and family for celebrating with me at home!! Fun evening swimming and playing football, my team won on a Pick-6.”
The Busch family announced on Thursday that Kyle had been hospitalized with a “severe illness” after battling health issues for several weeks.
During a race at Watkins Glen in New York on May 10, Kyle asked over his racecar radio audio for a doctor to come to his bus after he finished the race. A 911 call placed one day before Kyle’s death reported that he coughed up blood at a training facility in North Carolina.
Only a few hours later, NASCAR made the shocking announcement that Kyle was dead.
“We are saddened and heartbroken to share the news of the passing of Kyle Busch, a two-time Cup champion and one of our sport’s greatest and fiercest drivers,” NASCAR revealed via X on Thursday. “We extend our deepest condolences to the Busch family, Richard Childress Racing and the entire motorsports community.”
The NASCAR world has come together to honor Kyle’s life and legacy, with Denny Hamlin, Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin among the luminaries to pay tribute.
“Absolutely cannot comprehend this news,” Hamlin, 45, tweeted. “We just need to think of his family during this time. We love you KB.”
Earnhardt, 51, acknowledged his complicated relationship with Kyle, writing, “We luckily took the time to figure out our differences and that was something he instigated with a conversation in his bus around how we each managed our racing teams. I was super eager for us to get on better terms. But it was he who made the effort for that to be possible. We did some media together also to laugh through some of the things we put each other through many years ago.”
