Jeff Gluck

USA TODAY Sports

Our series of NASCAR driver interviews continues this week with Austin Dillon, last year's Nationwide Series champion who is currently a Sprint Cup Series rookie. Dillon is 14th in the point standings for Richard Childress Racing after 11 races.

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

A: On a long green-flag run, I'm just doing whatever I can to manage my tires and not overwork one side of the car and just trying to stay consistent when I can. I like long runs. I feel like they usually help us and we end up going forward at the end of a long run.

Q: Fans often come up to you and want to talk about a memorable moment from your career or a time they saw you race. Which one comes up the most?

A: I just had a guy come up and say he was at Homestead for the championship (last year). He had a Nationwide Series shirt on with the championship on it. That was pretty cool.

Also at Talladega, flying through the air (while driving the No. 14 car in October) gets brought up quite a bit.

Q: Let's say someone gave you $5 million to design a new racetrack and gave you an unlimited budget to build it. What kind of track would you build?

A: I would build the same design as Bristol, but I think I would make it pavement instead of concrete and I would do it in New Orleans.

New Orleans? Why's that?

Because I think that would be pretty awesome! Build it right outside the city — a New Orleans Bristol. The French Quarter is right there, so you could go between New Orleans and the racetrack and have fun.

Q: If you had a day off to do anything you wanted but couldn't race, what would you do?

A: I would be probably on some island with a bunch of my buddies, drinking cold ones and hanging out. And the island would be like the one in that Corona commercial.

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

A: I love going to Walter Reed (National Military Medical Center) up in Washington and meeting those guys. That's probably the coolest thing I've done. I like talking to them, because those are true heroes. It's an experience of a lifetime. It touches you.

I got to go on the show Nashville, but I'd take Walter Reed over that any day.

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

A: I might vent a little bit to some of my buddies. I don't have a girl that I call or anything and cry to. (Laughs) Sometimes I vent to my mom or dad.

My dirt crew chief, Shane (McDowell), I call him and talk about the race usually. I've been racing with him forever and he helped me get started, so we'll talk about how the race went. Then I just get over it.

Q: If you have kids someday and they're running around the garage, which driver would you point to as a good example for doing things the right way?

A: Jimmie Johnson, for sure. I enjoy talking to him. I talk to him a lot, just to get as much information as I can out of him. Being a rookie, he's helped me quite a bit. He's really got his stuff together.

So he makes time for you whenever you have a question?

Yeah, he does. And he's just a genuine guy. I think that's what's cool about him. Some people, they might tell you something and you're not sure if they mean it. I feel like with him, he means it when he talks to me.

Q: When you're standing around with other drivers and telling old racing stories, what is one you like to tell often — either about yourself or someone else?

A: One of my buddies spotted for me one time at Lime Rock in a (K&N) East race. It was a road course, so I had like six spotters. We only had three guys working on the team, so I let my buddy spot one of the corners — the one we thought would be the easiest corner.

Well, the first lap of the race, it was chaos. A car blew up that was second in line, a guy went spinning to the left and there was just smoke everywhere. So instead of just telling me where the wreck was, he just said, "Smoke! Smoke!" I said, "Yeah, I see the smoke — but where's the wreck?"

Then later in the race, going down to same corner, a guy is passing me on the inside and the grass is on my outside. He goes, "Outside! Outside!" I keyed the mic and said, "Man, there ain't nothing but grass on the outside! You gotta help me out here." Anyway, it was funny. We still pick on him about that.

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

A: Justified is my favorite TV show. I love Timothy Olyphant. He's like the U.S. Marshal in the show. I can't wait until the next season.

Q: What's the last movie you saw, either in the theater or at home?

A: I just went and saw Noah. I really enjoyed it and thought it was awesome. I got to meet a producer from Paramount in L.A. when we were out there for the Fontana race. He told us to go see it, and he was right.

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: I'd probably tell myself to be more aggressive early on. There were some opportunities in races where I cared too much about what others thought, but I think now I should have gone ahead and made the move. I could probably have had two more wins in the East Series, for example.

Q: I've been asking each person to give me a question for the next interview. Last week was Carl Edwards, and he wanted to know if you could tell a story that illustrates how crazy your dad (Mike) is.

A: Oh man. Well, the craziest story I have on him is a story about him on a dirt bike. He was really good on a dirt bike — really aggressive — and we had a lake at the house. He built this jump that was supposed to cross the lake. A huge jump. I didn't think anybody would ever hit it.

But I guess for some reason in his mind, he felt like he had to jump this. The only person he told was his dad — my grandfather, who has passed away now — and he was the only one to watch him do it.

So he did it. He jumped this lake, and the dummy pretty much blew out the shocks on the dirt bike, hurt his back, his guts and everything else when he landed so hard. When he does stupid stuff like that, he wants to complain about his injuries for months so he has something to talk about. I'll give it to him though: When he wants to do something, he'll make it happen.

There was no reason he had to jump this lake and didn't even care if anybody saw it, he just had to do it in his mind. That's when you know you're crazy.

Do you have any of that craziness in you?

Maybe a little bit, but in other things. If it comes to me destroying my body, I'm probably going to steer away from it. But I like to do stupid stuff every now and then.

Q: And do you have a question for the next person?

A: If you had a choice to go back in time and choose any crew chief from the past — no current crew chiefs from this garage — who would it be?

Follow Gluck on Twitter @jeff_gluck