If ever we had a week to run away from, that was it.
Aside from the emotional outpouring of support for the Busch family, delivered in person prior to Sunday’s Coke 600 at Charlotte, mere slivers of positivity were scarce.
From up close and from afar, the racing community looked on as several stages of grief played out very publicly and in real time.
Also, it rained. All weekend.
And rained a lot, enough to fracture the Truck and O’Reilly plans, and in the end, enough to shorten NASCAR’s longest race by 27 laps and 40-plus miles.
Normally, such horrible weather luck would be considered a serious downer. This time, gauging the collective mood, it barely registered.
No amount of clear skies could’ve saved this past weekend in and around Charlotte, where nearly all the NASCAR racers, including Kyle Busch, have long called home.
And frankly, not even the worst of forecasts could’ve made it any worse.
First Gear
Daniel Suarez’s Sunday night win at Charlotte is the second this season and third overall for Spire Motorsports, and while you hate to toss a wet blanket on the situation, the relentless clouds offered no dry alternatives.
Of Spire’s three Cup Series wins since its 2019 debut, two have come with an unofficial asterisk — the Suarez win and Justin Haley’s 2019 victory in Daytona’s summertime race. Both were rain-shortened events, and while Suarez indeed held off some heavyweights for the final 17 laps before a final red flag, Haley’s Daytona win was legitimately freakish due to mass pit stops just before the final rainstorm.
The third Spire win, delivered a month ago by Carson Hocevar, came at a Talladega “plate race,” and those types of races are often given a mental asterisk, at least.
However …
Second Gear
That’s not to say Spire hasn’t seen a definite uptick in production this year for the roster of Michael McDowell, Hocevar and Suarez, who replaced Haley this season in the No. 7 Chevrolet.
That trio has a combined seven top-five finishes in 39 combined starts, a little more than a third of the way through the 2026 season. That’s already more than Spire had produced in any of its prior seasons.
Granted, Spire has only been a three-car team since 2024, but progress is progress.
El momento en que Daniel Suárez se baja del Camaro #7 y le avisan que ganó en Charlotte! pic.twitter.com/lHYHrpzDmo
— 🏁「 Alerta Racing 」🏁 (@AlertaRacing) May 25, 2026
With three plate races remaining (Atlanta, Daytona, Talladega) and a pair of road courses (Sonoma and San Diego, back-to-back next month), McDowell will get his chances, since he’s good at both of those types of races.
Also, Hocevar appears to be a guy ready to start racing for wins on a consistent basis. Suarez seems to have found the extra horsepower that often comes from getting the boot from a previous ride.
Though Suarez wouldn’t publicly admit it, he must have noticed that his former team — Trackhouse Racing — only has a combined three top-fives among its three racers this season.
Third Gear
This weekly activity has offered an opportunity to show off the math skills in recent weeks. Just a week ago, you learned we were a third of the way through the 36-race Cup schedule.
And just a week later, the calculator stays on the desk and tells us we’re now, after 13 races, halfway through the 26-race regular season.
As we count our way down to the postseason cutoff, it’s proper to keep an eye on the standings to see who’s locked in, who’s teetering and who’s in downright trouble (looking at you, Ross Chastain).
Contact on the backstretch sends @RossChastain spinning. pic.twitter.com/LizTUunkEB
— NASCAR (@NASCAR) May 25, 2026
Suarez jumped four spots in the standings, from 14th to 10th, and while he’s now 62 points above the cutoff bubble, such margins can disappear with a couple of bad weeks.
Example: Chase Briscoe, who finished 34th at Charlotte but still jumped from outside the cutoff (17th) to inside (15th). How? By finishing second, third and fourth in the first three stages before crashing in the final stage. All those bonus points were part of his 27-point Charlotte haul, compared to just one point for Austin Cindric, who crashed early, finished next-to-last and fell from 15th to 17th in points.
Ryan Preece finished one spot ahead of Briscoe but only gathered three bonus points (eighth in Stage 1) and collected 20 fewer points than Briscoe. And now Preece sits on that uneasy stool in 16th place.
Fourth Gear
Finally, a tip of the officially licensed cap to Katherine Legge, who was still standing (figuratively) at the end of it all Sunday night.
That’s not to say she didn’t receive some haymakers during her attempt at the Indy-Charlotte double. The first half of her day ended after just 17 laps at the Brickyard. Ryan Hunter-Reay spun off Turn 4 and Legge, immediately behind Hunter-Reay, lost control while making an emergency dart to the left in order to avoid crashing into the spinning car.
Primer palazo de las INDY500
RHR lo pierde solito y Legge, por evitar pegarle, se va contra el muro interno.
Final del día para ambos. #IndyCar#INDY500pic.twitter.com/SSsGPfhFlE
— El Mejor del Resto 🏁 (@elmejordelresto) May 24, 2026
She finished 31st, 12 laps down at Charlotte, where the struggles included the loss of a wheel just beyond the halfway point.
As for that IndyCar world, wow, what a finish to the Indianapolis 500. Though you might expect IndyCar to take a deep breath and a week or two off after the stress of May, that’s not the way things work.
Instead, IndyCar goes immediately back to work this coming weekend in Detroit, to hopefully build on all that momentum Indy annually provides.
Like NASCAR, the show goes on for IndyCar. But unlike NASCAR, IndyCar will be very happy to take the past week’s events along for the ride.
THE CLOSEST FINISH IN INDIANAPOLIS 500 HISTORY!
IT’S FELIX ROSENQVIST! 🏁 pic.twitter.com/exA3UpH81b
— NTT INDYCAR SERIES (@IndyCar) May 24, 2026
— Email Ken Willis at ken.willis@news-jrnl.com
This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Kyle Busch memories dominate Charlotte, where rain shortens marathon