Q 13

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

Kurt Busch: You can. My car was a Volkswagen Bug. It had about 40 horsepower 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.

Q 14

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?

Kurt Busch: My girlfriend drives well. She's 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.

Q 15

PLAYBOY: Are objects in your rearview mirror really closer than they appear?

Kurt 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.

Q 16

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?

Kurt 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.

Q 17

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

Kurt 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.

Q 18

PLAYBOY: Carburetor restrictor plates slow NASCAR drivers down a bit. Do you hate them?

Kurt 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.

Q 19

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

Kurt 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 racetrack. 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.

Q 20

PLAYBOY: Is bumping a strategy, or is it unavoidable?

Kurt 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.