20Q: Kurt Busch

Q1

[Q] Playboy: NASCAR didn't invent the ball cap, but it has taken that hat to the next level. Just how many caps do you don after a win?

[A] Busch: You'll go through 30 sponsor hats during the hat dance in victory lane. When sponsors pay you the money they do, you're going to wear those hats. They fit your head real good. Our team has about a dozen sponsors, NASCAR has its sponsors, and the race-tracks have theirs. Some want specific photos. Coca-Cola wants me doing a chug--with label out and hat on, mind you. I have a huge personal collection, mainly baseball hats. I'm heavily into the Chicago Cubs, and baseball hats have a low profile and a clean fit. The trucker style has that mesh. But I do wear one of those, a John Deere, when I mow my lawn with my John Deere tractor. I'm from Las Vegas originally, but I've grown to be a country boy.

Q2

[Q] Playboy: Is there a sponsor you couldn't imagine driving for?

[A] Busch: It would suck to be sponsored by Viagra when you're 26 years old. Mark Martin's cool, but he's able to blend in with the marketing for that brand. It's a tough question because sponsors pay the bills and allow us to race no matter what name is on the car.

Q3

[Q] Playboy: NASCAR has generated its share of dynasties--Petty, Earnhardt and Jarrett. Is there an auto-racing gene?

[A] Busch: You catch the racing bug from your family. That's how most of us get involved. My dad raced, and there was always a race car in our two-car garage. One year he won 15 out of 16 races. That was in Las Vegas, where he raced primarily. You almost have to win if you want to break even. I didn't start racing till I was 15. I had my own little home-made-style go-kart, and Dad taught me how to drive it. I was a hands-on crew guy for him, doing tires, changing oil. I was the grunt. Mom thought it was too dangerous, but she went to work for our tire money when I was racing.

Q4

[Q] Playboy: You studied pharmacy in college. Were you trying to deny your inner race car driver?

[A] Busch: I was trying to make sure I had my priorities straight--go to school and race as a hobby. I was doing okay in college, struggling a little bit, and it looked as though the medicine wasn't as interesting as the racing. Every time I looked around, I noticed I was at a racetrack and my books were on the backseat of my Volkswagen Bug. Racing was beginning to take over.

Q5

[Q] Playboy: In your rookie year Dale "the Intimidator" Earnhardt flashed you the finger. Did you feel that was an honor, a salute to your aggressive driving style?

[A] Busch: It was February 2001. That was the inaugural Daytona 500 for me. It was confusing at first. I was minding my own business in my lane, and he changed lanes. I may have crowded him a little bit. [laughs] I thought, What did I do? If he's mad at me, I obviously did something wrong. That was his last race. He crashed in the last corner of the last lap and passed away at the hospital. It was not talked about until later. Now it's great to be able to laugh about it. It was an honor to get the bird from the Intimidator in his last race.

Q6

[Q] Playboy: Well-financed racing teams support young drivers with the finest equipment and experienced pit crews and crew chiefs. But it all comes down to the driver. Is car 97 a real pressure cooker?

[A] Busch: Definitely. I got the job at Roush Racing through what they call the Gong Show. They selected a group of drivers out of hundreds of résumés and narrowed us down to five, then told us one of the five was going to get the job. I put pressure on myself because they want you to win right away, but I put on so much pressure that I didn't do that hot. They brought me back after I won a lower-division championship. When you get into the excitement of qualifying at the race or the last few laps, your adrenaline is pumping so hard you don't even know you're breathing. You don't even know you're driving. You can't hear anything inside the car. You're in the zone. You get lost in it. And you have to get there by being comfortable, taking deep breaths and staying loose.

Q7

[Q] Playboy: In 2003 you bumped Jimmy Spencer, he punched you, and you were booed by fans. Do you have a strategy to become a more popular champ?

[A] Busch: I still get booed. Dale Earnhardt once said whoever gets the most noise wins. It's what makes our sport so great. You have 43 guys out on the track who anyone can root for, so fans are going to pick their driver and go against a few others. It's going to take time to change my image. Winning a championship definitely helps. I do sponsor affairs, and that can help fans gain a picture of who I really am. When I came in at 22 I didn't know if I was going to have a job the next day, and that made me race too hard. I ran over some people on the track, and then I got a bit sarcastic trying to cover up for that. Now I see the bigger picture, and it's made me a better person. I'm 26 and having more fun. You grow and mature with age.

Q8

[Q] Playboy: You arrive at the track with what you believe is a perfect setup--a tune-up, suspension and aerodynamics geared to the day's race. But isn't a car's setup a moving target?

[A] Busch: One thing you'll never hear from a race car driver is "The car was perfect." You're always adjusting it. The race progresses. More rubber from the tires gets laid down. More oil gets spilled on the track. Temperatures change. Every track is different. Some tracks need a soft setup, others a stiffer one because they're more banked to hold the stock cars at speed. Tire pressure is a big factor. We'll change half a pound of air during pit stops and make the car drive differently. That's the competitive state we're in. I'm involved in setup out on the racetrack. If the car is tight--if the front end won't turn well--I relay that information. I like a car on the looser side. You're not restricted by what the front tires are grabbing. I give advice because I feel all four tires underneath me. We call it the ass-o-meter.

Q9

[Q] Playboy: Did your stint as a grunt for your dad give you an appreciation of what a pit crew does?

[A] Busch: Those guys are athletes. Those seven guys throw themselves into danger. Cars are pulling in behind, around and in front of mine. And they have to dodge those cars and complete a pit stop in 12 seconds. Fifteen seconds is way too long. You're going to lose 10 spots in the pits. In real life, if I have a flat tire, whether on my own vehicle or a rental car, I can't help but make it a NASCAR-style pit stop. I thrash through it and see if I can get it done as quickly with a regular tire iron. I don't have the pressurized gun. I've done one in about three and a half minutes.

Q10

[Q] Playboy: NASCAR track lengths and layouts vary. You have to compete on all of them. Can road courses, with their twists, turns and differing elevations, be tough for a driver used to an oval circuit's high-speed lefts?

[A] Busch: Right turns are cool with me. I enjoy the road courses. If we had more on the circuit, that would be okay. When I first came in I ran real good on the big ones--1.5 miles. I hated short tracks. The cars would never turn, the rear tires would never hook up, and I'd be sliding all around, overdriving the car. Only a couple of tracks are really long: Daytona is 2.5 miles, Talladega is 2.66. Watkins Glen--that's a road course--is 2.5 miles. Over time you learn what your favorable tracks are versus tracks that you struggle on. You have to go to those tracks and work on them to get better. NASCAR gives us seven practices. You can choose the tracks you want to go on.

Q11

[Q] Playboy: At one time NASCAR drivers had a reputation for carousing the night before a race. Does today's driver spend more time in the gym than the bar?

[A] Busch: Yes, it's changed. The sport originated from moonshining--quick runs through the Southeast trying to outrun the law. Now there's such a demand on a driver's time, whether for sponsors or autograph sessions, that you want time to spend with your family or loved ones. So you're with them the night before a race. You try to get a good night's sleep. I do cardiovascular work to build up my lungs, and I have a treadmill at the house. I do a lot of strength training for my upper body because I'm working a wheel.

Q12

[Q] Playboy: The reigning champ gets the best parking place at every NASCAR track. How does it feel to be right up there with the employee of the month?

[A] Busch: That helps in many ways. The team gets to park our tractor trailer first. Our car is the first through technical inspection every week. If we have a small infraction, we have plenty of time to go back and fix it. Another perk is that I get to hit the track first in practice. If you're the defending champion, you get to go out first every week. They spoil you the whole year.

Q13

[Q] Playboy: Can those of us who are not NASCAR drivers learn to draft behind 18-wheelers and get better gas mileage?

[A] Busch: You can. My car was a Volkswagen Bug. It had about 40 horse-power and would do only 60 miles an hour floored. You don't want to drive a car at its limit, because you're going to burn something up. I would make trips to L.A. from Tucson to watch a race. On Interstate 10 through Indio, California the headwind is ferocious. So I'd get behind a fast semi and could do 70 without burning my engine up and with better mileage. It matters how ballsy you are about getting close. You get an ideal draft at five feet, but you don't want to get that close and deal with a mad 18-wheeler driver.

Q14

[Q] Playboy: Let's talk about backseat driving. Is it possible for a NASCAR champion to ride with his girlfriend behind the wheel without giving pointers?

[A] Busch: My girlfriend drives well. She's (concluded on page 161)Kurt Busch(continued from page 128) on the gas. My dad drives well. Mom is on the gas. If I ride with friends and they're not looking ahead and catching the green lights when they're supposed to, if they're stuck behind a car when the other lane is open or if they're just yip-yapping, yeah, I'm ready to tell them how to drive. But if I'm with sponsors, I'll put up with it. It's their time.

Q15

[Q] Playboy: Are objects in your rearview mirror really closer than they appear?

[A] Busch: If it's a fierce competitor, he's right on you. We do have a center rearview but no side mirrors. We'd probably knock them off. The cute answer is that we have our spotter up above with radio communications, so he keeps track of where other cars are. I probably look once a lap. You absorb it for less than a second--who's there? As it gets down to the end of the race and I'm racing for a win, I might look twice as often, but I'm telling myself not to look. I want to focus on the line--whether to run high or low--or on hitting my marks or keeping the fastest lap.

Q16

[Q] Playboy: At a recent NASCAR exhibit, no one seemed to notice that the Taurus's headlights were only decals. What's with the illusion? Is NASCAR trying to convince us that its cars actually have something in common with the cars the rest of us drive?

[A] Busch: Cars without headlights don't look right. Cars have headlights, so we need headlights. We are NASCAR because we drive stock cars. Decals make the schematics look correct. Taking the real headlights out is also a safety thing because all the drivers would run into one another and poke them out. You don't want to have glass out on the racetrack.

Q17

[Q] Playboy: The rest of us have driven fuel-injected cars for years. NASCAR sticks with carburetors. Will its technology ever catch up?

[A] Busch: Eventually. I've worked on carburetors. I understand them. What NASCAR is trying to do, at least for a while, is keep money away from that aspect of competition. It would mean millions of dollars in fuel-injection-software research because the air-fuel mixture is basically what runs a car. I'm sure NASCAR will be forced to turn to injectors, and it will find the proper technology to put in the cars. There's research and development going on for that, but right now we just run carburetors.

Q18

[Q] Playboy: Carburetor restrictor plates slow NASCAR drivers down a bit. Do you hate them?

[A] Busch: Some guys hate them. I'm on the fence. If you have to race and they're going to hand out points and a check, then you learn how to race with them. If they take them off, you learn to race without them. They put restrictor plates on our cars at Daytona and Talladega so that we don't go too fast. They're the largest tracks we race on, and without restrictor plates we'd be running 230 miles an hour, way too fast for a stock car. I'll hit 200 at most of our racetracks, but the average speed is 185, and that's unrestricted. Restrictor plates create entertainment value at Daytona and Talladega with the three-wide draft--30 cars on top of one another in three columns. But restrictor plates are needed for safety. I'm sitting in the seat. I don't want my ass to run into something so hard at such a rate of speed that I can't come back from it. I've been in some good wrecks. [laughs] I was dazed after one. I remember looking at the interview tape afterward, but I don't remember giving the interview. It was one of those goofy scramble-the-eggs wrecks. It's all about taking care of that egg in the carton.

Q19

[Q] Playboy: Early this season NASCAR cited several drivers and crew chiefs for suspension and fueling irregularities. Were they cheating?

[A] Busch: It's a fine line. Every team in the garage is out to develop something new. If it's not in the rules, it must be okay for a little while. It's up to NASCAR to govern what teams bring to the race-track. Negotiations take place. Some teams might get away with more. Competition is so tight right now that when you have that small advantage, you're going to be that much faster. Half an inch out of line at 200 miles an hour adds up to quite a bit of speed. Everybody wants to win, and you take risks, but NASCAR continues to make it tougher for cheaters.

Q20

[Q] Playboy: Is bumping a strategy, or is it unavoidable?

[A] Busch: There are so many different types of bumps. You can do it accidentally. You can do it to help pass somebody--that's bump drafting. And you can do it intentionally when you have that hunger and that drive when you're young. That's when I bumped Jimmy Spencer out of the way to win my first race ever, at Bristol. He finished second, though. It's not like I wrecked him. I have bumped guys and wrecked them by accident. I've heard cool quotes from drivers, like "I didn't bump him. He just backed into me." Dick Trickle says, "Yeah, I bumped him. He just chose to wreck it instead of save it." Bumping happens, and it's best just not to do it.