Final 12 months, we discovered that Kyle Busch had all the time dreamed of trying the Coke 600-Indy 500 Double. He practically had a deal put along with Andretti in 2017 and once more with McLaren in recent times.
Sadly, his Indy 500 dream by no means got here to fruition earlier than Busch’s sudden and tragic passing this previous week. The 2-time NASCAR Cup Sequence champion was solely 41 years previous.
After the NASCAR legend’s abrupt passing, there was an outpouring of tributes as the complete motorsport neighborhood remembers the ‘Rowdy’ Busch.
Dale Coyne Racing has joined in on the tributes, memorializing Busch by means of Romain Grosjean’s No. 18 Honda that’s set to compete within the one hundred and tenth operating of the Indianapolis 500.
Grosjean is driving the No. 18, the identical quantity Busch drove from 2008 by means of the 2022 NASCAR Cup season. 56 of Busch’s 63 Cup wins got here whereas driving the No. 18, and so, Coyne has modified the font on Grosjean’s 2026 Indy 500 challenger to reflect the font utilized by Busch for these 14 years at JGR.
Sports activities Enterprise Journal’s Adam Stern confirmed this, noting that FOX Sports activities and JGR assisted Coyne in making the font tweak as correct as doable.
IndyCar on FOX commentator and former racer Townsend Bell was the primary to counsel the change, and he has his personal reference to KB. They had been co-drivers for the 2020 version of the Rolex 24 Hours at Daytona
“Due to Dale Coyne Racing and Joe Gibbs Racing for making it occur,” stated Bell in a social media put up. “I’m nonetheless struggling to course of this tragedy. Kyle Busch was a teammate Lexus. He couldn’t have been extra beneficiant when my son first arrived in Charlotte. He was a buddy and I obtained to see his true character.”
Grosjean, who began 181 Components 1 races all through his profession, is making his fourth look within the Indianapolis 500. He certified twenty fourth within the No. 18 DCR Honda, and is hoping to raised his career-best outcome on the speedway, which is nineteenth in 2024. He skipped final 12 months’s Indy 500, however is again racing IndyCar full-time this season.
Regardless of over a century of Indy 500 historical past on the Brickyard, the No. 18 has by no means gained the enduring race.
IndyCar and IMS have already acknowledged Busch in numerous methods since Thursday, together with a tribute on the frontstretch scoring pylon. Busch is a two-time winner of NASCAR’s Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis, profitable back-to-back there in 2015 and 2016.
Indy 500 pays tribute to Kyle Busch
Photograph by: Penske Leisure
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