Take those chances and you can achieve greatness, whereas if you go conservative, you'll never know. I truly believe what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. Even if you fail, learning and moving on is sometimes the best thing.
My goal is people associate November with COPD awareness month as much as they notice October with breast cancer and pink. That'd be a great thing if it happened. The fact that COPD kills more people than breast cancer and diabetes put together should raise some red flags.
I take none of that to heart. I don't feel like there's anything that I need to do for anybody else. I want to win bad enough for myself anyway, that nothing anybody can say can make me want to win any more.
I've never asked for special treatment along the way. And I'm never going to hide the fact that I'm a girl, ever. That's obvious, isn't it?
You know, sometimes the little victories that I have throughout the season are not necessarily obvious on the track. Maybe they're another aspect of what I'm doing, winning little victories here and there to get everything in line to be able to perform from top to bottom on race day.
Indy, I have lots of great memories from there, and probably the part of me that doesn't feel quite as longing for it is that there is still a chance that I could do it again. It's not gone.
I spent my whole childhood watching open-wheel racing. I spent years going to England and racing open wheel, coming back and racing open wheel. It's been my world for 20 years and beyond that. For almost my whole life, I've been watching it. I watch it and I think I know how to do it.
I think you can be happy and still be competitive. A good lesson for everybody is to think a bit before you speak and represent who you really are instead of the brash emotional you.
I'm probably not 100 pounds anymore, but around there. I definitely got obsessed with my weight. When I met my husband and realized that he could put on 50 pounds and I'd still love him, I realized that's how he sees me or at least how he should!
I think that Indy is special to me. The greater the distance between the last time I drove an Indy car and the next time, I wouldn't like that to be too big.
I'm not tall enough to be a model, but I wish I was 6-foot, because I love it. It's kind of artsy, and I'm artsy. And I love clothes.
Fame can be annoying, but there are perks too.
I know what it takes to be fast and I feel like every year I learn valuable lessons about how to be better the next time.
Maybe back in the day you didn't need to be the greatest looking to be on TV and you didn't need to speak the best, but in this day and age, I think you need to be the package. You need to look the part for your sponsors, you need to be able to speak the part for the media and to big CEOs.
The mistake I really learned from was in 2005, leading the Indianapolis 500. I had a decision whether or not to save enough fuel to finish the race - which meant slowing down - or going all-out for the win. I went conservative and saved enough fuel to go to the end but finished fourth.
In motorsports we work in the grey areas a lot. You're trying to find where the holes are in the rule book.
No matter how good you are, how brave you are or anything, it comes down to that car so many times. Not every time, but so many times.
I'd love to do well on a big weekend with people watching and cheering, of course. But it's not fair to create an expectation level before I know what is realistic. I want to finish as well as possible. Is that top 20? Top 15? Top 25? You just have to play it by ear.
On Memorial Day, I was out floating on Lake Norman and came across Denny Hamlin. We struck up a conversation, and one of the first things we were talking about was how much it helped him when he started racing the Cup car and how much it helped his Nationwide program.
In the Lamborghini I have to avoid certain roads because of pot holes, and there's nowhere to put my drink, no cup holder. And I'm not going to lie, it looks pretentious. I used to think it was cool to, like, drive it to dinner. Now? Like I really need to be looked at any more.
