Jeff Gluck

USA TODAY Sports

Our series of NASCAR driver interviews continues this week with Casey Mears, who is currently 24th in the Sprint Cup Series standings for Germain Racing.

Q: When you're on a long green-flag run and not racing around anyone, what do you think about?

A: The biggest thing I think about is just making time. Bootie (Barker, crew chief) and I talk about it a lot. When you're on a green-flag run, staying focused is key. A lot of times when you get a big gap, even in the most focused moments of your racing career, your mind can wander some. So you need to just stay focused and try to make time and try to be consistent.

I race the watch at that point. They give me my lap times every lap. And maybe it's an opportunity to explore another line you haven't tried before because you know you've got plenty of gap. But once you explore two or three times and figure out where that happens, it's just about making fast times every single lap and not making mistakes.

Q: Fans often come up to you and want to discuss a moment or race from your career. Which one comes up the most?

A: For sure, it's the win in '07 at Charlotte (the Coca-Cola 600 when Mears was driving for Hendrick Motorsports). It wasn't just my first win, but it was a meaningful win for a lot of people — especially when you talk about people in the fight for our country. At that point, I was driving for the National Guard, it was on Memorial Day and it was just a big weekend because of my uncle (four-time Indy 500 winner Rick Mears) being so successful in Indianapolis on that weekend. I get a lot of ex- or current National Guard members who come up and remember that moment. And then just a lot of race fans, too.

The pole at Indy (in 2004) was also a big day for us, but the win was probably the biggest.

Q: If someone paid you $5 million to design a new racetrack and gave you an unlimited budget, what kind of track would you build?

A: Man, that's really tough. It seems these days, the tracks can vary on whether or not you have a tire that works there.

But one of the tracks I have the most fun at — and I used to absolutely hate it with a passion — is Martinsville. I just think that is some of the most fun racing I've ever done. When I came to this sport, I hadn't run anything shorter than 1 mile. So when I came to Martinsville in a Cup car, I was trying to figure it out, and it was terrible.

Once I figured out how to get around that place, it's some of the most fun racing we do all year. To be able to kind of root and gouge, it's exciting for the fans and there's constant entertainment the whole time. It's small enough that it kind of creates this bullring atmosphere somewhat like Bristol, but a different style of racing.

So I'd probably build a Martinsville.

Q: If you had a day off to do anything in the world you wanted — but you were not allowed to race — what would you do?

A: I'd probably be at a beach with my kids. That's some of the most enjoyable times. It's fun with kids — my kids are younger (Samantha, 5, and Hayden, 3) and when you get a beach with wide-open spaces like that, they're just having a good time and you're not stressed out about anything. It makes it fun for all of us.

Q: You get to have a lot of cool experiences away from racing through your job as a NASCAR driver. What's one that sticks out?

A: One thing I really enjoyed is I went to the CMA Awards with my wife (Trisha, last November). She's a huge country fan and I've grown to like country music more over the years. But we really enjoyed it. We walked the red carpet and it was fun to see how excited she was, you know? That's probably been the coolest thing we've done recently.

Q: When you go home after a bad day at the track, do you vent to someone about it or just keep it to yourself?

A: Unfortunately, I vent some and it's kind of a necessary evil in our sport. When you have a bad day in the position we're in, you've got to manage the emotions because you don't want to drag home everything that happens at the racetrack to your family.

But my wife is one of my best friends, and she has slowly, over the years, gotten to really understand the sport. Out of everybody I vent to, she's getting it the most; she's living it with you. I try to keep it to a minimum so it doesn't transfer over to Mondays, but sometimes Sunday nights can be a little rocky.

Q: If you could point to another driver as a good example for your children in the garage, who would it be?

A: There are several, to be honest. I think out of all professional sports, there are some fairly grounded people here for what we get to do, although it's probably hard to be 100% grounded.

But Jimmie (Johnson) has been one of my best friends for a lot of years. I think with all the success he's had, he's probably stayed the most even-keeled. Obviously, his life has dramatically changed and he gets to do a lot of cool things now, but I think his values and the kind of person he is still stands pretty strong. My family and I spend the most time together with their family, so I'd say probably him.

Q: When you stand around with other drivers and tell old racing stories, what's one of your favorites to tell either about something that happened to yourself or someone else?

A: It seems like whoever you're with at the time brings back memories of stuff that happened. I have a lot of stories with Jimmie; we were teammates in off-road, so we've got stories from back then until now.

A lot of the stuff we typically end up talking about is the stuff that happened off track, the antics we'd get involved in — a lot of stuff I probably can't share. (Laughs)

When you were teammates with Jimmie in off-road stuff, is he pretty much the same guy today?

He's the same as you can be. I've often thought about this: I don't think he's changed, I think the world has changed around him a lot. There's a lot of people who expect him to be different, but he hasn't changed. He's grown as a person — we all learn things as we get older from the experiences we have. But I think the guy he's always been is still there.

There's a lot of pressures that go on here that cause you to grow and change as a person, but for sure his core values are still there. We obviously had a lot of time hanging out in off-road, but there was a period of time when he was back here (in NASCAR) and I was in IndyCars. And when I moved back to North Carolina, he was the first guy I called. He was flat-out the only guy I knew who lived in North Carolina. He was real cool about introducing me to a lot of people he knew already and getting up to speed on the East Coast.

Q: What's a TV show you're really into right now?

A: I like Boardwalk Empire a lot, but the biggest one I like is Game of Thrones. That's cool. I think this is the last year for Boardwalk Empire, and it's pretty gnarly, but I've always kind of liked the mobster stuff — not that I think it's right, but it's always been intriguing to me.

Q: What's the last movie you saw – either at home or in the theater -- and was it any good?

A: The last one I saw in the theater was How To Train Your Dragon 2. It was with my kids, obviously. (Laughs) But I've always liked animation movies and appreciated the work it takes to put one of those together.

Pretty crazy how far animation has come since we were kids, right?

Yeah, it's insane. I've always thought (computer animation) was cool though; I was always into that. I probably wouldn't be good at the math and everything it takes to do it, but it would have been something I was interested in doing for sure.

Q: If you could give a piece of advice to your younger self — something you know now that you didn't know then — what would it be?

A: Maybe to have a better understanding of how to take full advantage of certain situations. I don't know how you translate that into advice, but I think being young and a little naïve and trying to learn, you don't fully understand what it takes to take advantage of situations because you don't know what you don't know.

As I look back on the course of life or my career, just having a better understanding of how to take advantage of some of the positions I was in early on my career would have been good. It'd probably more of a three-hour conversation with myself. (Laughs)

Q: I've been asking each person to give me a question for the next interview. Last week was Jimmie Johnson, and he wanted to know: "Growing up, you had your uncle, father and brother kicking butt in racing. How did they play a role in your career and whose advice did you listen to the most?"

A: My dad (Roger Mears) the most, just for the simple fact he was my idol growing up and watching him race. I was able to draw from all of them, which was great. In the years I did the Indy Lights program, my dad and uncle actually ran the program and I got to know my uncle a lot better than I ever had. He'd been traveling the whole time I was growing up; he was always going racing and lived in Florida.

But I drew from my dad a lot. I learned a lot from his racing experiences without him telling me anything — just watching how his career went and the stuff they went through owning a race team. When I grew up, the race team was right in our backyard. I'd come home from school and go right to the race shop and hang out with the guys, so I grew up kind of inadvertently learning from my dad and how he approached racing. Just by being around him, I was learning how to approach media, learning from his mistakes and learning from the stuff he did right.

Q: And do you have a question for the next person? It's Darrell Wallace Jr.

A: I don't know a ton about Darrell and I'm actually not sure we've had the chance to meet yet. So I'd like to ask: "At this point in your career, what would you consider to be a dream opportunity for you?" Obviously he's trying to climb the ladder, so what does he want to do next?