A Quote by Alex Zanardi
I said I preferred Daytona to LeMans if I were to race. LeMans is a great event, don't get me wrong, but here in the U.S. is where I turned my life around, where I have a lot of friends, where I feel have my greatest following - not in terms of quantity but of quality - of racing fans.
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Daytona is a restrictor-plate race and, unlike Daytona, guys can't get in a line at Phoenix and go to the front. Daytona and Talladega (Ala.) have always just been two different forms of racing. With the draft being so important at those two tracks, it's more of a team deal than an individual deal. What happens at Phoenix and the races after that has to be done on your own. You can't help each other at Phoenix. You just have to go race.
The Daytona 500 is a big race, and Darlington is just as big of an event, and a lot of people get excited for it.
By being a racing driver you are under risk all the time. By being a racing driver means you are racing with other people. And if you no longer go for a gap that exists, you are no longer a racing driver because we are competing, we are competing to win. And the main motivation to all of us is to compete for victory, it's not to come 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th. I race to win as long as I feel it's possible. Sometimes you get it wrong? Sure, it's impossible to get it right all the time. But I race designed to win, as long as I feel I'm doing it right.
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.
The Daytona 500 is what it is because of the tradition and history of this great event. People have been coming out in February since 1950 to watch this great race. It would be hard to ever change that.
I'm good at separating my personal life from racing. When I'm at track, it's race time; when I'm away from it, other than the fact I'm training to be fit for it, there is nothing at home that makes me even want to think about racing. I just want to enjoy my life, and by the time the next race comes around, I'm ready and excited for it.
I really want to drive a Porsche GT1 car - also a McLaren, if I could fit. I want to do LeMans badly. I want to do Spa, a European series with World SportsCars.
I seem to have made my friends proud of me/proud to know me. I also feel I've learned and grown a lot even in this short time, and this event has given me a lot of opportunity to continue doing so. Obviously there were a lot of negative reactions, but they seem to have overall little relevance to my life.
I've had a lot of success over the years racing in New York, but the main point is that I feel the marathon is a different event, a lot more my event.
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.
I always enjoyed the training more than I did the racing. There was a high level of anxiety in racing that I did not enjoy. Training runs set me FREE. I could imagine the race in my mind and race as if it were the actual race.
I think I feel a car like anybody else can, but maybe what makes me different is that I race so much that I have experience racing with a lot of different crew chiefs. I'm really easy to get along with and me not knowing anything about a race car, I know to just let them do their job.
Newman and I were friends. We were great teammates, and he needs to check his trophy case on that Daytona 500 trophy I helped him get years ago.
For some reason, the fans got behind me, and I don't know exactly why that is. I wasn't supposed to main event WrestleMania XXX, but the fans were so vocal about it that the fans had no choice but to put me in the match. I've had a lot of lucky breaks.
Coming to Buffalo three years, two and a half years ago, whatever it's been a lot of people said, 'Why are you going there? You're not going to be able to get it turned around.' But we got it turned around, with a lot of work yet to do.
I can tell you I preferred my era. Yes, they make much more money now but I preferred my cycling. The passion for racing. I like more racing. Now riders they train all the time. Not so much racing.
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