We all get so caught up in the moment of what we're doing every day, it's hard to hit that reset button and get pulled away from all that and see life from a different perspective.
Tony Stewart
When I go home, its an easy way to be grounded. You learn to realize what truly matters.
I am a racer. I'm not a race car driver. I am a racer. I race. That's what I do. I don't go on vacations. I don't take my family on vacations because I don't have a family. My family is the racing family.
I go into it with the attitude that I'm not going to look at my leg, and as soon as they get the wrapping off of it, I'm like, 'I've got to look.' It's like yelling at a dog going, 'Squirrel!' I cannot not look. And then I spend the rest of the time sitting there with a wet washcloth on my forehead trying to regain consciousness.
The one thing I don't do, that helps make me successful, is I don't rob Peter to pay Paul. All of my businesses have to stand on their own.
When you're doing something every week, it's kind of routine.
I'm not going to just stop doing it because I got hurt once. People get hurt in car wrecks every day, and they don't stop driving the car the rest of their life to work. It's my passion. It's what I want to do with my life. It's a part of what I do.
It's no different than anything else in anybody else's life. Doesn't matter how simple or complex. There are days you hate it and days you love it.
I learned that I was just getting too consumed by racing. That's all I used to do was think about it. You have to be able to turn it off. You have to make yourself stop, or you'll get burned out.
It's very easy to get caught up in everything that's going on and just daily stuff being a distraction. When you have all that taken away from you, your daily activity becomes a lot more subtle, and you appreciate it all a lot more.
I've got more stuff asked of me every week. But I drive a race car for a living. My car owner lets me race as many sprint car races as I want to run.
I broke my leg is all I did. I didn't break my brain.
I have to relearn how to walk again. It's not that you have to reteach yourself. But your mind and your foot have to get back on the same page, and remind yourself that it's OK to do this. You've done this before. It's reminding it what it's supposed to do again.
Get in the race car do what I do then go home. We don't have freedom to do anything anymore.
It's hard to not make a mistake at Darlington.
For most part, the rule of thumb is pretty much you're going to race guys hard the last quarter of the race and for sure the last run of the day. You're still going to give and take until that last pit stop.
There are guys you give the benefit of the doubt if they hold you up a little bit longer than normal, and you have that list of guys you kind of know are going to be a problem when you get there. The window of being patient with them is a lot shorter.
If a guy does us wrong the week before, and he does something the next week where he makes an effort to make it right, then I pretty much will let that go. You don't forget about it, but just seeing that the guy makes an effort the next week means a lot.
All my life I've been that way - ever since I was a kid. It doesn't matter whether we played video games or even before that when we had board games when you played with your sister and mom and dad - I didn't like losing then and didn't want to do anything but win when we played.
I guess if you're not going to win the championship, you're better off taking the opportunity to win a Brickyard or a Daytona 500 than you are to make the Chase and then fizzle out.
You get around people who see us away from the track, and it's a pretty big contrast. You're still competitive, and you still want to win everything, but I think in the car, we're focused and passionate all the time. We get outside the car, and we're a lot more relaxed and easygoing, enjoying things away from racing.
I guess I take a lot of pride in that no matter what type of car we drive, we're always competitive in it. That's something I've taken a lot of pride in my whole life.
At the age of 41, I'm glad I still have hair.
Race cars, no matter what size or shape they are, they do the same things. It is not complicated.
It's like, what if you get a set of tires that aren't balanced right or a driveshaft that's vibrating. That could create a problem. You try to think of every possible scenario of what can make you uncomfortable and try to come up with a solution for it.
I'm scared of saying something that may get taken the wrong way.
Things happen every day. You can't spend your whole life trying to guard against something happening. If you do that, in my opinion, you've wasted your life.
I'm going to take full advantage of whatever time I've got on this earth. I'm going to get my money's worth. You can bet your butt on that.
