Each week, The Athletic asks the same 12 questions to a different race car driver. Up next: Richard Childress Racing's Kyle Busch, who needs to win one of the regular season's 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.

1. What was one of the first autographs you got as a kid, and what do you remember about that moment?

I can't 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. ... 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 -- and then John Elway's was on a football. Got him to sign a football for me.

I don't know where the car is. I guarantee it's in my dad's stash of all the stuff he's 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.

2. What is the most miserable you've ever been inside of a race car?

Yes. (Pauses and smirks.)

Honestly, the absolute hottest I've ever been inside of a race car was back in 2002. 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.

Oh yeah. So it completely shut off. 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 you made it?

I made it. I made it to the finish. I think we ran top 10 somewhere. But that was the most miserable I've ever been in a car.

3. Outside of racing, what's your most recent memory of getting way too competitive about something?

Everything. Video games, pool, ping pong. Ask Austin (Dillon) about pickleball, yeah. Ask him how competitive that gets.

I'm not very competitive with (10-year-old son) Brexton, but he's very competitive. I can still beat him at board games and stuff like that. He does not enjoy that. But he's good at playing card games and stuff. He likes Rummy.

4. What do people get wrong about you?

I'm 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 -- all that sort of stuff. So I think some of that kind of relates into racing, right? If I'm doing all of those things, then I want those around me to also be doing all of those things.

So when we make dumb mistakes or whatever and I get mad -- that's not me berating my team. That's trying to get us all on the same page and get us all wanting to be perfect and do the right things.

But I would say the perception over the years was always the "black hat" thing, right? And now it's definitely different, where it just automatically flipped because I changed teams (from Joe Gibbs Racing to RCR). So that's a little weird. But I'm just taking things more in stride, and I feel like people are respecting that a little bit more.

At Gibbs, you're expected to win -- like, if you're 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'm in a different spot, and let's call a spade a spade -- we're less competitive and not up front as much. So you're 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.

5. What kind of Uber passenger are you, and how much do you care about your Uber rating?

I care zero about my Uber rating. I don't even rate drivers.

So you get done with your ride and you're just like, "Whatever?"

That's it. Yep. I paid you to do your job. Thank you. See ya. Point A to Point B. That's it.

6. I'm asking each person a wild card question. Your wife Samantha has a new podcast called "Certified Oversharer," and it continues the pattern of your family being very open about your lives. But I feel like it wasn't always like this. So what was the journey like to be comfortable sharing so much with the public?

I think it mostly came from when we went through the infertility journey, and then we shared all of that -- 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. ...

She's the much more like, "Hey, let's throw everything out there in the open" one. I'm more of the, "We shouldn't live in a glass house" type, but whatever.

I don't know that it helps or hurts. But people have certainly seen a "different side of Kyle" in some of the TikTok things and whatever -- which I don't even have TikTok. So maybe that's been to the benefit of it.

7. This is my 16th year of doing these 12 Questions interviews, so I'm 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?

(Pulls phone out and looks at the point standings for a couple minutes.)

There's two. I would probably say Chris Buescher being one of them. And then I'd 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's at and what he's doing and how he's driving with similar stuff as us -- I think he's getting a lot out of his cars.

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.

I did text Connor Zilisch and congratulated him on one of his wins. He's a good kid, so I like him.

9. How much do you use AI technology, whether for your job or daily life?

I don't use it for my job at all. Maybe that's my problem.

I use it for helping me compile some email responses and stuff like that -- business emails and things. Like, this guy sends me an email with four bullet points and it's five or six paragraphs long, and my answer is like one sentence. So I'm like, "OK, maybe it needs to be a little longer than that." (Laughs.)

Add some fluff. I hate fluff. Like, get to the point -- what do you want?

10. What's a time in your life that was really challenging, but you're proud of how you responded to it?

I would say a lot of things that were going down in 2019. There were a lot of rumors flying around -- Samantha and I are having issues, we're getting divorced, all this stuff -- and then we win the championship and everything's fine. Just like ... what?

That was really dumb. It's 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.

11. What needs to happen in NASCAR to take the sport to the next level of popularity?

That's a tough one. I think it's a culture problem -- and I say that in regard to the world culture. In the '80s and '90s, 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. ...

I just think the problem we're running into is there's 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's 90-something degrees outside. Who wants to sit in metal bleachers under the sun for three hours? If you're out there -- 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're not going to find me out there.

I think it's also tough for those of us who were around in the mid-2000s and who saw the peak, and for people to say, "What has NASCAR got to do?" It's so different now that in some ways it's not even a conversation, you know?

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 -- obviously we lost Dale -- but there was this sense of "What are these guys going to do next? What's this next crash going to look like? Are they going to come out of it OK?"

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't there. So there's not this Evel Knievel type thing happening anymore. It's just going to watch a race on Sunday -- and people feel like that's boring.

12. Each week, I ask a driver to give me a question for the next person. Last week was Rajah Caruth 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?

The fire I have to go out and be successful for me -- to win and do everything -- 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'm trying to instill in him the notion that you're going to lose a hell of a lot more races than you'll ever win. I was never taught that. I was taught "win or die."

I think there's more to life than that. Now that I've been here for so long, I've gotten to understand that -- which is good. He still has that "win or die" notion, but I try to console him and tell him it's OK.

Like yesterday was his first dirt race in two or three months, and he ran second in the adult class. I was like, "Damn. All right. Good job." I'm sure he was upset he didn't win, but the leader was gone anyway. He did a great job.

The next interview is with Denny Hamlin. Do you have a question I can ask him?

Who is your favorite teammate of all time -- and you can't use Tony Stewart, Joey Logano, Matt Kenseth, Carl Edwards, Christopher Bell, Chase Briscoe or Ty Gibbs.

Seriously though, who is your favorite crew chief of all time?