From a prestige standpoint, the U.S. needs to host Formula 1. And I think Formula 1, they know they need the U.S. as well. So many companies that are global are based in the United States support Formula 1.

From the driver's standpoint I had the same horrors, the same satisfactions, the same everything. The speed is relative. It's faster and things are happening quicker, but you have the equipment to handle it.

I never even thought the sophomore slump existed. You hear the saying, but you never thought it was for real or anything. But that's kind of what happened to us last year, and I don't know really why that is.

We're working on being consistently in the top 10, top 12 and getting ready for next year's Chase. We need the make the Chase and one way we need to do it is to be consistent and starting running in the top 12.

As far as I'm concerned, Parnelli Jones was the greatest driver of his era. He had aggressiveness and also a finesse that no one else possessed. And he won with everything he put his hands on, including off-road.

We get paid a lot of money to do what we do, and there's a lot of people who are dependent upon that car running well and us getting everything out of it as a team. So I'm very, very loyal to my team and the company.

I think racing in Mexico will prove to be a great move for our sport in the future. The reaction we received from the fans last year was outstanding. The fans were unbelievable, and I expect the same reaction this year.

You do a period of go-karting until you're at the age of qualifying for a ride in a 'school-kart,' then you qualify for driving school. And several of the driving schools have a competition series for their own students.

I see all these old people who don't have anything to do but eat, drink and sleep. I will never say 'retired' because that's such a finality that I don't want to be part of my life. I'll work until they throw me in a box.

We share information really well together — all the teams do — and we give each other racing room, ... It's fun to race with Matt and these other guys. Man, it's just unbelievable that our cars run this good.

There's something special about racing in real streets. The 'artificial' circuits have a certain sameness to them. But every race conducted on real streets has a character of its own - Barcelona, Monaco, and now Long Beach.

Yeah, our car was really good even after the crash. I told you before the race that if we had good track position at the end I thought we could finish good. It was a really good day for our Linksys car. Just a fun day racing.

Do it no matter what. If you believe in it, it is something very honorable. If somebody around you or your family does not understand it, then that's their problem. But if you do have a passion, an honest passion, just do it.

The choice to become vegetarian was purely for ethical reasons. Like most meat eaters, I was a little concerned with removing meat from my diet. Also, like most meat eaters, I was blind to the horrible ways animals are treated.

Bill Elliott has always been good at Pocono, and he's given me a lot of pointers. He's helping me learn how to get through the corners. He's got great insight on how to each corner is different and how I need to get through it.

I mowed yards with my grandpa at $10 a pop for awhile. I painted numbers on curbs. I cleaned swimming pools. I usually did all of that over the summer, and then I'd continue to do the yard part during the year as I went to school.

When a concept has been understood intellectually, if the learning is to be of value then a connection with personal feelings, inner knowing and experience has to be made, and consideration of how the information would best be applied.

The experts or the cynics say, "Oh, those were the good old days, that's when drivers were really drivers. They didn't have all these aids." You know what? What we had, we did the best with and when we got more we provided what was needed.

Whenever you move to a different team, it's really hard just to get to know each other. The best thing I've found is to just be yourself. They're people like any other people - you just have to get to know them and create that relationship.

There were some struggles throughout the year at RCR. In order to keep yourself relevant, you had to find a headline. In order to find a headline, you had to do something that wasn't right, like jump over a car or say something you shouldn't.

Circumstances may cause interruptions and delays, but never lose sight of your goal. Prepare yourself in every way you can by increasing your knowledge and adding to your experience, so that you can make the most of opportunity when it occurs.

Vegas is definitely a place where we can win. We had a good run here last year, and I feel even more confident about the car we're taking this time. We're taking the car that we raced in California two weeks ago, and it was obviously a good car.

The most important thing at Daytona is, are you going to have friends willing to work with you during the race as far as drafting? You've got to have friends out there. You can't do it alone. You form those relationships as the race moves along.

My favorite part of any military feature, aside from the people themselves, is how clean and organized everything is. I like things clean and organized, and they don't get any cleaner or more organized than they are in any branch of the military.

Going vegan was a little tougher for me. The final push came from watching Gary Yourofsky's lecture at Georgia Tech in person. The video is now on YouTube. I constantly show it to people interested in learning about why I choose to live the way I do.

I'd say it [success in NASCAR] is probably 50% car, 30% driver and 20% luck. When it comes to the driving, if the driver doesn't do his part, then it's just kind of like multiplying a negative times a positive: The end result is going to be a negative.

When we're outside of the racetrack and in our team meetings, you need to communicate with your teammates and do what's best for the company in order to give the people that work there the best opportunity to succeed and maximize the potential of their job.

In racing, there is no question who is best - the first one to cross the finish line wins first prize. But with wine, even if you make the best wine in the world, someone isn't going to like it, because it isn't their style. Judging wine is very subjective.

Love is the key. If we start to express the spring of love within that is our true essence, our Truth, our spark of Divinity... and allow it to flow more... then all is revealed. Love becomes our guide in life, our connection with All, and our path back to Source.

With tennis, you can go pick up a racket, take a lesson, and understand how much talent and skill it takes to be as good as the top pros. Same with golf: pick up a club. But not many can go out and get in a race car and experience a drive at over 200 miles an hour.

It seemed like whenever I got a bona fide offer from Ferrari, I couldn't do it. And vice versa - when I was ready, their seats were taken. We always had a relationship, but what's important is that I pretty much started my F1 career with them and ended it there, too.

You can only live on the past for so long, and we kind of stretched our luck on that. We think we're on the way back, but it's just a matter of how quickly things come together. Common sense tells you it's not going to happen overnight because we're trying to catch up.

When a car's ahead of you, as long as you can see it, you get a tow, just like the draft in NASCAR. Even if it's a long ways down the track, it punches a hole in the air that has to help. When you're running alone, you can feel the difference, and it shows on the clock, too.

Kyle Busch is going to get his ass whipped shortly I hope. He better sit his ass in his motor home or I’m going to come find him and he’s going to have to hold my watch because I’m going to whip his ass. He’s the biggest whining little piece of [expletive] I’ve ever seen in my whole life.

A lot of the kids we have coming up through our ranks now have been in stock cars since they were 12 or 13 years old. It's much different. I think you have to pick a path. If you want to race open-wheel cars and do those things, it's probably going to be carts and into an open-wheel series.

We just have to keep our heads down and keep doing everything that we've been doing. This isn't a bunch of guys that are just going to go out and brag We're going to race every week like we have never won a race before. That's the kind of determination that you need when you are going to do this stuff.

I've been a part of this before, where you think the racing gods are against you, then next thing you know, you can't do anything wrong. You're winning races and doing things you feel like you shouldn't have done that particular day. It all comes full circle in this sport. It has a funny way of doing it.

But really - look at the span of my career, and it's something people dream about. And to be spared major injury: I had some moments along the way, but being able to retire on my own terms after having driven during those decades when safety conditions were more precarious than today - am I lucky, or  what?

Being a good race car driver is one thing, but to take all the time commitments and all the pushing and pulling and learning when to say no - because you need to rest or focus on the things you need to do to make the car go fast - those are the hardest things to learn and the most distracting things to learn.

So many assume the truth is either black or white... It's all evolution or it's totally creation, for example. Reality creates consciousness; consciousness creates reality. Actually truth is inclusive, neither black nor white, nor a shade of grey. Indeed, truth is a multicolored spectrum, a beautiful hologram!

I think when you have kids, it definitely makes you look at things from a different perspective, but I think that the biggest thing it's done is it's made me look at things from a different perspective from a professional standpoint in how you analyze things and how you look at things and how you react to things.

In college I took a class from a professor who changed my whole life. I can't really remember what his name was, or what the class was, or even which college it was, but I found that if you sit behind a really tall guy and kind of slouch down in your chair you can drink Scotch right from the bottle and not get caught.

You see people in the left lane, and as long as they are on the speed limit, they stay there. Get in the right lane and let people pass you - let the police worry about somebody who wants to speed. Don't force them pass in the right lane and zig zag, which can create an accident, just because you think you're correct.

Action is where it's at, as far as making dreams come true. We ourselves are the prime channel for our creations, so if we don't act but just wait, then we are blocking the channel. If we do act then we will be supported by all that we are connected to... which is All That Is if we act with love and service as our motivation.

I love racing cars, and we have to have great competitors to make the diverse fan base have people to root for, and some people like calm, shy Ryan Blaney that knows a lot about the sport, or Chase Elliott, who's been around racing and has those deep ties to NASCAR and the southern roots of our sport. Those guys are all important.

The truck was really fast, we just couldn't get a long enough green flag run there toward the end to get a good run on Todd and Skinner. But we were fast. Randy Goss, David Dollar and everyone on the No. 47 team and at Morgan Dollar gave me an awesome truck to drive tonight. We ran out of time to get back up there and race them for win.

For me, I believe that Dale Jr. has had a big part in kind of stunting the growth of NASCAR because he's got these legions of fans and this huge outreach of being able to reach different places that none of us have the possibility to reach, but he's won nine races in 10 years at Hendrick Motorsports and hasn't been able to reach outside of that.

As a kid, I loved my Matchbox cars, my Big Wheels, and the race cars on TV. When I laid eyes on my first go-kart when I was just five, it gave my desire for making things with wheels go fast a focus. This combined with the fact that I've been incredibly competitive since a young age made for the proper mix of passion and aggression to become a race car driver.

Love is unconditional acceptance. It is love of parents for child; also the non-possessive love of partners; also the caring love between all people that enables forgiveness. It's above energy, though it may be expressed energetically. It's our essential nature: Spirit itself, the quality we share with God. And it is the binding force of the Universe, inherent in all that is.

Last year was the best Father's Day ever, 1,000th win for Ford and to have my daughter there for her first victory lane. I'm not sure how to top that, but hopefully something spectacular will happen. Michigan is one of my favorite tracks; it's a big fast place and has lots of room to race. There is always a lot of strategy going on. Fuel mileage and pit stops are very important.

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