{"id":123349,"date":"2025-08-06T10:27:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T10:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/123349\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T10:27:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T10:27:12","slug":"kyle-busch-on-how-nascars-fandom-has-changed-how-hes-different-at-rcr-and-more-12-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/123349\/","title":{"rendered":"Kyle Busch on how NASCAR\u2019s fandom has changed, how he\u2019s different at RCR and more: 12 Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: Richard Childress Racing\u2019s Kyle Busch, who needs to win one of the regular season\u2019s final three races to make the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs. This interview has been edited and condensed, but the full version is available on the 12 Questions Podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n

1. What was one of the first autographs you got as a kid, and what do you remember about that moment?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I can\u2019t remember if it was (Dale) Earnhardt (Sr.) first or if it was John Elway first. Earnhardt was at Fletcher Jones Chevrolet in Vegas, and then Elway was at one of the other car dealerships in Vegas. \u2026 I just remember being in line and getting up to the front and getting an autograph. Earnhardt was on an Earnhardt car, obviously a black No. 3 car \u2014 and then John Elway\u2019s was on a football. Got him to sign a football for me.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know where the car is. I guarantee it\u2019s in my dad\u2019s stash of all the stuff he\u2019s got from when we moved from Vegas. That was basically considered all his stuff. And the football is still with me. I still have that.<\/p>\n

2. What is the most miserable you\u2019ve ever been inside of a race car?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. (Pauses and smirks.)<\/p>\n

Honestly, the absolute hottest I\u2019ve ever been inside of a race car was back in 2002. It was Pensacola, Florida \u2014 I think we ran there in June or July, for some stupid reason. And it was 100 degrees outside with like 100 percent humidity. It was so, so hot.<\/p>\n

Back in that day, those cars had aluminum engines, aluminum blocks and all that stuff. So they just run hotter, and they don\u2019t have very big grille openings. You\u2019re probably running 230 degrees of water temp in those cars. They have over-the-top headers, which means they come over the back of the top of the engine and down your right side \u2014 so everything is hotter about those cars.<\/p>\n

We splurged and spent money for an AC unit back in that day \u2014 the ol\u2019 Cool Boxx 2 \u2014 and had it mounted underneath the seat in front of me, and then had a helmet hose to the helmet. Well, it was so hot that that thing wasn\u2019t cooling. It was basically like 100-degree air blowing across my face.<\/p>\n

So I asked the guys on a pit stop, \u201cHey, give me a bag of ice,\u201d because there\u2019s radiator fins in the top of that thing. I got the bag of ice \u2014 and instead of putting it on me, I put it in the air conditioning unit to cool the fins.<\/p>\n

Well, it cut the circuit.<\/p>\n

Oh no.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Oh yeah. So it completely shut off. That was the first pit stop \u2014 probably around Lap 80 \u2014 and we had to go to Lap 300. So I had no AC, no nothing.<\/p>\n

Guys were falling out of the seat. They were just pulling over and stopping and getting out because they couldn\u2019t do it anymore. There were guys who were dizzy, fainting \u2014 all that stuff.<\/p>\n

But you made it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I made it. I made it to the finish. I think we ran top 10 somewhere. But that was the most miserable I\u2019ve ever been in a car.<\/p>\n

3. Outside of racing, what\u2019s your most recent memory of getting way too competitive about something?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Everything. Video games, pool, ping pong. Ask Austin (Dillon) about pickleball, yeah. Ask him how competitive that gets.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not very competitive with (10-year-old son) Brexton, but he\u2019s very competitive. I can still beat him at board games and stuff like that. He does not enjoy that. But he\u2019s good at playing card games and stuff. He likes Rummy.<\/p>\n

4. What do people get wrong about you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m a focused guy, driven guy. I want things to be done the right way. A little OCD. Just like neat and tidy and clean and put together \u2014 all that sort of stuff. So I think some of that kind of relates into racing, right? If I\u2019m doing all of those things, then I want those around me to also be doing all of those things.<\/p>\n

So when we make dumb mistakes or whatever and I get mad \u2014 that\u2019s not me berating my team. That\u2019s trying to get us all on the same page and get us all wanting to be perfect and do the right things.<\/p>\n

But I would say the perception over the years was always the \u201cblack hat\u201d thing, right? And now it\u2019s definitely different, where it just automatically flipped because I changed teams (from Joe Gibbs Racing to RCR). So that\u2019s a little weird. But I\u2019m just taking things more in stride, and I feel like people are respecting that a little bit more.<\/p>\n

At Gibbs, you\u2019re expected to win \u2014 like, if you\u2019re not winning, then what are you doing? So when you lose out on close races or whatever, you get very frustrated, very mad, very angry. And those were always my bad moments that people hated me for. Now I\u2019m in a different spot, and let\u2019s call a spade a spade \u2014 we\u2019re less competitive and not up front as much. So you\u2019re just going with the flow and trying to work on things and make things better. And I guess for some reason, people respect that more.<\/p>\n

\"Kyle<\/p>\n

\u201c(At RCR,) I\u2019m in a different spot, and let\u2019s call a spade a spade \u2014 we\u2019re less competitive and not up front as much,\u201d Kyle Busch says. (Krista Jasso \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n

5. What kind of Uber passenger are you, and how much do you care about your Uber rating?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I care zero about my Uber rating. I don\u2019t even rate drivers.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t even rate them?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nope.<\/p>\n

So you get done with your ride and you\u2019re just like, \u201cWhatever?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s it. Yep. I paid you to do your job. Thank you. See ya. Point A to Point B. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

6. I\u2019m asking each person a wild card question. Your wife Samantha has a new podcast called \u201cCertified Oversharer,\u201d and it continues the pattern of your family being very open about your lives. But I feel like it wasn\u2019t always like this. So what was the journey like to be comfortable sharing so much with the public?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I think it mostly came from when we went through the infertility journey, and then we shared all of that \u2014 especially the second time, when we went through all of the miscarriages and stuff. She wrote a book about everything in that nature as well. \u2026<\/p>\n

She\u2019s the much more like, \u201cHey, let\u2019s throw everything out there in the open\u201d one. I\u2019m more of the, \u201cWe shouldn\u2019t live in a glass house\u201d type, but whatever.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know that it helps or hurts. But people have certainly seen a \u201cdifferent side of Kyle\u201d in some of the TikTok things and whatever \u2014 which I don\u2019t even have TikTok. So maybe that\u2019s been to the benefit of it.<\/p>\n

7. This is my 16th year of doing these 12 Questions interviews, so I\u2019m going back to the first time we did one. In 2011, I asked you: Who is the most underrated driver in NASCAR? You said Matt Kenseth. So who would you say now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

(Pulls phone out and looks at the point standings for a couple minutes.)<\/p>\n

There\u2019s two. I would probably say Chris Buescher being one of them. And then I\u2019d also go with AJ Allmendinger. I think AJ is really, really good. Being (alliance) teammates with the Kaulig guys and stuff like that, and knowing where he\u2019s at and what he\u2019s doing and how he\u2019s driving with similar stuff as us \u2014 I think he\u2019s getting a lot out of his cars.<\/p>\n

8. Other than one of your teammates, name a driver who you would be one of the first people to congratulate in victory lane if they won a race.<\/strong><\/p>\n

None. None of \u2019em.<\/p>\n

I could have guessed that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I did text Connor Zilisch and congratulated him on one of his wins. He\u2019s a good kid, so I like him.<\/p>\n

9. How much do you use AI technology, whether for your job or daily life?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t use it for my job at all. Maybe that\u2019s my problem.<\/p>\n

I use it for helping me compile some email responses and stuff like that \u2014 business emails and things. Like, this guy sends me an email with four bullet points and it\u2019s five or six paragraphs long, and my answer is like one sentence. So I\u2019m like, \u201cOK, maybe it needs to be a little longer than that.\u201d (Laughs.)<\/p>\n

Add some fluff. I hate fluff. Like, get to the point \u2014 what do you want?<\/p>\n

10. What\u2019s a time in your life that was really challenging, but you\u2019re proud of how you responded to it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would say a lot of things that were going down in 2019. There were a lot of rumors flying around \u2014 Samantha and I are having issues, we\u2019re getting divorced, all this stuff \u2014 and then we win the championship and everything\u2019s fine. Just like \u2026 what?<\/p>\n

That was really dumb. It\u2019s crazy the bugs that will fly around our garage area. But I felt like we handled it well and with our heads held high. And here we are. Won a championship through it all.<\/p>\n

11. What needs to happen in NASCAR to take the sport to the next level of popularity?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a tough one. I think it\u2019s a culture problem \u2014 and I say that in regard to the world culture. In the \u201980s and \u201990s, you had a bunch of Hot Rod guys who were cool with souping up their 1970s, 1980s street rods. A lot of those guys are aged out. \u2026<\/p>\n

I just think the problem we\u2019re running into is there\u2019s not a lot of race fans anymore. People would always bring their kids to the track, but now there are just so many other things people can do otherwise. Going to the lake, taking your kids to a bounce house. No offense, but we just stood outside, right? It\u2019s 90-something degrees outside. Who wants to sit in metal bleachers under the sun for three hours? If you\u2019re out there \u2014 God bless you. More power to you. I appreciate that. We need to do more for those people who are here and who give us their time and their money. But you\u2019re not going to find me out there.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s also tough for those of us who were around in the mid-2000s and who saw the peak, and for people to say, \u201cWhat has NASCAR got to do?\u201d It\u2019s so different now that in some ways it\u2019s not even a conversation, you know?<\/strong><\/p>\n

A little bit of it too was back in that day, guys were getting hurt, the speeds were getting faster, cars were getting a little bit safer \u2014 obviously we lost Dale \u2014 but there was this sense of \u201cWhat are these guys going to do next? What\u2019s this next crash going to look like? Are they going to come out of it OK?\u201d<\/p>\n

Now it seems like everything is neutered. I got hurt in 2015, so I can talk, but nobody really gets hurt. The safety aspect isn\u2019t there. So there\u2019s not this Evel Knievel type thing happening anymore. It\u2019s just going to watch a race on Sunday \u2014 and people feel like that\u2019s boring.<\/p>\n

12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next person. Last week was Rajah Caruth<\/a> and he wants to know: How has your competitive nature changed since becoming a father? Do you view it differently with yourself and Brexton in terms of being competitive?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fire I have to go out and be successful for me \u2014 to win and do everything \u2014 is the same as what I see in Brexton for himself. But I feel like my fire and desire I have for him is probably less, because I\u2019m trying to instill in him the notion that you\u2019re going to lose a hell of a lot more races than you\u2019ll ever win. I was never taught that. I was taught \u201cwin or die.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think there\u2019s more to life than that. Now that I\u2019ve been here for so long, I\u2019ve gotten to understand that \u2014 which is good. He still has that \u201cwin or die\u201d notion, but I try to console him and tell him it\u2019s OK.<\/p>\n

Like yesterday was his first dirt race in two or three months, and he ran second in the adult class. I was like, \u201cDamn. All right. Good job.\u201d I\u2019m sure he was upset he didn\u2019t win, but the leader was gone anyway. He did a great job.<\/p>\n

The next interview is with Denny Hamlin. Do you have a question I can ask him?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Who is your favorite teammate of all time \u2014 and you can\u2019t use Tony Stewart, Joey Logano, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards, Christopher Bell, Chase Briscoe or Ty Gibbs.<\/p>\n

Seriously though, who is your favorite crew chief of all time?<\/p>\n

(Top photo: Meg Oliphant \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: Richard…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":123350,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46],"tags":[1833,1406,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-123349","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nascar","8":"tag-motorsports","9":"tag-nascar","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114981348560777501","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}