Winning a race in a premiere motorsports series is hard. That’s by design. It’s not supposed to be easy. There’s a reason why they’re in the top level of professional sports. For Kurt Busch, he’s been a victor 32 times in the NASCAR Cup Series. There’s no doubt about it, he’s a future Hall of Famer in this sport whenever he decides to hang up his helmet and firesuit.

Among his 32 career wins are victories in the Coca Cola 600, the Bristol Night Race, the All-Star race and a season championship (2004). His biggest feat outside of his championship though has to be his 2017 Daytona 500 triumph.

A win in the Great American Race separates NASCAR drivers from men to legends. Daytona is the birthplace of speed and for a stock car racer, there’s no better feat in ones career than a win in the Daytona 500. There’s a reason to why the race is dubbed the Super Bowl of the sport.

The same could be said for an Indianapolis 500 win. I’ve talked to drivers after their Indy wins and if they don’t win again in the years after, the fire just burns deeper and deeper with each passing May. To have tasted the milk and know what it’s like to become a race immortal, you don’t want anyone else to feel that joy. You selfishly want to bottle it up all for yourself.

The Daytona 500 is the equivalent for NASCAR drivers. Some races, after you cross the checkered flag first, you’re labeled the “winner.” For Daytona or Indianapolis, the driver to beat everyone else is labeled a “champion.”

That’s for great reason.

For Busch, he says his starts from a wide eyed rookie in 2001 through a seasoned vet in 2017 felt differently than his last three trips to Daytona. The Las Vegas native won the 2017 Daytona 500 and now that he’s accomplished that feat, he wants to feel it again.

“The years before a win at Daytona, there’s the humility and the humble feeling that this track is still in control over me,” Busch said. “Then with winning it in 2017, it’s an experience beyond no other. There’s this energy in your soul when you go back to defend that no, this is my turf. This is mine. Then, if the race doesn’t go when, there’s that humble feeling again that the track will give you.

“That’s the approach that I have as the couple of years have gone by. To be humble. To approach the track with the same style, the humility, appreciation and the hopeful feeling of lady luck can be on your side to win, because you can never go there to expect to win. You just go there to try and take care of all of the things under your control to be in position to win.”

Busch, will make his 20th Daytona 500 start next Sunday and hopes to become just the 13th driver to win multiple ‘500’s over the course of the 63 year history of this great event. He’s been close multiple times with three runner-ups (2003, 2005, 2008) and six top fives overall.

He’s one of just seven drivers in this year’s field to have won this race before. Derrike Cope (1990), Kevin Harvick (2007), Ryan Newman (2008), Jamie McMurray (2010), Joey Logano (2015), Austin Dillon (2018) and Denny Hamlin (2016, 2019, 2020) are the others. Just Hamlin has won this among that group multiple times.

For Newman, he’s excited to be here. After last year’s near win which landed him unfortunately in the hospital after, he says that fire and jealously is honestly there for every race, not just at Daytona.

“I actually don’t ever look at it that way and I say that because and I’ll give you a little piece of private information because I’m pretty sure it’s unanimous across the board, but there’s not a driver out there that doesn’t have that burn or that desire and I say that because as much of a team sport that this is, even when your teammate wins, you’re still more disappointed or jealous that you didn’t win,” Newman said. “You can be happy your teammate won but still it makes it that much more of a burn I guess you could say internally or externally because you haven’t. That makes you want to fight that much harder. If you have the passion for the sport and the desire that it takes to be a winner, that will always be inside of you. My point is, no matter the situation on who wins or how close you were, it’s always going to exist.

“I don’t know if it exists more since 2008.”

In Hamlin’s sense, he said to be the first to win three straight Great American Race’s would be the biggest win in his career up until this point. It’s one that he’d not trade away for anything.

His friend Austin Dillon said that this race amps him up like none other.

“For sure,” Dillon said on if he has a deeper burn to win this race again since he’s won it once. “That feeling of driving into victory lane and hoisting that Harley J. Earl, there’s nothing like it. It’s a memory I’ll never forget. For me, every time that you get to jump in a car for the ‘500, you’ve got to be thankful because it’s history. It’s a prestigious event. It’s my favorite event of the year. It’s my favorite Sunday that when I wake up that morning, that Daytona 500 morning, there’s noting like it.”

That’s why this year’s race is going to be a fun battle among the drivers who have won and the ones who’ve not yet won a Daytona 500. It truly makes a racers career.