Panic at Daytona: How Kyle Busch's life changed in five seconds

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — Oh no, Kyle Busch thought. It's not slowing down. This is going to hurt.

One instant, Kyle Busch was driving right behind a Joe Gibbs Racing teammate in last year's Xfinity Series season opener at Daytona. The next, he was shooting straight toward an unprotected infield wall. And suddenly, in less than five seconds, an otherwise anonymous race became the most significant moment of Busch's career.

Hitting a wall at 90 miles an hour has a way of reordering one's priorities. In an exclusive interview with Yahoo Sports, Busch and his wife Samantha discussed the minute-by-minute sequence of what happened before, during and immediately after the accident that transformed Busch and, he believes, led directly to winning his first Cup championship nine months later to the day.

Set the scene. Busch is one of the most dominant drivers in Xfinity Series history, having won 76 of the 311 races he's entered. While his primary focus is on NASCAR's more elite Sprint Cup Series, he still thrives on competing in what amounts to NASCAR's Triple-A series.

On Feb. 22, 2015, Busch was just eight laps from the finish line of the Alert Today Florida 300, and he was gearing up for what he expected would be another shot at a win. Meanwhile, Samantha Busch, 27 weeks pregnant with the couple's first child, sat in her customary spot atop Busch's pit box, listening on the radio and watching the laps wind down.

Kyle tucked in behind Erik Jones and prepared to push Jones forward to the front of the pack, where the two of them would duel it out for the win.

That was the plan. The reality turned out far different. Busch was too low when he began pushing Jones, and the off-center push sent Jones spinning. The wreck collected several other drivers … and sent Busch rocketing straight toward the infield wall.

In many cases, cars in a wreck will spin sharply, reducing momentum. In most others, the driver can apply a combination of brake and throttle or turn the wheel to shed momentum. In this case, absolutely nothing worked.

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I can save this, Busch thought as his car kept zooming further and further into the infield, first through the pavement, then onto the grass. It's just going to tank-slap back to the left and I'll probably just slide.

But the car never corrected, and the infield wall – a spot unprotected by an impact-resistant SAFER barrier – loomed ever larger. He was trying his best to sideswipe the wall or back into it.

Pull your legs back, Busch told himself. Pull your legs back. His mind was giving the orders, but his body wasn't responding.

When Busch's car started spinning off the track, it was traveling at 176 miles an hour. The grass cut that in half. But that's still 90 miles an hour, and the impact was horrendous. The car compressed backward at least 12 to 15 inches, and Busch himself came forward eight to 10 inches, and in that tight space, trouble happened. His helmet and chest hit the steering wheel. The engine slammed back toward the cockpit. The pedals slammed back into Busch's legs, instantly breaking his right leg and left foot.

Busch had a moment to think that he would just take a second to compose himself, but a flash fire rolling right at him scotched that idea. Only, he had a problem: How was he to get out of a burning car with bones broken in both legs?

He popped off the steering wheel and managed to leverage himself out on onto the window ledge using his left heel. By that point, emergency crews had arrived, and one was attempting to help Busch stand.

“Nope, we're not doing that," Busch thought. He had to flip his visor up to talk, and had to tell the emergency crew four times that his legs were broken.

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But exiting the car so quickly meant Busch didn't have time to communicate with his team … and, more specifically, his wife.

"We had a deal from past wrecks," Samantha said. "If he wrecked he needed to come on the radio right away and say he was OK."

But Busch wasn't responding, and so Samantha understood something was extraordinarily wrong. She and their motor coach driver headed straight for the infield care center. In a heartbreaking moment of miscommunication, she left the pit box before she could see Kyle climb out of the car, alive if not fully intact.

When she arrived at the infield care center, she was shuttled off to a waiting room without a TV. She kept asking for information on her husband, but no one would give her any details. Finally, a nurse came into the room and said, "You need to go to the hospital."

The dread rose.

Meanwhile, Kyle was riding toward Halifax Medical Center in the back of an ambulance. He was a NASCAR driver, he'd ridden in the back of ambulances before, so he was not exactly worried for himself. He knew the leg was broken, but he didn't know how bad it was; he was far more concerned for his wife and unborn child.

"Is Samantha here?" he asked every doctor, nurse, and attendant who came into his room. "She has to come back here. She has to see I'm OK. She's pregnant. It'll ease her mind."

Samantha, in a waiting room, was near panic. A television cameraman told her that Kyle was, in fact, out of the car and alive, but she didn't know any more than that. After about 45 minutes, she lost it.

"Let me see him!" she shouted, again and again. "Let me see him!" One need not think too hard about the history of NASCAR to understand the reason for her panic.

Finally a nurse led her back to Kyle's room, and the relief at seeing her husband alive and mostly in one piece led to the night's only touch of dark humor. Just as she walked into the room, attendants were changing the dressing on Kyle's leg, and his bone was sticking out, exposed to the air.

"I don't think I'm going to race tomorrow," Kyle said, unaware of the extent of his injury.

Samantha spoke in a gentle, measured tone. "I think it might be a little longer than that, honey."

The next day, standing just outside the hospital, Samantha could hear the engines of the Daytona 500. Kyle, in his hospital room, couldn’t hear them at all. He watched the prerace coverage, then drifted back off to sleep, awakening with only 20 laps remaining.

"There was a lot of coverage of Matt Crafton [Kyle’s replacement] and getting him fitted in the car," Kyle said. "That was harder. Once the race started, there was nothing I could to do be in it."

"He as the driver was so focused on, 'That’s my car. I'm not in it,' " Samantha said. "Whereas I’m thinking, 'Thank God, you're here, you're alive.' "

After the 500 finished, Tony Stewart stopped by and hung out for, by Kyle’s reckoning, four to five hours.

"Dude, don't you have to go?" Kyle said. "You've got people waiting on you."

"They can wait," Stewart replied, and stayed at Kyle’s bedside.

Eventually, though, Stewart had to leave, as did the rest of Busch’s team, fellow drivers, and everyone else in the traveling NASCAR caravan. For Busch, months of rehab lay ahead.

The idea that the year would end with Kyle hoisting the Sprint Cup trophy seemed about as likely as the idea that he could sprint back to North Carolina.

Usually when drivers arrive at the airport just beyond the Daytona backstretch, fans are there waiting for autographs, and team plans are lined up one after another. When Kyle and Samantha arrived at the airport on Wednesday, there was only a single other plane there. It was a lonely sight, a lonely feeling.

"We weren’t in the NASCAR circus anymore," Kyle said. "We were outsiders."

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Jay Busbee is a writer for Yahoo Sports and the author of EARNHARDT NATION. Contact him at jay.busbee@yahoo.com or find him on Twitter or on Facebook.