As a trusted voice at the shop, Austin Dillon revealed Saturday at Nashville Superspeedway that he was keeping team members abreast of the unfolding situation on May 21, the day Busch died after severe pneumonia progressed into sepsis.
“My grandfather and my dad were at the hospital. I was at the shop with everybody and trying to keep them updated, and going through that was tough,” Dillon said. “And then, when I got home, I just told (wife) Whitney, look, I’ve got to write him a letter. Most of you probably have read what I wrote, and that was the biggest reason I feel like I could go forward because it was from the heart, and it’s how I felt about Kyle. And it’s gonna hurt for a long time, but I know the character he was, he’d want us to go kick butt.”
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“The longer I do this, I learn what the family aspect of RCR is,” Dillon said. “I’m so proud of our people, our employees, our fans. Some of the nicest things that could be done were done over the last week and a half. The garage, NASCAR took really good care of us in Charlotte, but I mean I’m just really proud to be a part of RCR and proud of our employees for doing what they can. It was obviously one of the toughest weeks of RCR’s history. Being a part of, from my side, for the first time, really being able to understand what everybody’s going through, it was hard, and it’s going to be hard, but the people that we have at RCR are the ones that I would want to go through with this.”
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Part of Dillon’s influence in addressing his fellow team members stemmed from a story shared by his grandfather Childress, and a conversation he had with Earnhardt decades ago.
“I go back to what my grandfather and Dale talked about before on the ‘Great Horse Wreck,’ is what my grandfather calls it, on their hunting trip that they would go on,” Dillon said, “whether one of them passed away or not, that they would be there racing and putting their heart and soul into it. And I think Kyle Busch, his character would have wanted all of us to do what we could to get back to Victory Lane and to work as hard as possible. And I mean, I knew what he cared about, and that was being here on Sunday, racing hard as he could for his guys and for himself and for his family, and to try and create history in this sport. And we have a great opportunity to do that here at RCR to go back out there and make him proud.”
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