“Because you never know when the last one is.”

That was double NASCAR Cup Series champion Kyle Busch after winning a Truck race at Dover last week, and it was a prophetic statement that marked his last ever NASCAR win before his tragic passing on Thursday, May 21, aged 41.

Busch’s entrance onto the NASCAR scene coincided with my most attentive NASCAR-watching spell. In that mid-late-2000s period, Jeff Gordon’s clean cut, corporate America image had created a new breed of NASCAR driver that didn’t need to be a villain or to piss everyone off to sell merch and get bums on seats.

Sure, there were fights, rivalries, maybe even a bit of pantomime. But anything of that sort often felt quite unnatural. Corporate America almost always ensured there was an apology, a handshake or at least a de-escalation.

Then Kyle Busch came along.

He wasn’t the first antagonistic NASCAR driver. But he was the first for a while who genuinely didn’t mind what anyone thought of him, left everything out on the race track and didn’t care for the consequences.

Despite his obvious speed, Busch was let go by Hendrick Motorsports so it could create a 'super team' with Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and newly-signed for 2008, Dale Earnhardt Jr, the most popular driver in the championship by a mile or 10.

During 2008, Busch blatantly spun Earnhardt out while fighting for the lead at Richmond and needed security to exit the track where thousands of angry fans threw beer cans at Busch while the race was still happening. Busch didn't care!

Even though at this point Busch was in direct competition with my favourite driver Gordon and the Hendrick team Gordon co-owned, I couldn’t help looking for Busch every week. He just cut through the bull.

Many drivers before and after him have been antagonistic because it attracts fans, keeps them relevant, gets people talking about them and sells merchandise for their sponsors or themselves. You could even argue that this bluster was a coping mechanism for not being as talented as the top drivers in the series, or at least being able to beat them consistently.

Kyle was as good as any driver on that grid in a car and was antagonistic because that’s who he was. And motorsport has an amazing way of showing who someone truly is.

Even now, after his passing, floods of tributes are pouring in from people he would have fought at various times given the opportunity. And they definitely would have fought him!

“Tonight I feel like a coyote with no more roadrunner to chase,” said Brad Keselowski. Even Earnhardt Jr wrote a long post about how they’d reconciled recently - initiated by Busch - and laughed at the prospect of Busch driving for Earnhardt later this year.

There’s not enough space here to analyse every season, result, win, career move, title and fight. But I wanted to convey that Busch was a genuine racer who existed in a championship where you might think theatrics and disingenuous portrayals of a personality are part of the game.

But that wasn’t Busch. He was his nickname, Rowdy, through and through.

In recent years he’d done so much to help the aspirations of Brexton, his son, in racing, and Brexton became a regular feature in victory lane at races. Samantha, his wife, has always been super-involved in Busch’s career and visible to NASCAR fans too, especially through a big social media presence.

I can’t imagine their grief and sorrow but hope the many dedications of time and effort to properly praise and remember Kyle are a source of sympathy at this difficult time.

I’ll leave you with this. One of my favourite Busch moments was in 2018 at Chicago when Busch and Kyle Larson banged wheels to the finish. Larson clipped Busch and almost spun him, and then shortly after Busch just drove Larson into the wall and won the race solo.

Larson was so impressed with Busch he held a thumb out of the window while driving past after the race. He'd been taken out, but I think that thumb was Larson acknowledging he'd been one-upped by a better driver, at least on the day.

Busch proceeded to walk to the cameras and do a really enthusiastic crybaby gesture, to his ‘haters’,  and anyone who didn’t like how he’d won the race.

Classic Kyle Busch. There's 50 stories just like that.