Quotes

"Throughout my career I've had the benefit of uncanny timing.I guess to some degree you make your own luck. Sure we won that Riverside race thanks to rain, but I've lost far more races to bad luck than I ever won through good luck."
-- On his first ever NASCAR win.

"We didn't buy our way into a good team as happens so often today. We did it on our own and that's what I'm most proud of. That to me was the key to the whole thing. Like Frank Sinatra says, 'I did it my way.' And we did. Our success was the result of our hard work, patience and innovation."
-- On his first ever NASCAR win. "Money may be the most important element in modern-day stock car racing, but team chemistry runs a very close second."

"Bad chemistry is like a drag on a chassis."

"You need to win multiple times if you want to carve out a place in a sport. In some respects your second and third and fourth and fifth wins are more important. They prove that the first one wasn't a fluke and that you belong out there on a weekly basis with the best cars, drivers, and teams in the world."

"To this day, I doubt that I really was the most popular driver in NASCAR in 1984, but I couldn't argue with the fact that I did have the most ardent supporters. Those dedicated friends are responsible for my winning the award several times over the last few decades."

"Sure, I love the competition, but I see my dirt-track races as a way to give back to so many of the people who have supported me for so long."

"In the 1960s NASCAR was truly stock. You'd go to a junkyard or whatever and find a car, rip the interior out of it, weld a roll cage in it to beef up the suspension, and go race. We were closer to demolition derby than we were to modern-day stock car racing."

"The car we brought to Daytona was so blatantly superior that I thought we were a prohibitive favorite. In fact, that car was as good as any car racing NASCAR this year, twenty years later.
-- On his 1985 Daytona 500 win.

"Being under the car and behind the wheel has always given me a lot of satisfaction and a lot of joy, but the best thing about my career has been the fans. I look forward to seeing them in the years ahead and beyond."

"Crossing that finish line was the pinnacle of my still-young career. Two years earlier we had gotten our first win, and that was big. Then we had our first Daytona win earlier in 1985. That was huge. This win was not only our tenth of the season, but it was inaugural Winston Million. We had accomplished something that no other team or driver in the history of the sport had ever done."
-- On winning the inaugural Winston Million

"If you can be competitive and run good, you don't necessarily have to sit on the pole and win every race, but if you can chip away and be competitive week in and week out, that's where I want to be. That's a part of what this business is all about."

"I never think of how many starts I've had. I never worry about it. I don't dwell on that stuff. I'm just out there doing what I like to do."

"In 2004 I ran a total of six races. The more time I spend away from the track, the more I realize that I am prepared to walk completely away. The reality is that eventually - and sooner rather than later - I'm going to have to walk whether I want to or not."