There is no blueprint in sports broadcasting for what Danielle Trotta has done in the last two weeks.
The studio host for Amazon Prime Video’s coverage of the NASCAR Cup Series was ready for a celebration as the streamer took the baton from Fox Sports for its summer swing of five races, set to begin at a crown jewel event, the Coca-Cola 600 in Charlotte.
Charlotte is meant to be a homecoming of sorts for the teams and families in the NASCAR community. It’s one of the premier races on the NASCAR calendar, happening on the same day as the Indy 500 over Memorial Day weekend. But this year, it was the sight of something much more significant, the first race since the shocking passing of NASCAR legend Kyle Busch at 41 years old.
Danielle Trotta first heard the news that Busch was ill while hosting her daily SiriusXM radio show with Larry McReynolds. At the time, Richard Childress Racing shared that Busch had a severe illness and would miss the race at Charlotte. It came as a shock, given that he had just won the Truck series race at Dover the week prior. But McReynolds knew something wasn’t right, this wasn’t a normal team announcement.
Just 24 hours later, her phone was flooded with the news. Kyle Busch was gone.
“I know it’s real, but it’s still very hard to process such a huge loss,” Trotta told Awful Announcing this week. “But certainly in those first hours and those first days, your first thought goes to the family and Samantha, knowing her as long as I have. The second thought is I have to respond to the first text in all of them, my boss Alex Strand, our senior coordinating producer at Amazon Prime. I knew immediately we needed to connect because I rightly guessed that anything we had planned for the 600 was out the window, and as of Thursday night, it was a whole new ballgame, and we had less than 72 hours to figure out what we were going to do.”
Remembrance in Charlotte
By the time Danielle Trotta went on air at the Coca-Cola 600 on Amazon Prime Video, she had a couple of days to process the emotions that came with the sudden loss on her SiriusXM show. Callers choked up while sharing personal Kyle Busch stories and reflecting on his impact on their fandom. A community grieved together.
There is inherent risk within motorsport. A driver takes their life into their own hands every time they get behind the wheel. But the NASCAR Cup series had not lost an active full-time driver since the tragic death of Dale Earnhardt at the 2001 Daytona 500. This was new ground for many members of the NASCAR community to cover.
Trotta and the Amazon Prime crew had to rewrite their show. Drivers and other members of the NASCAR community shared their memories of Busch. Dale Earnhardt Jr. narrated a beautiful video tribute. But Trotta couldn’t let herself get caught up in the emotion that night, so she could let the millions of NASCAR fans watching process their own feelings.
“I really needed to hold my stuff together and allow them to have their moment. I can do a pretty good job of that. At some point I just knew I have to make a TV show, I can’t be the one falling apart. I have to make sure I quarterback something that is not void of emotion, but keeping my emotions pretty close to the vest to get through that in a professional capacity,” Trotta said.
That was evident when the Busch family made an unexpected visit to the infield as they were surrounded by drivers and teams in a tribute. It was a moment Danielle Trotta did not expect and had to call live as she held things together. In a post on social media after the race was done and the lights were turned off at Charlotte Motor Speedway, Trotta had a simple message – she hoped that Kyle Busch would have been proud.
“I hope that we did him proud. I think we did. I think we brought comfort and solace to millions of people who needed it. I hope Kyle was smiling down saying, ‘yea, you nailed it, the good and the bad, you showed it all, thanks for reminding everyone what a badass I was.’ We really wanted it to be a celebration of one of the most talented race car drivers in the world. I think we did do his legacy and his story justice,” Trotta said.
“We tried to not just tell the story of Kyle the racer, but who he was as a philanthropist, a father, a husband. There were so many layers to Kyle. The antagonist, the villain, the hero, the winner, the champion. When you have that long of a runway like we do on Prime, it was making sure we were hitting all the high notes and all the layers and who could help us unpack those layers and reveal who he truly was on and off the race track.”
The day after the race, Trotta said she watched the program from the night before and was able to continue her personal bereavement journey once the cameras were off and there was no longer a job to do to tell the story for the NASCAR community.
“Monday morning, I went back and watched it, and I was in tears. I was sobbing. That was my time where my brain was not in work mode and it was when I cared about Kyle as a fan mode. I watched it just like someone would at home and it was hugely emotional. I found myself going back watching that show several times since just to feel close to him. You miss somebody you’re used to seeing at the race track and we didn’t see him the last two weeks. That’s still very hard to comprehend,” Trotta reflected.
Generational bonds
NASCAR is one of the most unique sports in the American landscape because of its community. Instead of a traditional sports league that sees dozens of games played between two teams in many cities on any given night, the entire sport travels together to the track for 38 weeks during the year. Families park their trailers beside one another. Kids grow up together. Drivers and teams spend an inordinate amount of time together.
“Showing up to work was where I wanted to be most, but it’s where all of us wanted to be because we can be together and mourn together and spend time with each other, grieving and processing, as opposed to being home by yourself. You’re with Kyle’s friends, you’re with your friends, you’re with your colleagues, you’re with people who cared about Kyle and Samantha and Brexton and Lennix very much. If you are experiencing loss, that is the time you should come together as a community, to mourn and to heal,” Trotta shared.
“We all spend a lot more time together collectively, so it makes our bonds with each other that much more special. And you felt it. Kyle touched so many people. I couldn’t wait to get in the garage Saturday just to talk to guys from all these different teams. ‘Kyle helped me here, he gave me a leg up here, I knew him when.’ Yeah, he only drove for Gibbs, Hendrick, and RCR, but he owned his own team, and it was almost a university of sorts, bringing kids up through the ranks and graduating them to higher levels of the sport.”
NASCAR is a generational sport. The series has embraced this in an effort to return more to its roots this year. Dale Earnhardt Jr. is a member of the Amazon Prime team and perhaps the greatest testament to that truth. Bill Elliott and Chase Elliott have won NASCAR’s most popular driver award a combined 24 times. Grandparents and grandchildren can reminisce about watching different generations of Pettys, Jarretts, and Burtons.
Kyle Busch’s car owner, Richard Childress, has already said he is saving the #8 for Kyle’s son, Brexton, a racing prodigy at age 11. Brexton drove his first race after his father’s passing this week, following his dad’s funeral. The fans who watched Kyle Busch become the winningest driver across NASCAR’s three national series are waiting for the day when they can watch the next generation of Busch drivers take to the track at the highest level.
“Then do it.”
Kyle Busch was always on his best behavior in the studio or on prerace shows around Danielle Trotta. When asked about her favorite story that she shared with the NASCR champion, it wasn’t one of his famous quips or needles that earned him the nickname “Rowdy” along with his on-track ferocity.
It was an event she hosted for Kyle Busch and his wife, Samantha, at RCR to promote their Rowdy energy drink. As Trotta was on stage with the Busch family, she was floored by how much the pair had accomplished. Kyle was a NASCAR champion, a team owner, a businessman, a philanthropist, and a parent. Samantha Busch had launched her own clothing line and helped launch the Bundle of Joy foundation, providing monetary grants for couples needing IVF treatment.
Then, after bringing this up with them, Kyle Busch told her something she will always carry with her.
“They did all this business plus raising two kids, and you’re a top-tier race car driver. How do you have more hours in the day than anyone else to do all this? I said, ‘You are actually inspiring me to want to accomplish more in my life.’ He looked at me and said, ‘Then do it.’”
“Maybe I overthink or overanalyze or talk myself out of things. I think a lot of us have dreams, and then we don’t do a lot with them. Kyle was one of those people that, if he dreamt it, he executed it,” Trotta said.
That is advice she takes to heart more now, in the weeks since his passing. And she and the Amazon Prime team, as well as TNT and NBC after that, will continue to find ways to honor his legacy as a driver, father, philanthropist, and more. Danielle Trotta has traveled a road that no sports broadcaster can be fully prepared to travel. But as she does, the experience shows that sports are just one window into who we truly are.
“I think I learned there is no right or wrong,” Trotta said. “You can tell a story and laugh, you can tell a story and cry. What’s most important is to share your experiences with that person that fans out there may not know. In those shows, having a big scope, yes, he was one of the greatest race car drivers ever, but he was so many other things.”
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