Credit: Autostock

Conversation: Kurt Busch

LAS VEGAS -- It's 10 o'clock in the morning on Thursday, and Kurt Busch is a hero to a few hundred kids at Kenny C. Guinn Middle School -- mainly because he showed up and got them out of class for an hour.

Busch is back at his old middle school for a sponsor appearance -- he collected kids' signatures on the decklid of his Bristol car.

The school has rolled out the welcome mat for Busch -- they've even plastered Kurt's old school photos on the wall.

Despite our best efforts, NASCAR.COM could not secure copies of the photos for distribution, but we did catch up with him for a quick Conversation.

Q: Kurt, you were at your old middle school today, did you see any of your teachers?

	Kurt Busch signs the wall at his old middle school.
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Kurt Bush: There was a couple of them, and there was my principal. (man walks up) This was my high school principal, Dr. Coles. Good to see you.

Dr. Coles walks up and shakes Kurt's hand.

Coles: Congratulations, you did well for yourself. Very good. I see your name up all over the place.

Busch: Never would have expected it, right? I didn't expect it!

Coles: I'll tell you, you were driven even then. Play on words, I guess (laughs). Nice to see you.

Busch: Glad you could make it!

Sorry about that.

Q: No problem. So you saw a lot of your teachers?

I never made it to the principal's office, so that was my first time today to go back.

Q: What did your school pictures look like? Were they funny?

They actually had some blown up and they are in the principal's office right now. You have got to go check it out. My seventh-grade or eighth-grade picture I looked like Zack Morris from "Saved by the Bell".

I had the big wave going on. I had blond hair back then too.

Q: We're in your hometown, what do you do when you come back here? Do you just come out a week early, or what?

It's been busy. We had an off-week after California and I've been on the West Coast since. There is no sense in going to the East Coast and coming back, for a driver anyhow.

Our teams had to go back, they have been through a lot. I thought our Vegas test went better than the California test, and we almost won the California race.

	Credit: Autostock
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So we will see how it shakes up.. New tire, new spoiler, it's a bit different, there are still some unknowns. Once we go and do one more test -- we are going to test Bristol in a couple weeks -- we will known a bit more.

Q: Why test at Bristol? You have like 78 straight wins there.

It's something new for our team.

You can get into a rut and chase race tracks that you are not good at it and continue to test at those. We want to go to a race track we are pretty good on and test there and try to polish up.

We have got a good knack on changes. Let's try to reach out of the box and find something and then look at it from the other side.

Our setup won it in 2002 and we have not changed it much. This is 2005. You have got to change to keep up with the times.

Q: You just kind of hung out here after Fontana?

I was in San Diego for a few days, I went to Mexico. I went to San Francisco for an appearance. Back here in Vegas. We have been bouncing around.

Q: What did you do, lay on the beach?

Oh yeah. You have got to get that in there. It's a little bit of a vacation. Couple days here and there.

Q: You didn't get engaged, did you?

No, nothing like that, but it's been fun to bring her (girlfriend Eva Bryan) around to everything, she comes to some some of these sponsor events, shaking hands and talking to people. She loves it.

Q: I just wanted to make sure we were not going to Atlanta and having to read you had gotten married.

Ha. No. I would not get married during the season. You'd want to have time to go on a honeymoon and celebrate.