12 Questions with John Wes Townley

Jeff Gluck | USA TODAY Sports

Our series of weekly NASCAR driver interviews continues with John Wes Townley, who recently won his first career Camping World Truck Series race. Townley, 25, is eighth in the series standings with five races remaining.

Q: If NASCAR allowed you to listen to music while you were racing, would you want to?

A: I would. I guess the only problem would be obviously hearing your guys when they’re trying to talk to you. But that would be cool if you could have it to where once they got off the radio, the music would come back on. I think pilots have something similar to that.

Would you go with motivational music or something to calm you?

I’d say some hard rock. Something to pump you up, like some AC/DC.

Q: Where did your first paycheck come from?

A: Hmm. That’s a tough one. It would have to be RAB (Racing, where he ran his first full-time Truck season).

Q: Who is an autograph you got as a kid that seemed to be a big deal to you at the time?

A: Jeff Gordon. He was always my favorite driver growing up as a kid.

Was it at an autograph session or in the garage? Where did you meet him?

In the garage at Atlanta Motor Speedway.

Do you remember much about it?

I think he was talking to his crew chief or something. He was very nice, actually.

Q: Where’s a place you’ve never been that you’d like to go visit?

A: I would say Japan. Maybe go to Mt. Fuji. That would be fun.

Q: Do people ever accuse you of being addicted to your phone?

A: No. Actually, it’s the opposite. People are always on me about not being on my phone enough and not responding to people.

That’s funny. So they’re like, “Hey, we can’t get in touch with you!”

That kind of thing, yeah. I’m working on it though.

Well, most people have to work on putting down their phones.

Yeah.

Q: If a genie promised you a championship in exchange for never being able to do your favorite hobby again, would you accept that offer?

A: Ooh. That’s tough. I guess my favorite hobby would be playing guitar or playing the piano. But I feel like I’d say probably not.

I know that as I get older, racers don’t race forever. They retire around 45 or 50. And playing the piano or playing the guitar is something you can do up until you’re like 80 years old or something like that. You can do it to relieve stress and make you forget about life. So I wouldn’t give that up.

Q: What’s your preferred method of dealing with an angry driver after a race?

A: Well, it depends on if I intended on doing it or not -- which is rare. Unless it’s like revenge or something like that, I’ll rarely ever move somebody or spin them out or anything like that.

If it’s accidental and I legitimately am sorry about it, I’ll apologize. But if it’s a situation where there’s already like a grudge going on, I can be bad about fighting fire with fire and making the situation worse at times. (Chuckles)

Q: Do you ever get mistaken for another driver or celebrity?

A: No, I feel like I kind of have like a unique look to me. So I’ve never really gotten that before, actually.

But people have thought I was – oh, what’s his name? It’s an actor. Oh, Ben Affleck. That’s the guy.

Q: If you had a time machine and you could travel to any year and race, where would you go?

A: What year was the big fight down in Daytona?

Oh, the 1979 Daytona 500?

Yeah. That’d probably be it. That’d be cool.

Would you want to be part of the fight or just part of the race?

Just the race. Because then I’d still have a chance of winning the race. If I was in the fight, I’m probably out of it.

Q: Would you rather have the ability to fly or be invisible?

A: Probably invisible if I could turn it on and turn it off. Otherwise, I’d want to fly.

Yeah, it would be something where you could snap your fingers and turn invisible and then turn it off when you wanted.

That’d be cool. I’d take invisible then.

VIDEO: Townley celebrates first career Truck win

Q: I’ve been asking each person to give me a question for the next interview. The last interview was with Ryan Blaney, and his question is: Can we all get free Zaxby’s gift cards since you won at Las Vegas?

A: Hmm. That’d be a lot of Zaxby’s gift cards. Who is “all?” That’s the question.

Q: And do you have a question I can ask the next driver? It’s David Ragan.

A: Are you proud of where you’re from and would you change anything about it if you could?

Q: Finally, how did this interview go on a scale of 1-10?

A: Hmm. I’d say about a 9. I only give things a 10 if they're really spectacular.

Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluck