I act like I'm always in a good mood when I'm not, but it's my job.
Michael Waltrip
I would probably build somewhere between a half-mile and three-quarter-mile track. It would be sort of like Indianapolis Raceway Park. When I was a kid, that was my favorite track.
I just feel so confident when I get in my race car that I'm going to do good, I'm going to win, I'm going to outrun everybody.
You can only beat a guy down so far before he has a tendency to start listening to what you're saying.
I love my job. It doesn't feel like a job, and I don't look at it as work.
There's a Bible verse that says if you believe, you will be in the presence of the Lord in the blink of an eye. And I know Dale was a believer, and that means that he saw his son and his friend going to win the Daytona 500, and he was in heaven all within the blink of an eye.
I built my team with Dale in mind. He lives with me. He's part of who I am because I just appreciated who he was and how he went about things. People worked on his cars at Dale Earnhardt Incorporated before I got there. When Dale would walk by you could just tell people were thinking, 'these are Dale Earnhardt's cars.'
Anybody can be replaced. I can be replaced.
The thing that warms my heart is people. I have just met so many kind folks that want to just pat you on the back and say, 'We love you.'
This is racing. There is going to be twists and turns. You're going to be dealt setbacks.
I was confident that I not only could win races, but I could win the championship.
Dale was just trying to get third. Maybe he was thinking that he could get a run on everyone coming out of Turn 4. But the race was over. Junior and I had pulled away, so there was no need to block. That always hurt me when people said he was blocking for me, because it almost felt like it was my fault that he died. But I don't think that anymore.
It's as much looking out your rear-view mirror as the windshield. You want to make sure you put your car in front of the right line. You're constantly looking behind you.
People that know me know I take stuff personally.
You can't take your win for granted. Your next win might be your last win or you might never get to your next win, so I can't imagine not being overcome with joy by winning and never taking winning for granted.
People are obviously capable of handling the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. But I don't know how many people have had to experience them within seconds of each other.
I don't know anyone who's started more consecutive Daytona 500s than me.
I was always one who thought that if something is painful, you just ignore it and it will go away. That's not true.
I like to tell my own story using my personality and my insight, the way I see things.
Talladega is one of the macho tracks on the circuit and when I was a kid, I remember everyone wanting to go watch this race because the cars go so fast on the circuit; there were so many great battles.
It takes a good car for anybody to be good, but it takes a good car and a special driver to achieve greatness.
They say some people are born with the ability to play golf. I wasn't.
Obviously you can make a pretty good living these days as a crew member or a crew chief or as a driver. But the technology is expensive.
When I showed up to drive for Dale in '01 it was a brand new team.
I'm pretty comfortable in a car to know what I'm doing, and I'm exactly the opposite onstage.
I know y'all have probably heard I lost a few races in a row before I won one, but I never gave up. Never believed I wasn't good enough.
Some people might say I'm two different people, but I think it's more like seven or eight.
When you've been ridiculed and talked about as much as I have over the course of my career, pressure doesn't exist.
I love being outdoors.
It's real important to me to do what I say I'm going to do.
There are several races that anything can happen and Talladega is one of those places for sure.
The computer systems that we have on our cars when we go test just blow my mind.
I've never had anything given to me. I've never had anything easy. My whole career has been that way.
Nobody had ever lost 462 races and then just won. But Dale Earnhardt Sr. had told me I had the ability, and that day, I knew I would.
Whether you're Michael Waltrip or Jeff Gordon or Richard Petty, you can't be the Daytona 500 champion without it having an impact on people around you. When I say that, I mean the race fans. They want to congratulate you for winning the biggest race of the year. It has changed people's perception of me.
It's my opinion tracks got too wide. You put 43 cars on the track, and if the turns are too wide like they are at some tracks, you sort of lose perspective of what's going on.
Lying in bed, I determined that since I'm a Christian, I believe we all have our days - our days are numbered. I figured it was Dale's day to die, and I was the best person to win the race and be able to honor him in the victory.
I'm a sensitive person.
The chances of me getting into the Hall of Fame as a racer are slim to none. But as an owner I have a chance to do something special, mostly because I learned a lot of secrets from Dale.
Everyone who has ever aspired to be a stock car driver wants to win the Daytona 500. If someone says that it's better to win somewhere else, then that tells me one thing for sure - they've never won at Daytona.
I'm a Christian and I believe in angels and God.
No matter what town we went to, if there was a comedian playing, I'd go watch.
You have faith in who you are as a driver and stay strong when things go wrong.
I've always loved comedy.
If you look up the definition of stand-up comedy, it's funny on purpose. A little bit of pressure there. It's basically acting. You're telling stories and acting them out for people. The more you make it seem real, really a person doing it, then it seems to me the better it works.
The racing team is the most important thing in the world to me. It's where all my eggs are fully in that basket. I go dance and do TV to try to make that world more important.
You will rarely get introduced as the two-time Pocono champion. You will certainly be introduced as the two-time Daytona 500 champion.
Anytime you're pushing the envelope as hard as you can to be successful at anything at life it's easy to go from hero to zero in a second.
I do believe I'm not good enough to be a professional dancer. I believe that in my heart.
I just was fortunate enough to be talented at what I was watching my brother do. It's great that it worked out that way; I might have been wasting a lot of time saying that's what I want to be, but when I got behind the wheel I had the ability.
