At WWT Raceway, Jesse Love claimed his first victory of the 2026 NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts season. The Richard Childress Racing driver, a longtime admirer of Kyle Busch, paid tribute to the late two-time Cup champion by displaying a No. 8 flag after winning at Gateway — the very track where Busch earned his final Cup victory.
During the winner’s press conference, Love shared an emotional tribute to Busch, who passed away suddenly at the age of 41 in May of this year.
“Fortunately, I’ve already had this question thrown at me, so a lot of those emotions have already been worked through,” Love recalled. “But last week at Darlington, I had to pull up my calendar to reach out to Kyle. I sat there and looked at it for a while.”
“I was on my way to the shop, and I realized that ahead of Darlington this year, I had put a reminder in my calendar to call Kyle that week — just to ask, ‘What do I need to do to figure this place out?’ and simply listen to him talk. I wasn’t looking for anything specific; I just wanted to hear him speak about Darlington. As you can imagine, that hit me like a ton of bricks, because I was no longer able to do that, and it was incredibly difficult for me.”
Love admitted that he is an “emotional person” and it took him time to move past losing the Charlotte NASCAR O’Reilly race — the first event following Busch’s passing. Fog blanketed the night, and after a caution for fluid on the track, NASCAR continued under caution until halfway before calling the race official.
Ross Chastain was leading with significant right-side damage after slamming the wall due to the fluid, with Love directly behind him. The RCR driver was visibly upset after that race, though he later revealed it was the lesser of his frustrations.
Kyle “didn’t get enough credit for how kind he was”
Watch: After Gateway victory, Love gets emotional remembering Kyle Busch
“I felt like I had never shown up to a racetrack more determined to win that race, and the way it played out, it felt like it was stolen from us,” Love said. “I put on a good face for TV afterward, but I was genuinely upset for a long time. I wanted to win again for him — obviously, this is the place where he got his last win.”
Love went on to say that “we were all very lucky to have Kyle in our lives. I hope Brexton (Busch’s son) knows — Kyle owed all of us, guys like me, nothing. He had no reason to help us out, but for him, whoever had the courage to call him and ask, ‘I need help, what do you think?’ he was always willing to make that person better. I didn’t realize until he was gone how lucky I was to be in the same building as somebody like that. I hated Darlington on that weekday, on that Tuesday, because I couldn’t do that anymore. It sounds a little selfish, because it’s like I’m asking for something from him — that stings and it hurt really bad.”
“I miss the ability to be around somebody so great, and somebody who didn’t get enough credit for how kind he was.”