Kyle Busch is returning to NASCAR this weekend for All-Star Race – USA TODAY
Kyle Busch is back.
Busch will climb into the seat of his No. 18 Toyota at Charlotte Motor Speedway for this weekend’s All-Star Race, less than three months after he broke his right leg and left foot in a crash at Daytona International Speedway. He’ll practice the car on Friday, then race in the All-Star event Saturday night. He is eligible due to a win last season.
The Joe Gibbs Racing driver announced his return to NASCAR via a 23-second video posted to Twitter on Tuesday morning, which showed him zipping up his uniform, putting on his helmet and walking out the doors of his hauler to the race car.
Busch’s return had been anticipated since he tested a Late Model car at a local short track, which he said would be the first step to getting cleared by doctors for a comeback.
The All-Star Race is an exhibition and is brief by Sprint Cup Series standards — only 165 miles. That will allow the All-Star event to serve as a warmup for Busch in advance of the May 24 Coca-Cola 600, which will be a much tougher test of his fitness. It is the longest race on NASCAR’s 36-event Cup schedule.
Matt Crafton, David Ragan and Erik Jones filled in for Busch during his absence. Crafton drove in the Daytona 500; Ragan in the next nine events; and Jones, a rookie, made his official Cup debut Saturday night at Kansas Speedway.
JGR simply said Busch “has received medical clearance to return to on-track activity.” With the 600 as the next points race, that means Busch will only have missed 11 official events — a somewhat remarkable recovery given the talk he wouldn’t return until July or later.
All along, officials said there was no timetable for a return. But this was faster than many anticipated.
The next step will be for NASCAR to announce whether Busch has received a medical waiver to be eligible for the Chase for the Sprint Cup, and whether it will also waive the requirement that he would have to be in the top 30 of the points standings to qualify.
Busch has no points, so he currently trails 30th place (Tony Stewart) by 179 points. Each position on the track is worth one point, so Busch is a significant distance behind with 15 races left until the Chase field is set.
This figures to be an eventful couple weeks in Charlotte for Busch, who turned 30 on May 2. Not only will he return to NASCAR, but wife Samantha is due with the couple’s first child, a boy, in the upcoming days.
The happy times ahead are quite a contrast for Busch’s first few weeks after getting hurt in the Feb. 21 crash in an Xfinity Series race at Daytona.
Busch slammed into a concrete wall that did not have any of NASCAR’s so-called “soft walls” — the SAFER barrier — and ended up hospitalized with broken bones.
Once home, he laid in a hospital bed on the first floor of his home and had to re-learn to walk in addition to other intensive physical therapy. There was nothing he could do to make the bones heal any faster, he said, so he just focused on getting in shape for his eventual return.
Now that return will come at Charlotte, which he considers one of his favorite tracks. Busch is 0-for-22 in points races at Charlotte, but has eight Xfinity Series wins and six Camping World Truck Series wins there.
PHOTOS: Kyle Busch through the years