Beware of Sterling Marlin around port-a-potties, says one Cup competitor. Credit: Autostock

10 Questions: Best of '05

A sampling of drivers' responses that were really over the top

Each week during the 2005 NASCAR season, NASCAR.COM Senior Writer Dave Rodman brought to light the responses of the same 10 questions he posed to several drivers.

Some of the responses were, to say the least, entertaining. A look at some of the best answers of 2005:

	GET BEHIND THE MIC Here's your chance to finally ask Driver X that burning question. ... Well, sort of. NASCAR.COM's Marty Smith will be your voice during Preseason Thunder.  •   Click here to submit question

1. What's your dream vehicle that you don't already own?

Randy LaJoie: "A Rolls Royce. I just think they're the mac daddy."

Tony Stewart: "Probably an army tank."

2. If time on the road weren't an issue, what would be your ideal pet?

Robby Gordon: "What's that? A pet?"

John Andretti: "A Bengal tiger. It would just be cool to have -- until it got hungry."

Boris Said: "A 'DRD' dog. That's my favorite pet, and I've still got one. Death Row Dog -- it's from the animal shelter."

Jon Wood: "A monkey. I want a monkey really bad."

If a monkey is good enough for Tony Stewart ... sighs Ron Hornaday. Credit: Autostock

Ron Hornaday: "I've always wanted a monkey. For some reason, when I saw Tony Stewart's monkey, I wanted a monkey."

Rusty Wallace: "I have the ideal pet. It's a little Chihuahua that looks like the Taco Bell dog. His name is Miller. I should start taking him on the road with me more because he's just a fun dude. I can't think of anything bad about Miller, except he's getting old and he's starting to act weird."

Kurt Busch: "Horses bring a sense of calmness and openness -- and if you're not paying for them, then they're really nice. ... As long as the stink from the barn is far enough away."

Kerry Earnhardt: "I like deer. They're fun, and we actually have some, back at the farm, that we play with. We rassle with 'em."

3. What's your biggest pet peeve while driving on the road?

Hands-down the No. 1 answer -- just ask any driver, like Jimmy Spencer: "Stupid people in the left lane."

Rusty Wallace takes his plan for slow pokes one step further than Jeremy Mayfield. Credit: Autostock

Jeremy Mayfield has a solution: "The best thing I've done in the past is that if you're trying to get over and somebody won't let you over. You just act like you're going to swerve over -- like you don't see them -- two or three times and they'll back off and you can pull in. It's because they don't want to wreck their stuff, either."

And Rusty Wallace offers: "Honk the horn and hit 'em in the ass" (though we're not advocating his rule of thumb).

Kurt Busch: Stop signs and red lights.

4. You travel a lot, so what's your worst hotel experience?

Jon Wood: "Brian Vickers and myself raced karts at the same time; so every week we had our own hotel room, just the two of us. One week my dad would pay for it and the next week his dad would pay for it. And my dad was always at the Cup races.

So this one Friday night, and we were only 13 so we didn't know any better -- and our hotel room came equipped with a microwave. So we thought it would be cool to find stuff in the room and put it in the microwave. So we put the soap in there, and a shoe -- a pillow. It seemed like the TV remote control was the next thing in line. So we put that TV remote in the microwave and put it up to about 10 minutes and about two minutes into the deal it was just a puddle of plastic.

ACCELERATION 2006 There's more to the new season than just driver changes. Read more about what to watch for as we rev toward Daytona.  •   Complete coverage, click here Third-time charmJeff Gordon celebrates his third Daytona 500 victory Kiss the BricksTony Stewart gets elusive first Indianapolis win 2005 HighlightsCoverage of the postseason banquet in New York. Sign up for TrackPass now BUY THE NEXTEL i836

So we went running outside and poured it in the parking lot. We didn't get to throw it -- we had to pour it because it was solid liquid. And I think the hotel owner saw us. So he came into the room and said that we could no longer stay there that night. It was late and we had to race the next day, so I called my dad and said, 'What do you want me to do? Where do I stay?' And he said, 'Well, it's up to you.'

So I had to sleep in the back of the pickup truck that we drove to the track in. It was not a good idea. I was never allowed to stay at that hotel in Amelia again."

And just when you thought Amelia was in the rear-view mirror, along comes Elliott Sadler: "Went to a go-kart race in Amelia, Va., when I was like 10 or 11 years old. Everything was sold out and we stayed at -- I don't even want to name the name of the hotel. Actually, we had to wear flea collars in the bed -- it was so bad. It was fleas and bugs and mess everywhere.

There was no cover on the air conditioning fan -- you could just see the fan turning. You had to get the bugs out of the bathtub before you could take a shower, so we actually went down to the local hardware store or whatever and bought us all flea collars to put on that we slept in that one night."

Jeremy Mayfield: "We stayed at a place one time -- I think it was out in Phoenix -- and it was just terrible. You'd walk outside and there'd be cars up on blocks. The wheels had just been stolen right there in the parking lot."

Terry Labonte: "In St. Louis, Mo., at the Busch race over there without a doubt. They tried to rob us at the motel -- and the people that worked at the motel were part of the gang."

Watch the hairs on your chinny chin chin, Todd. Credit: Autostock

Tony Stewart: "I was drunk and hung over at the Chili Bowl Midget race before I got into the IRL or NASCAR and my buddies, through the course of the night, had kept throwing their empty cans behind my bed. And they put shaving cream and Vaseline on my mattress and sheets and I didn't realize it."

Todd Bodine: "Well, it was at Darlington, and I won't say what motel it was, but I was laying there in the middle of the night, and I had a cockroach right here, on my chin. And it actually ate some of the skin -- that's what woke me up."

But no more calls, we have a winner -- Ron Hornaday: That would have to be staying at a hotel in Las Vegas -- and finding out that your friend was sleeping on a dead body. There was actually a girl's body that had been inserted into the bed springs, that were cut out to make it fit. They were complaining about the room smelling, and they found out there was a dead body in it. So every time I go in a hotel room now, I look under the mattress."

5. What's your favorite food?

Mark Martin: "My favorite food would probably have to be a hamburger. ... You said what was my favorite, but I don't eat 'em. I don't eat burgers -- I just don't."

Don't expect Chick-fil-A to sponsor Ken Schrader anytime soon. Credit: Autostock

Travis Kvapil: "I don't even know if it's a type of cheese, but I like cheese curds. Not many people know what cheese curds are, but I like cheese curds and string cheese."

Mike Skinner: "You can tell by the size of my belly that I've got a lot of favorite foods, but I love Ahi Tuna and I love steak."

Ken Schrader: "Probably dead cow, yeah."

Todd Bodine: "The garlic pizza at Mangialardo's Restaurant in Sayre (Pa.). It's different. You've got to taste it to understand it."

OK, we'll take your word for it.

6. If you had to choose, would it be being honest, or being nice?

99 percent of the guys said honesty. Honest -- we're not making that up. "I think if you're honest, that's nice," says Ron Fellows.

7. What's your fondest childhood memory?

Johnny Benson: "I could come up with something from last week."

Kerry Earnhardt can recall when he first met his dad. Credit: Autostock

Dale Jarrett: "The 1965 Southern 500, where my dad won the race. We were there; the Camden High School band played the national anthem that day. My dad won the race by, like, 14 laps. We went to Victory Lane and Doc and Festus from Gunsmoke were in Victory Lane."

Mike Skinner: "I was, I don't know, 7 or 8 years old and I got a Schwinn Stingray. It had the butterfly seat and it was metal flake green and I just thought I was the cat's meow on that bicycle."

Kerry Earnhardt: "I'd have to say my fondest childhood memory was when I was 16, and I saw dad again -- for the first time, actually, since he had put me up for adoption."

8. What would your dream date be? Where and with whom?

Several stuck in our minds:

Sterling Marlin: "Just a regular plain-Jane girl you'd see in the mall or something, that wouldn't be a lot of high maintenance and all that stuff. Probably the islands. Saint Thomas or somewhere down in that area."

Kurt Busch: "Jessica Simpson because she's new, she's on the market and she's ready to rip."

Jimmy Spencer: Johnny Carson, maybe ... Brian France, never. Credit: Autostock

Jimmy Spencer: "My dream date? Hmmm? I don't really have any particular woman that is a dream date for me. A man? I always admired Johnny Carson, though he's dead and gone, now."

Kyle Petty: "I would have to say Ingrid Bergman or Lauren Bacall, somewhere in Hollywood about 1940-something -- just because I liked the clothes, I liked the cars and I felt like they were hot women. They're still hot, even though they were in black-and-white."

Ken Schrader: "Yeah, well, my wife and a night at the garage usually work out pretty good."

Kerry Earnhardt (with nary a moment of hesitation): Shania Twain, at my house. And my wife knows it, too.

Boris Said: "I'd have Angelina Jolie, because she seems a little bit nasty -- and I like her. And probably Debra Messing, because she'd make me laugh the whole night. The dream date would probably be at Watkins Glen. Right after racing we'd just head over to the hotel. That's all I need."

9. What's your worst prank, either played by you, or done to you?

Denny Hamlin: "It was my very first test in a Busch car, at Darlington -- and [Tony] Stewart decided that he would go crazy with a blowtorch and some brake cleaner, to the back of my pants."

Jimmie Johnson: "Sterling [Marlin] throws these quarter sticks of dynamite, either in rental cars or, when somebody's in the bathroom at a test session he'll throw them in the bathroom with the guys. I've literally seen crewmen running out of the bathroom stalls with their pants down around their ankles, scared to death."

Ricky Rudd: "I can't remember where we were, but I put my helmet on and I went to put my goggles on. This was like a minute before you'd crank your motor. I go to put my goggles on, I pull 'em out of the box -- a brand-new pair -- and there's two eyeballs drawn on the lenses so I couldn't see out of my goggles. All thanks to Dale Earnhardt."

And again, Ron Hornaday: "Probably the worst one was when I was driving Bobby Hamilton's car for Andy Petree. I went out there and had run about 10 laps and found out that Bobby does relieve himself in the seat -- and I was wearing his firesuit, so I probably smelled like an outhouse."

Kurt Busch was taught a lesson early in his Cup career. Credit: Autostock

We smell a trend, Ron Fellows: "Probably one of the funniest was one of the first times I had Johnny O'Connell as a teammate. I had got in the car after him at one point in the race, and I think it was our first race together at Daytona in 2001, and when I jumped into the seat it was like I had slipped into a bathtub. Old Johnny had had to pee in the seat. So I got on the radio and asked, 'How come the seat is so wet?' And he's been peeing in the seat ever since. Actually, both of us do."

10. What was your "Welcome to NASCAR" moment?

Kurt Busch: "It's got to be 'the finger' out the window from Dale [Earnhardt] Sr. at Daytona. It was my first Daytona 500 and I got 'the finger' out the window."

Mark Martin: "[NASCAR inspector] Dick Beaty telling me, 'We don't run that Indy s--t here' about my brake pedals."

Jimmy Spencer: "Being called into the NASCAR office trailer by Bill France, and being explained to how the sport works. And the most famous saying that Bill France said, was that 'this sport will still be going, with or without you. What part of that do you want to be?' ... Some of these kids that are coming into this sport today -- including crew members -- I still don't think they realize how this sport operates."