I think it's very flattering. I feel very lucky to have people talking about Formula One and to potentially have that as an opportunity.

Any kind of track that people come back to time and time again means it's pretty good. I have to imagine it's going to be a lot of fun racing on the road course and the oval at the same time. Just the prestige of this race is enough. I'm looking forward to it.

It's something different that people haven't seen. It's a story that people are interested in, and the league will do what they think is best for the series.

There are people all over the place. Kids and adults. Men and women. It's been really cool. Having this whole role model thing happen is definitely something that happened a lot quicker than what I thought. It's really easy because it's not trying. I'm not, like, trying to be a role model. I haven't tried to go out of my way to inspire people. When you're real and you're authentic and you try to give honest answers all the time, then it's easy.

On Memorial Day, I was out floating on Lake Norman and came across Denny Hamlin. We struck up a conversation, and one of the first things we were talking about was how much it helped him when he started racing the Cup car and how much it helped his Nationwide program.

My goal is people associate November with COPD awareness month as much as they notice October with breast cancer and pink. That'd be a great thing if it happened. The fact that COPD kills more people than breast cancer and diabetes put together should raise some red flags.