Kurt Busch has long fascinated NASCAR fans because A) it's commonly agreed that he's a superlative driver with 25 wins and a NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship to his credit, and he continues to race in the Pro Stock division of the NHRA on an "opportunity permitting" basis; and B) he has played Peck's Bad Boy in the Politically Correct world of NASCAR, where sponsor needs increasingly hold sway. Busch has been suspended and fined by NASCAR multiple times, and most observers of the sport believe he was fired from Penske Racing in December 2011 after blowing up at a TV cameraman, with his performance going viral on YouTube (warning: profanity). Writer Peter Manso spent several afternoons chatting with Busch, whom he found to be "not in the least psychotic, troubled, or rude but, on the contrary, perfectly coherent, sensible, and polite." Below is the unabridged interview that came of those several meetings.
Last May, you took sixth place at the Indianapolis 500 as a rookie and then ran the Coca-Cola 600 later that same day. What was the most difficult part of driving the two cars back-to-back?
The most obvious difference is the [Indy car's] open cockpit. Driving an Indy car feels different, being exposed as you are, and also sitting so far forward and close to the front axle line—that's another difference. Compared to a stock car, an Indy car doesn't let you know that the rear end is breaking away, and sometimes it's already gone by the time you've started to correct. It's the pendulum effect; the physics are different because of the weight distribution.
I've always had the desire to win, that fire in the belly.
You put your car into the wall during practice at Indy; from afar, it looked like the correction was too late.
No, the correction was there, but I didn't get the wheel turned back straight in time. I put too much input to the right and drove straight in, hitting with the right front, while normally that car would have spun around and backed itself in. This showed my inexperience as to what you're supposed to do with an open-wheel car with that much rear weight bias, which is to not react that heavily. And I'd put myself in a poor position by getting too complacent. I started making adjustments in the car—moving the weight jacker, moving the front bar—in preparation for the race itself, trying to find a setting I thought I would be able to leave alone, but in reality there is no optimum setting. I was trying to move the adjustments in my car so as to have less understeer, so I could just leave it there. With an Indy car, you have to keep track of wind angle as well as the distance between you and the car in front of you, just as you have to make suspension adjustments throughout the 500 miles. What happened was I got too much air on the nose by not following the car in front closely enough, like, all of a sudden I poured a lot of downforce on the front and the thing came around on me.
And this was because of inexperience?
I had maybe 20 to 25 hours in the car, total. On the other hand, if I hadn't made the mistake during practice I would probably have wrecked during the race. Sometimes you have to wreck to learn.
Does a NASCAR stock car offer far fewer options for setup versus an Indy car?
It has fewer tools for the driver to make changes while driving. In the pits, they can change front wing angle, rear wing angle, air pressures, plus there are a lot of suspension adjustments, which can make for a much more aggressive change. On a scale of one-to-ten, it's like a seven compared to a stock car's three.
How much of this kind of tuning do you think can be learned by drivers through experience versus intuition?
When it comes to race cars, drivers are smart. But being a race-car driver, we're always trying to find our next ride, and we're hobbled by this adrenaline rush that we have to get a fix for. It could be same thing as being an alcoholic or drug addict—you have to have it. We love that feel of driving on the edge.
The skill involved in setting up a car to handle well, the intellect involved—how old were you when you first realized that this was essential?
My fourth year on the NASCAR circuit was when everything really slowed down for me, but I'd had moments before. And, of course, it's this phenomenon of things slowing down that's key to going fast. My dad was a national champion, and I was beating him within one and a half years of driving the same kind of car when I was 16. I didn't know anything. But I remember talking to him once after a race, and I could see in his eyes that I was talking over his head on some of the concepts I was struggling with.
Like what?
I was halfway to figuring out that I liked to pitch the car sideways as soon as I would accelerate on restart; that way I'd have a straighter trajectory to the finish line. In turns three and four, when you stand on the gas to accelerate, I would chop turn four to the low end of the racetrack, which was based on my drawing a straight line from the turn's apex to the start/finish line. My dad would run the high groove all the way through Turn Four, saying he was blocking guys. But I was thinking, Why do you have to worry about blocking on a restart if you can just draw a straight line from A to B and drive away from them?
This was something you came up with on your own?
Sort of. I remember when my dad was teaching me how to drive a go-kart; I wasn't running fast lap times one weekend and was trying to figure out why. There had been a dust storm the week before, and it occurred to me that track conditions always mean something and that a track isn't going to be ideal just because it's been dry. I ate, drank, slept, cussed, and have thought about racing every day of my life since I was twelve.
Has your need to win been there from the start?
I've always had the desire to win, that fire in the belly. But has it been accepted, the way I react to certain situations? As I said, nowadays it's tougher for people to accept any type of raw emotion. You have to have your guard up more. I've seen that corporate America is only worried about not having blemishes, and at the end of the day I'm afraid I'm still a racer.
Every driver has had a beef with someone on the track at some point. It's racing, not curling.
How much did the rush of racing have to do with your decision to run a double at Indy and Charlotte?
Indy was all about doing something different, about giving myself the challenge to push myself in a new driving discipline. I'd driven [Craftsman] trucks, Nationwide, 24 Hours of Daytona, IROC, and competed in Pro Stock NHRA. I love racing. In the world of NASCAR we race 40 weekends a year, and it consumes your life, and sometimes you burn out. But Dale Jr. is the guy who threw down the gauntlet: "You are representing NASCAR." He tweeted that on social media, I didn't publicize it, and I [just] had to pick the year when Indy was really competitive, like I never seem to do things the easy way. But then when I landed on the front straightaway at Charlotte after finishing at Indy, everybody was applauding me like I was no longer the bad guy, so much as people were saying, "We always knew he was a racer."
Did you feel like it was redemption after all the bad press you've received?
Maybe that's one way of talking about it. But it just seemed to come about on its own. I'd been looking for sponsors for two years and meeting with people, one of whom was Michael Andretti, who wanted to start a stock-car team, and my meeting with Michael turned into this opportunity to run the 500. This was shortly after Roger Penske and I parted ways in December 2011. But let me say that when I finished at Indy, Roger was very complimentary.
Even though the two of you hadn't parted on the best of terms?
I think we'd parted on awkward terms, yes, but largely because of middle management and also my burnout. It wasn't Roger himself, although at the time I certainly wasn't happy about finishing in eleventh [in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Championship] two years in a row, which Roger seemed to feel was adequate. That's why he and I didn't see eye to eye sometimes: what performance we were expecting of each other.
You're saying it was your frustrations with the Penske team that led you to start threatening reporters?
That was incorrectly reported.
Let's straighten it out, then.
It peaked at Homestead in 2011. I'd spent the previous 35 races in the top 10 in points, the crew chief was leaving because the engineering department was very stubborn to work with, and now we had to beat Clint Bowyer to finish 10th in points. Each week of the Chase we lost a spot that we had worked all season for. Two weeks prior to this, we ran out of gas while leading. [At Homestead], my transmission broke on lap two, putting us down to eleventh, and it was devastating. Afterwards, I'm standing in the pits ready to give an interview—this is my moment when I thank our sponsors, saying we've had a great year, that we almost won the Daytona 500, and so forth—and Dr. Punch, the interviewer, says, "We're going to come to you in two minutes, after commercial break." I say, "Fine." But the camera guy is right there, six inches from my face, recording this, and I asked him to move away as I was trying to collect my thoughts. I asked him three times and he didn't. Then Punch leans in to tell me there's this other thing he's got to cover before getting to me. Well, I should have walked away. I didn't need to give an interview—I was trying to be the nice guy. But now I realize the camera guy is still there, still rolling, and I told Dr. Punch, "Get this motherfucker out of my face."
And the whole scene was recorded start-to-finish—
It was, by a fan who put it on YouTube. There was no reason for the cameraman not to back up until they were going live.
But by that time you'd already put yourself on the wrong side of the establishment. There had been fines and suspensions from NASCAR, as well as reported incidents involving you and Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick, Robby Gordon, Tony Stewart, and your own brother Kyle.
Every driver has had a beef with someone on the track at some point. It's racing, not curling. This is a sport where you go out to beat the other guy each week—you run into each other, accidents happen, and just like in life, there are people you just don't like. But was all of it warranted to the extent it had been written about? No, I was bullied by some members of the media. I'd had a real beef with one driver, Jimmy Spencer—he's got his story, I've got mine—but the media reported that I was having problems with every driver in the garage area, which was simply wrong. The bad publicity was partly my fault, I admit it. I made things worse by telling the media they were the problem. I didn't know enough to keep my mouth shut, and I felt I had to explain things in order to set the record straight. Take what happened in Maricopa County, Arizona, at the end of 2005 when I got pulled over for a DUI. I'd had one beer, I blew a .017, but the cop who pulled me over was mad because he thought he'd nabbed a NASCAR driver and was going to make front-page news. Sheriff Joe Arpaio ran with the information he was told that was incorrect, then a year later, Sheriff Joe invites me to his office to give me an honorary deputy's badge. And as he's giving me the damn badge—Roger Penske told me to go [accept it and] to take the "high road"—I wanted to destroy the guy. I could have sued Maricopa County for the damage they did to my reputation, but Roger talked me out of it. People believe what they want to, usually on the basis of what they hear in the first fifteen seconds of a TV broadcast. After that it's set in cement.
In the aftermath of the Penske breakup, you were quoted as saying, "I need to be a better person on the radio, to the team, as a leader. It's personal issues, of course. [I'm] working with a sports psychologist." How long did you work with this psychologist? What did it entail?
About nine months. The principal benefit to meeting with the man was that it gave me more of the big picture and allowed me to take a situation to a Tuesday meeting rather than blow up on the spot—to find a balance, really. I was burned out at that point in my career and needed to find my passion for racing again. I was at a crossroads in my life, I suppose, and I didn't know what I wanted. Many men go through this, and what you have to do at that point is stop and re-evaluate.
Would you say that the therapy allowed you to see yourself more clearly?
I felt disgruntled about it for the first six months, but, yes, the guy helped put tools in my toolbox—emotionally, I mean. And this had the side benefit of helping to restore fun to my racing. That's why when I was at Phoenix Racing, a low-budget team, I was getting in there, working hard, getting greasy with the guys, which was different from the corporate structure and roadblocks I'd struggled with at Penske Racing. Earlier in my career, I'd thought leaving Roush and going to Penske was going to be a good move since I'd jumped into NASCAR from essentially bush-league racing and knew next to nothing about PR or how to conduct myself with sponsors. I signed on with Roger to gain the polish I thought I needed. In therapy I realized that it used to be the end of the world for me if I didn't win, and the therapy made me see there are many other things in life that are a lot more difficult to deal with than not performing in a race car, like what faces many men and women who have served in the military—people with physical and mental wounds like PTSD, and those who suffer because they don't have higher education and can't pay the bills at home after they get discharged. Working with the Armed Forces Foundation was, in fact, maybe the best therapy and snapped me out of my funk.
How have you found Stewart-Haas different from a Penske-type operation?
This group is more about racing, less about process and formalities. They allow for creativity and the freedom to try new ideas. And that's Gene Haas, who's half-owner of the team. Gene looked through all the bullshit of my supposed image and said, "I want this talent on my team," and the fourth car was put on specifically for me. Gene's guidance has always been, "Be yourself and go and race, and get me that trophy. I don't care about how the rough edges drag." He's allowed me the freedom to concentrate on driving the car.
When you first arrived in NASCAR, you really were unaware that your duties were going to be heavily sponsor-oriented?
I was naïve, I didn't know. I was raised in a middle-class family that spent weekends at the track. All I was worried about was what it takes to get that trophy. From local late-model racing, I'd gone to the top level of motorsports in America in a single year, and I had no idea of the steps in between. I'd just skipped them. I didn't know how to speak, how to present myself. My father had taught me everything about the car, how to work on it, how to drive. But he didn't know politics. And the problem was compounded by the fact that, more and more, the public—or at least corporate America—had come to frown on people who display any type of raw emotion. Whereas raw emotion is applauded and encouraged at my local short track. Why do people go to watch a race at Bowman Gray, the legendary quarter-mile oval at Winston-Salem? They go for the racing but probably more for the fights that will happen.
Here I am, a local brat from Vegas, starting next to Dale Sr., Jeff Gordon, Bobby Labonte. The move up had been way too fast.
Do you feel like NASCAR has become even more sponsor-oriented over the past dozen years?
Absolutely, and I think it hurts our sport to be as vanilla as it is. The Allison brothers, Buck Baker, Dale Sr.—those are the guys I grew up watching, who I wanted to emulate. But nowadays, the corporate element has become so strong as to raise the stakes on what it takes to be competitive; it influences who gets hired and how you've got to behave.
So, for drivers, playing politics and being politically correct is the trade-off for making the big money?
It's part of the game, yes. I've been an outlaw against this and still say, "Let us be ourselves, let us race, let us put on the show that Bill France Jr. would have wanted." I came into NASCAR with the belief that the driver needs to be concerned with driving and that a sponsor's big return on his signage on the hood and quarter-panels should be the car's running up front. The trick is to find a sponsor whose personality is like yours. Not all sponsors are vanilla because the public isn't all vanilla.
Have you ever sat down and figured out how much money you may have lost by not playing the smooth-talking corporate figurehead?
I've thought more about the trophies and the wins I would have gotten if I'd have done things differently. But the money is a great bonus at the end of the day, no question. NASCAR drivers live well.
Some people feel that stock-car racing has been stripped of danger, because you can crash at 200 mph and then go out for dinner afterward.
Standing on the grid of the Indy 500 was the first time in 14 years that I felt the danger to the extent that I was thinking, "I might not be able to stand here this healthy again after today." I had a chapel service before we came out for driver introductions, and my girlfriend's son Houston, who is nine, started crying. He was overwhelmed. You could feel that this was dangerous.
Was there anything pleasurable about that feeling?
It's not like I felt I was cheating death, but I definitely felt more on-edge, and that's because Indy is not my comfort zone. Compared to driving a stock car, you have to be more precise with your wheel movement and throttle input. With a stock car, you can let the rough edges drag a little bit. With an Indy car, everything is being given to you at a much quicker rate, so you have to digest things quicker, discard information quicker, and, no question, I enjoyed going through the apex of the corners 50-mph quicker than what I was used to.
In NASCAR, it's said that one of the hardest things to learn is to draft well. Is decoding this mystery what separates the men from the boys?
It's very difficult to know everything there is to know about restrictor-plate racing because there is the rhythm you must find in the speed; it's an invisible competitor. The low lane will sometimes draft better than the high lane. You could be running fifteenth, say, and trying to work your way towards the front, and if the leader is continuing to run the low lane then the low lane is going to give you the better chance. On the other hand, if he changes from the low lane to the high lane, then you might wind up running three wide and the middle has the best chance of moving forward. That's why the draft is called "the equalizer." Sometimes a slower car will win out, and always it's a matter of taking advantage of other peoples' mistakes.
Is this the strategy Trevor Bayne—an unknown at the time—followed to win the Daytona 500 in 2011, when he started in 32nd?
Yes, Trevor Bayne happened to make the correct moves at the end of the race. He got lucky. He made the right move in blocking low and picking up Carl Edwards as his draft partner for that last part of the race.
In principle, does a rookie winning Daytona bother you?
Handling played a big role at Daytona in the early 2000s, but then they repaved it, so it became very easy to hold the car wide open all the way around. Before that you had to make your setup work, which put the premium on experience. More and more Daytonas turned into a crapshoot.
Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently in your career?
I would have done one thing: I raced a late model in NASCAR's Southwest Series—low level, Chevy small-block—in September of 1999, and one year from that day I'm starting in a NASCAR Sprint Cup car. NASCAR's premier division. Qualified tenth at Dover. Here I am, a local brat from Vegas, starting next to Dale Sr., Jeff Gordon, Bobby Labonte. The move up had been way too fast. I should have run two years in trucks and two years in Nationwide. Instead, I went too quickly and got in over my head. Yes, I won a championship early in my career, but there's more to this sport than just driving.
from Car and Driver Blog http://ift.tt/nSHy27
Put the internet to work for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment