As soon as I began to earn what might be called fairly large sums I bought a car and began to explore the country around New York.

When you walk the track and you see a corner and realise you were going round it at 160mph you wonder who could be so stupid to take a corner at that speed. But in the car you don't even think about that.

Sometimes I feel like I'm not only the engine but the caboose. I have to be in the front car and pull forward and at the same time run around behind and push everybody along with me.

I grew up in Texas and people love their American-made muscle cars there. I grew up around people who loved cars and took care of cars and my dad's a big car nut so I learned a little bit about cars - how to love them most importantly. I think that from the time I could remember I've always envisioned myself in a vintage muscle car.

It's that I don't like white paper backgrounds. A woman does not live in front of white paper. She lives on the street in a motor car in a hotel room.

You're pulling 4-5G for a lot of the corners around the lap. We build up lactic acid because there are a lot of vibrations in the car and you have to have strong legs to hit the brake pedal. We need to be fit to do every lap at 100%.

I keep my weight low although you need to be able to move your weight around the race car to change the balance. I'm 6ft and I'm 70kg so I haven't much fat on me.

With all the hybrid stuff and things like that I think that's a fabulous direction to go with cars in that sense. As someone who grew up around muscle cars I'll never not be able to not love a muscle car. Not that I don't care about the environment that's not it. But I adore muscle cars.

I was raised in Chicago and I guess that was one of the special breeding grounds for gangsters of all colors. That was the Detroit of the gangster world. The car industry was thugs.

I've got Asperger's syndrome and I'm not a very good people person so I've always been more comfortable around machinery. Not in a weird way - I don't want to marry my car or anything stupid like that!