NASCAR removes Kyle Busch from points standings after his death

Kyle Busch has been removed from NASCAR’s Cup Series points standings.

Busch died Thursday at the age of 41 after contracting sepsis following a case of pneumonia. According to his death certificate, Busch had been dealing with bacterial pneumonia for “days to weeks” and became septic. That led to clots to form in his bloodstream.

Per Fox Sports, NASCAR made the decision to take Busch out of its official points standings “following conversations with [his Richard Childress Racing team] about how to handle Busch’s death and being empathetic of the impact to those who would see his name in the standings.”

His name no longer appears on the standings on NASCAR’s website.

Before Sunday’s Coca-Cola 600, Busch was 23rd in the points standings and had accumulated 217 points through the first 12 races of the season. He scored his first two top-10 finishes of the season in his last three races after he was 10th at Talladega and then eighth at Watkins Glen.

Busch is NASCAR’s winningest driver across its three national series with 234 wins. His last NASCAR win came on May 15 at Dover in the Truck Series. He’s the winningest driver ever in both NASCAR’s O’Reilly Series and Truck Series and ranks ninth in Cup Series history with 63 wins.

However, that last win came in 2023, when Busch won three races in his first season with RCR. As RCR struggled to be competitive, Busch’s win rate tailed off as a result. He recorded just eight top-five finishes across his last 84 Cup Series races after scoring 246 top fives in his first 678 races.