After Kyle Busch’s passing away earlier this week, the Coca-Cola 600 was never going to be like a typical NASCAR race. From the emotional tributes before the green flag to the silence hanging over the garage all night, Charlotte Motor Speedway felt more like a grieving family gathering than a race weekend. And Daniel Suárez’s heartfelt homage to Busch demonstrated how profoundly the NASCAR great had influenced the careers of drivers around the garage when he eventually got out of his car after surviving the rain-soaked mayhem.

Daniel Suárez dedicates his victory to Kyle Busch

“Kyle, he was special. We won it for Kyle, for Samantha, for Brexton, for Lennix, for his family. This one has a special flavor because of Kyle. This one is for him. If he wasn’t for Kyle, I wasn’t going to be an Xfinity champion. I wasn’t going to have my shot in the Cup series and to be able to win this race for him is unbelievable.”

The passion surrounding the Coca-Cola 600 became inextricably linked to the race itself as soon as Daniel Suárez spoke those remarks after getting out of his car on Sunday night. In a weekend dominated by grief following the death of Kyle Busch, it somehow felt fitting that one of the drivers whose career Busch helped shape ended up standing in Victory Lane.

After many weather delays caused NASCAR to stop the race with 28 laps left under yellow, Suárez was declared the official winner of the rain-shortened Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte Motor Speedway. Suárez’s victory was his first with Spire Motorsports and his third Cup Series triumph overall. And it was not at all simple.

Teams continuously responded to shifting track conditions and impending weather concerns, resulting in 32 lead changes among 13 different drivers during the race. Suárez’s No. 7 Chevrolet began the race in 14th place, steadily gained ground during the evening, and with just over 30 laps left, it was in the lead.

When NASCAR officially called the race, Suárez sat ahead of Christopher Bell by 0.421 seconds and Denny Hamlin by 0.841 seconds, all thanks to perfectly timing his final pit stop sequence. But long before Daniel Suárez became a Cup Series winner, Busch had already become one of the most important figures in his career.

Daniel Suárez was still getting used to American racing and learning English when he initially joined NASCAR in 2015 from Mexico. Kyle Busch turned as an odd mentor at that testing time. Suárez claims that during the then Xfinity Series season, Busch called him nearly every week to explain racetracks, race strategy, and vehicle setups. Busch voluntarily became one of Suárez’s greatest assets during a period when he was in dire need of knowledge.

“Every single race in 2015. I remember, in the second half of the year, I just kept asking him,” Daniel Suárez revealed in an earlier interview. “I was the kind of person, I was a sponge. I wanted as much information as possible. And I remember when I started getting good, and we started racing together, and he said, ‘I think you’re getting too good. I think I need to stop helping you.’ But he always continued to help me. So to me that was very impactful.”

Daniel Suárez would go on to win the 2016 Xfinity Series title and the 2015 Rookie of the Year award, both of which he still attributes to Kyle Busch. The greater significance of Suárez’s triumph was appreciated even by other drivers.

“He did a great job to hold off some extremely fast cars and the meaning of this win. It’s just awesome for them, the old KBM shop, Jeff Dickerson, he meant a lot to Kyle, it feels meant to be,” Kyle Larson told Alan Cavanna after the race.

The Coca-Cola 600 didn’t seem like just another crown jewel race at the conclusion of the evening. Instead, it felt like the racing gods through Mother Nature somehow found one final way for Kyle Busch’s influence to cross the finish line first.