We sat down with the winner of Race 2 to get his take on racing in the first auto racing series designed to be green.

We are all in it to win. I think to be a good driver, you need to have a mindset where you push everything to the limit. Even the rules.

The driver I most want to beat is the one that everyone considers to be the fastest. To me, racing isn’t about points or strategy. It’s about being able to drive faster than everybody else. I want to be known as the fastest, so I want to take down whoever holds that crown.

If I were to win the Jetta TDI Cup, I wouldn’t make any big, bizarre purchase. All of the $100,000 prize money would be spent on more racing and furthering my career, but I guess most people would call that bizarre.

Right now, there isn’t anybody on the track who makes me nervous. The racing has been really clean. It’s early in the season, so everybody wants to finish races and get the points. Ask me again in two months when people start to get desperate, and I know there will be a different answer.

I have a lot to prove to myself. When I first started karting, I had a fair bit of success, but as I got older I could never get the results I wanted. I always thought that my size (6ft2) held me back in karting, but obviously you start to doubt if you have the talent or not. Your body size doesn’t really matter in a touring car like the Jetta TDI, so I am already having better results in cars than I had in my last 5 years of karting. I’ve been able to prove to myself that I can do this.

It seemed natural to flip him the bird. Last year at a kart race, I ended up giving the middle finger to the flagman as I went by at 70mph. In karting you do rolling starts, so as you come to the line, if you’re not in proper position they wave off the start and send you around for another try. I was starting 3rd and my teammate was on pole, so we were lined up behind each other on the inside, and coming out of the last corner to get the green, the outside lane jumped us big time, so much that 4th place was ahead of the pole sitter. I had my hands in the air waving frantically for them to call off the start, so when he dropped the green flag it seemed natural to flip him the bird.

I’m usually too nervous to eat right before the race. So far this year I have been filling myself up with lemonade, which has lots of electrolytes and seems to do a good job keeping me hydrated. Then when it’s time to get in the car, I like to get in early, but without my helmet on, and the seatbelts just done up loosely, so I can relax and try to get my head in the right place. When we get the five-minute signal, I put on my helmet and tighten the belts. Those are the most nerve-wracking moments of the weekend, sitting on the grid, just thinking about what’s about to happen.

Green racing is happening now. Just look at the TDI vehicles winning at Le Mans. In the past, the idea was the bigger the motor the faster the car. Today, with the way rules are written, it is all about efficiency, who can get the most out of a certain displacement, etc. That paves the way for greener technology going back into road cars.

I grew up going to the Indy Car Race in Vancouver, and the atmosphere at the street races is fantastic. If the Jetta TDI Cup were to race at one more circuit, I think it would be awesome to be at one of the big street races, like Long Beach, St. Petersburgh, or the Edmonton Indy, which is close to home for me.

I’m a Canadian so, I think it’s funny that I get announced as being from Calgary, Canada. Everyone else gets announced by their hometown & state (i,e. Portland, Oregon or Chicago, Illinois), but instead of being from Alberta, my home province, we all get lumped together as Canada, like we live in one little igloo village somewhere north of the border. I was laughing about it with one of the American Drivers (no names mentioned, AJ Nealey!) telling him I was from Alberta, and he asked me what the names of the other two provinces were (there are 10!).