The Final Score

-What was the first car you had when you got your license?
A Chevy Silverado red pickup.

-Do you have to drink Red Bull as part of your contract?
No

-Do you have any advice for someone trying to break into the sport?
You’ve got to be very passionate about it. You need to make it your life if you really want to succeed. At this level of competition, it’s all about what you do every day, day in and day out. Obviously an education is important. You’ve got to do well in school growing up. But beyond that there’s very little time for play, very little time for parties or other activities. You just have to focus on racing.

-How do you like living in New York City, and what do you like to do while you are in the Big Apple?
I love living in New York. Obviously my full-time residence is in North Carolina. With our race shop there I spend a lot of there. But New York is definitely a good escape, a second home. It’s a place to kind of get away from things. I like the diversity of New York. I love the cultural diversity throughout the city. The restaurants are unbelievable. The nightlife is good. The fact I don’t have to have a car is good. I take public transportation, subways, just about everywhere I go. The subways, the parks, there’s a lot about the city I really like.

-Would you like to see a track in New York someday?
Absolutely, I’d love to see it. I think it would be awesome, just awesome to have a presence there for our sport. Just in the years I’ve been going to New York on a regular basis, the popularity of the sport has grown tremendously. A lot of friends I have in New York and people I meet, they keep up with the sports. It’s obviously the no. 1 market in the country. I think a track would do really well there.

-What’s the weirdest or craziest thing that a fan has done to get your attention or impress you?
I’ve definitely signed body parts and I’ve had women take their tops down, things like that, but probably the weirdest thing I’ve seen is a woman who had a Jeff Gordon tattoo all down her leg. A full tattoo, and it looked just like him. Obviously wasn’t me, but that’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen.

-What is your favorite track to race at and why?
I’d probably have to go with Darlington, South Carolina. Very unique, very challenging, different. It’s very narrow. You run right against the wall. It’s very difficult.

-Outside of the race track, do you hang out with any of the other race car drivers?
Probably Jeff Gordon and Jimmie Johnson and Casey Mears the most. We have similar personalities, similar interests. Myself, Jeff and Jimmie have a place in New York. We spend time together. I get along with most of the guys. There’s other guys I hang out with occasionally like Denny Hamlin. But the past five or seven years it’s been those three guys the most.

-What track that does not currently have a Cup race would you like to see get one?
What city, I’d say New York. But what track, I always liked racing at Rockingham (N.C.), but I don’t think it’s in a very good market. If they could take Rockingham and put it in New York, or take Rockingham and put it in Seattle, I’d say definitely that track. Same for Iowa, Iowa Speedway is a good track. Kentucky Speedway is a good track. There’s a lot of tracks I raced on before that I really like. But that doesn’t mean we should have a Cup date there.

-Will there be a day when NASCAR goes to alternative fuels?
Yeah, potentially, but I think there’s a lot of other things they could do a lot smarter in our sport toward being more green and more environmentally friendly before they worry about alternative fuels. In the big scheme of things, the amount of fuel we burn is very minimal compared to a lot of other things we do. Even some simple things like recycling. Some tracks don’t recycle, which is embarrassing. Just about everything the fans buy and we use can be recycled. I think that would be step one. There are a lot of other things. Watkins Glen, I think, went to all renewable energy to power the whole racetrack. I feel I read that somewhere. I’d have to double-check that. (Edit note: that’s true.) Things like that, committing to renewable energy for all the power of the whole racetrack, that’s going to be much better for the environment than the amount of miles we run on the car. Will that happen one day? Yeah, maybe. But I don’t know how long it will be. There are so many factors involved, so many people involved, so many companies involved, so many manufacturers. That’s a big obstacle to overtake in a sport like this.

-What are some of the biggest adjustments that you had to make switching from Chevy to Toyota?
It’s just being patient, you know. There are just some things coming from an established team like Hendrick and an established manufacture like Chevy that just seemed so obvious and so simple. Toyota just wanted to do it their way and we suffered a lot because of that. There were a lot of issues, troubles and pains and struggles we went through last year and even some this year that have been real frustrating because the answer is right there in front of you. But they got to do it their way. Inevitably you still get the same answer. But it just takes times and you just got to be patient. But Toyota has a lot of strengths, and it’s just going to take time. Our sport has a reputation in the world of motor sports, that we’re behind the times, we’re not as far along as other forms of racing. So when a new manufacturer or someone from Formula One or Indy cars or other form of racing come into the sport, they come in here thinking they know better. That the NASCAR industry doesn’t know what they’re doing… You realize things are done for a reason in NASCAR. It’s not because the 42 other teams out there don’t know any better. It’s not because the other manufacturers have been building certain aspects of the cars the way they have for the past 50 years. It’s because they don’t know any better or they’re not smart enough. Sometimes people do things for a reason. There’s a lot of smart people in NASCAR. The reasons our engines are not sophisticated as a Formula One engine, and the reason our cars are not as sophisticated as a Formula One car, is not because the people aren’t smart enough to do those things. It’s because with the rules that NASCAR gives us, this is the best way to go about it. There’s always going to be improvements, ways to get better, and you need to look for those ways. But that doesn’t mean that everything that is currently done is done because no one knows any better. I think that just comes with time. But Toyota has brought a lot to the table. They’ve done a tremendous job. The hardest part is getting used to the new group of people and being patient. We’ve gone through a lot of hard times. We fell out of a lot of races last year just being patient with our process, letting everyone grow together.

-Who had the biggest impact on your racing career?
My father.

-You recently started a Facebook page. How involved are you with that?
I’m definitely involved in it, updating it, putting pictures and throwing stuff out there. It’s something the fans were on my Web site asking for, so we put it together. It’s had a really good response. The fans have used it, and it has some neat stuff. It’s an avenue for me to express some more of my personality, who I am away from the racetrack.

-If you weren't racing what would you do for a living?
I’d probably be finishing up school, college, and I’d probably be pursuing either a career in business or a career as an engineer of some sort.

-Are you superstitious? If so, do you have any pre-race rituals or do you carry any 'good luck charms'?
I used to be superstitious. I’m not quite as much anymore. I still have certain things I do or don’t do. I do have routines I do before the race, in the mornings, after I get up pre-race. But it’s not because I’m afraid something is going to go wrong if I don’t do them. It’s just a way to get your mind and your body in the zone and ready to go race. I get in the car the same way every time. I buckle my safety equipment the same way every time, in the same procedure. It’s not so much if I don’t do it that way something bad is going to happen. I think procedures like that are important to make sure nothing is forgotten.