CHARLOTTE, N.C. _ Given the opportunity last week to sum up her husband's reputation on the racetrack, Samantha Busch smirked, cocked her head and, though she didn't wink, might as well have.
"A passionate driver," she called Kyle Busch, who'd just kissed her goodbye on the hospitality bus and gone to suit up for the Monster Energy All-Star Race at Charlotte Motor Speedway.
Two days later, he had both a fresh victory _ his first Cup win in Charlotte _ and a slightly different way to describe himself:
"Butthead."
Of course, Busch can be a bit of a butthead when he's got that fire suit on. There was the time he intentionally wrecked Brad Keselowski in Bristol in 2010. Or the bird he flipped later that season to NASCAR officials in Texas. Or that post-race dust-up with Kevin Harvick at Darlington in 2011. Or that time in 2011 in Charlotte when he intentionally wrecked Ron Hornaday Jr. under caution. (And that's just one 15-month span in a 15-year-long career.)
But while on the track he's been notorious for his hardheadedness, off it, the joys and pains and unexpected projectile vomiting associated with fatherhood are turning Busch into something of a softie.
While on the track he's been known to sneak up on a rival to deliver a surprise right hook, off it, Busch and his wife are making names for themselves by sneaking up on couples dealing with fertility problems and surprising them with grants of $10,000 (or more) for fertility treatments.
"I'm maybe a little bit more relaxed, day to day, than I once was," said the 32-year-old driver, as he sat in the second-floor lounge of Kyle Busch Motorsports in Mooresville Monday, beneath a life-sized print of him celebrating one of his 173 wins across NASCAR's three top series. "I think one of the biggest things is that as life goes on, and as you pick up a wife and then a son, and you have this life outside, you realize that there's more to life than just what your job is."
Building that family, though, was more difficult than he imagined it would be.
