Bobby Hamilton

"When I was running local race tracks in Nashville, Tenn., there was a Winston Cup driver named Darrell Waltrip down there testing his Busch Grand National car. I'm just standing around because I'm a Darrell Waltrip fan and I've never met him or anything, but he knows who I am. I didn't even know he knew who I was. He called me over there and asked me how his race car looked on the track. I told him it looked good. He was out there testing. I said it looks real racy. About 20 minutes later, someone calls across the intercom and tells me to go to Darrell Waltrip's Busch Grand National car. I get down there and he asked me if I'd fit in it. I told him I'd fit in it. It fit. It's funny how it all turned out. I use the same seat as he did still until this day. He said, if you had to drive it would you change anything? I told him no, that it felt good like that. He said, would you mind qualifying it for me? I've got to run The Winston this weekend. The story goes on and on. I qualified his car and he ended up winning the race and gave me a ton of credit when he flew back in that night. That opened a lot of doors for me."

"I didn't for a long time. My family has always been involved in racing. They built local cars here (Nashville, Tenn.). They built Marty Robbins' first car. I was always around the race shop, so I thought it would be pretty cool to be an owner at the young age of 17, so I decided to own a car and I ended up with two cars. Everybody that drove 'em tore 'em all to pieces every week. I went through about half a year and then I decided I could tear it up. To make a long story short, I started driving because I couldn't find anybody to fit my needs. It became sort of a snowball effect, so I started when I was about 17."