Kyle Busch reveals the most MISERABLE he's ever been in a NASCAR car

Kyle Busch has had a ton of great days in a race car - including two NASCAR Cup Series title wins - but there have been some pretty awful ones too.

The 40-year-old superstar has reached the very top of the mountain twice, but he had to come up the hard way to do it.

READ MORE: NASCAR team facing multiple penalties after Watkins Glen incident

Busch recalled his worst racing memory during a wide-ranging interview with The Athletic, and he had to go back some 23 years to do it.

Kyle feeling the heat

He revealed: “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.”

Despite the searing heat, Busch and his team thought it had a potential solution - until it didn’t.

He continued: “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 thing wasn’t cooling. It was basically like 100-degree air blowing across my face.”

Busch hack goes south

It was at this point that Busch came up with a simpler route to keeping his cool inside the car, but once again things went south.

“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.

“Well, it cut the circuit. 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.”

Despite a truly horrible day, Busch would make it to the finish, somehow. It’s a day that he does not remember with any fondness, but it absolutely was memorable.

“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.”

READ MORE: NASCAR confirm Kyle Larson demotion after Watkins Glen nightmare

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