Nascar’s Kyle Busch Says His New Documentary Doesn’t Go Far Enough

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R champion Kyle Busch is jumping on the media bandwagon with the debut of his own documentary which will be shown in theaters as a special presentation at the end of June.

Busch’s foray into entertainment comes on the heels of a limited Netflix series featuring driver Bubba Wallace’s “Race: Bubba Wallace” that aired last year, and another limited series starring Austin Dillon “Life in the Fast Lane” airing on the USA cable network and also debuts this month.

The movie “ROWDY” will focus on Busch’s improbable, and now legendary, 2015 season that saw him come back from a horrific injury in the season opening Xfinity race at Daytona International Speedway in February to win the NASCAR Cup championship at Homestead in November of that year.

“I never thought I would ever do a film about my career until after I retired,” Busch said in the press release announcing the movie. “I know there are some pivotal moments in my life that are misunderstood by fans. This film sets the record straight about what went on in my mind and many people who were a part of those pivotal moments that changed me.”

Friday at Sonoma Raceway, Busch said the film won’t necessarily appeal to the hardcore NASCAR fan but to those who are causal fans

“If you’re a newer NASCAR fan and only been around for, I guess, the last five or eight years you don’t necessarily know the whole history of where I came from and what all went down in the early days,” he said. “Just kind of given a whole lineup of that.”

Busch also seemed to express that maybe he felt there were some things missing from the film.

“I feel like, you know, the film’s okay,” he said. “There’s definitely some elements that got left out; that just timing, just wasn’t enough time to show that. I wish we had an opportunity to do something more.

“You know the Jordan feature (the 10-part documentary “The Last Dance”) that was what eight nine hours’ worth of film that was put out…but it is what it is; I’m looking forward to people to understand a little bit more about the rowdy background.”

Busch has been one of the most polarizing drivers in the history of the sport. The “Rowdy” nickname came from his aggression on the track and his seemingly “take no prisoners” attitude. He’s a driver who rarely (if ever) apologizes for anything. While he does have a group of fans, he calls his “Rowdy Nation,” he’s most often met with a chorus on boos.

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The movie spends time exploring Busch’s past, his rise to Cup stardom, and on his polarizing reputation. Busch, however, said even that didn’t seem to go far enough in the film. He feels he has been misunderstood, and his actions misinterpreted at times.

“Yes, that would be very fair,” he said.” I feel as though there’s been a lot of instances and scenarios where there’s build up to certain actions and I don’t feel as though that that build up has ever been characterized you know to get me to that point to get the pot to finally boil over.”

“So to showcase a little bit of that; and that’s one of the other points of the movie that was not fully given in there was some other boil over points.”

Busch posits that his reputation might have been set in stone even before he made his NASCAR debut in the Truck series in 2001. Kyle is the younger brother of Kurt Busch, the 2003 NASCAR Cup champion who also had a very polarizing fan base. Though he’s mellowed with time, in the early 2000s when Kurt was rising through the ranks he was known for angry outbursts, and as someone who, like his younger brother, was known for aggression on the track, and his own “take no prisoners” attitude.

Kyle said that because of that he might have been doomed nearly from the start of his NASCAR career to be a driver with the reputation he has to this day, the driver known as Rowdy.

“When you come into the sport off of your brother’s name,” he said. “(He’s) who got me here, so he is due credit for that; but you’re booed in your first race you know driver intros (after) qualifying third at Charlotte Motor Speedway (in 2003) for an Xfinity series race and you’re booed, that doesn’t really I guess bode well for the remainder of your time.”

ROWDY is produced by Chance Wright of Wright Productions along with Hans Schiff and John Stevens of Venture 10 Studio Group. It will debut June 29^th in select theaters hosted by Fathom Events.