My dad was very successful running midgets in Texas. Then, his two drivers ran into some bad luck. People started saying that Daddy had lost his touch. That it was the cars and not the drivers. I wanted to race just to prove all those people wrong.
I was born in Riverside and spent my whole growing-up years in Florence, a little township on the Delaware River. I tell people that I'm from the West Coast of New Jersey.
Some people admire the aspirational rock star figures whose biopics make it to TV, the people they watched as kids and made them want to play football for England. For some comics, it is often the Doug Stanhopes and the Joan Rivers.
I tell all the rookies that come into our series and all the young drivers they can come ask me anything at any time, and we'll give them the straight shoot.
When a young person is sent 'up the river,' we need to remember that all rivers can change course.
A river is a river, independent of whether there are other rivers nearby. In science, we call things what they are based on their attributes, not what they're next to.
There's a really great documentary called 'Many Rivers,' which documents the totality of slavery from its inception, and then it gives you a little history on how America came to prominence. It's crazy - the first black man to actually step foot in America came as a free man, as an explorer, with the Spaniards.
Even as global warming increases the frequency of El Nino and the Atlantic event, their effects are being amplified by the annual loss of an area of rain forest the size of New Jersey. Less rain falls, and the water runs into the rivers instead of being sucked up by the fungus filaments and tree roots.
I'm no different from other drivers - my talent is in my brain, not in my right foot.
I think you can learn from other people's mistakes and other people's strengths, and that is why I have always been watching, with particular attention, other drivers - and not only drivers at the top.
