Given that he’s been racing in NASCAR for nearly a quarter-century, it’s not surprising if Kyle Busch has experienced a number of miserable moments in his race car over the years.
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When The Athletic asked the two-time Cup champion, “What is the most miserable you’ve ever been inside a race car?” Busch initially paused, as if having to go through 20-plus years of terrible memories (including his horrendous crash in the 2015 Xfinity Series season opener, ending up with a broken leg and other injuries), and then smirked.
“Honestly, the absolute hottest I’ve ever been inside of a race car was back in 2002,” he recalled. “It was Pensacola, Florida. 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.
“Back in that day, those cars had aluminum engines, aluminum blocks and all that stuff. So they just run hotter, and they don’t have very big grille openings. You’re 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. So everything is hotter about those cars.
“We splurged and spent money for an AC unit back in that day, the ol’ Cool Boxx 2. 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’t cooling. It was basically like 100-degree air blowing across my face.
“So I asked the guys on a pit stop, “Hey, give me a bag of ice,” because there’s radiator fins in the top of that thing. I got the bag of ice, and instead of putting it on me, I put it in the air conditioning unit to cool the fins.”
So much for cooling off quickly
However, something happened that Busch wasn’t expecting. He was hoping to cool off, but instead, things got even hotter.
“Well, (the ice) cut the circuit. So it completely shut off,” Busch remarked with agony. “That was the first pit stop, probably around Lap 80. And we had to go to Lap 300. So I had no AC, no nothing.
“Guys were falling out of the seat. They were just pulling over and stopping and getting out because they couldn’t do it anymore. There were guys who were dizzy, fainting, all that stuff.”
But somehow, the younger Busch brother managed to make it all the way to the finish of the race. “I made it, I made it to the finish,” he said, proud of achieving his goal, albeit in some of the worst weather conditions ever.
Now, the best way to end this story would have been for Busch to win the race. But he didn’t. “I think we ran top 10 somewhere,” he remembered. “But that was the most miserable I’ve ever been in a car.”
Well, actually, it could have been worse: he could have crashed and finished last.
