In life you'll always remember your firsts; first day of school, first car, first date and first heartbreak.

For Stephen Leicht, a pivotal first came Saturday night when the 20-year-old Busch Series driver won his first NASCAR race.

From Victory Lane, emotions overwhelmed the young driver as he quickly looked for his father.

The two shared a long embrace and within that moment, Leicht said nearly every memory of his racing career, starting at age 5, flashed through his mind.

Q: In Victory Lane, you were able to give your father, Russ, one heck of a Father's Day present. What did he tell you, what was going through your mind?

Leicht: Just everything we've been through together, racing together. He's never missed a race since I was five. My mom and my whole family have really been there for me and for all of it to finally come together, especially on Father's Day weekend, was pretty special. He was telling me how proud he was, but he was really lost for words. We knew how we felt.

Q: Is there any better first in life than winning your first NASCAR race? And please, try to keep it PG.

Leicht: My first kiss! I'm not going to say it's better than a win, but it's tied with my win. It's kind of the same feeling; you don't know what you're doing. Yeah, you're first kiss ever.

Q: Do you remember your first kiss?

Leicht: Oh yeah. My best friend Lindsey, I've known her since kindergarten. We grew up 10 miles from each other. It's was like a Corey and Topanga on Boy Meets World kind of deal. We dated in middle school and never kissed. Then we dated in high school and then kissed.

Q: Carl Edwards has dominated the Busch Series this season and was dominating the race Saturday with a near 10-second lead. A late wreck took the full-time Cup driver out and you were able to take advantage of his misfortune. Did it detract from your victory at all?

Leicht: I think so. Two things happened. One: Obviously I knew it increased our chances of winning the race, but at the same time, I was kind of disappointed because I was really looking forward to racing him at the end. We had a car capable of winning or at least running with Carl. We would've been close and raced him for a win. But the fastest car doesn't always win.

Q: What do you think about double-duty drivers?

Leicht: Personally, I don't mind that they're there. Obviously it makes it tougher to win. At same time, you're going to be racing those guys on Sunday sooner or later. Why not go out there and gain experience from the best drivers in the world? I look at it like this: If you can beat them guys, that is huge. And if you run second to them, that's OK, because you were supposed to run second to them. At the end of my race last weekend, Scott Wimmer and Carl came and congratulated me. They seemed happy I won. They seemed happy that someone other than a Cup driver won.

Q: You had lots of success with crew chief Howie Lettow in the ASA Series. How did he help you transition to the big leagues?

Leicht: Howie and [crew chief] Cully [Barraclough] remind me of the same person -- both are very car smart and very patient when it comes to young drivers. If I put them on a scale of one to 10, both are a 10. Howie really helped my transition and the set-ups in the Busch Series are really similar to my ASA car.

Also, Howie, like Cully, can adapt to different drivers quickly. They don't tell you how to drive they just help you along the way.

My first Busch race (2005) in Memphis we finished 13th and it went well because it felt similar to my ASA car and the following week in Phoenix we finished 15th.

Now the following year (2006) we got away from what we ran, we got off our original game plan because we were trying new things, new things that weren't working. We needed to go back to what we had. We didn't do that until Cully got here. He knew how to coil bind when no one else did so he came and showed us how to do it. We are now turning a corner.

Q: Your crew chief Cully Barraclough won at Kentucky last year. What was it like having him in your corner?

Leicht: It's safe to say there's a little bit of magic between Cully and that track. He understands so much about how the cars work. He always runs well at Kentucky. He knows how the track transitions from night and day and knows what you need to get around and be there at the end of the race. I think he's like that everywhere. The comfort level is there with him and I and that comes because I know he knows so much.

Q: Your family, similar to Denny Hamlin's family, made considerable financial sacrifices to keep you racing and ultimately a chance at Robert Yates Racing. Tell us more about that.

Leicht: We sold our vehicles, our house; we sold everything and mortgaged everything. We took our garage, which was also our race shop, and turned it into a third of our house. We had to keep racing, we were so close.

I was 16 and we were just to the point where I was almost with a good enough ASA team to not have to fund everything out of our pockets anymore. Our whole family was helping to pay ... uncles, cousins, everybody.

I finally got a test with Waltom Racing, and I won that. During that time, if I hadn't done so well and won the ASA championship, we would've had to quit racing -- at that point, we were pretty much bankrupt. I'm not sure if we had filed for bankruptcy or not, but we were a couple of days within signing.

My dad, who helped start Action Performance, now Motorsports Authentics, had enough money to take care of us for a long time, but spent all of it all to go racing. The money was all gone by the time I was 13.

Q: During Saturday night's Busch Series race in Kentucky, TV personalities referred to you as a "kid." How hard is it for you to be mature and responsible when for most those very words come with age and you're only 20?

Leicht: Well first of all we are rookies in the NASCAR series, but we are not rookies to racing. Most of us have been racing since we were five years old. Yeah we are young, but some people forget that.

And yeah I had to grow up early to do what I do. I finished my GED in the 10th grade and had to be mature and on my best behavior all of the time.

When I was really young, the only way I could race was if I did well in school.

I didn't experience much in high school because I was always racing. I did get to go to prom simply, because one of my best friends invited me and I happened to be home that weekend, but it felt weird because really no one knew me, because I was rarely at school. I knew only half the people in there.

Q: They say the first win is always the hardest. Why? And do you feel like some of the pressure is off?

Leicht: So many things seem to go wrong when you're trying to get that first win, you can't do anything right. Now once you win that first race, that pressure is gone and you know you can do it. After that you can do nothing wrong and everything clicks.

It's funny, apparently after he wrecked out and I was in Victory Lane, Bobby Hamilton Jr. went and toilet-papered my bus. The same thing happened to him when he one his first race so the entire experience has been amazing.

Q: You're quite the star on the Drivers Education commercial promoting ESPN. You flunk on the commercial, but how did you do in real life?

Leicht: I failed the written part the first time I took it. Failed it and came back and the only reason why I passed is because my mom was sitting next to me helping me cheat. She answered some questions for me. It wasn't pretty, but the driving part was easy.

Q: Admittedly, you can recite every line of the famous NASCAR movie Days of Thunder. Really? Why?

Leicht: Ha. Actually, the following day after the win I was reciting lines, because we won the race on the outside. I passed Wimmer and my good friend Brad Coleman on the outside with 13 laps to go.

In the movie when Cole Trickle (played by Tom Cruise) goes for his first win, his crew chief tells him to go to the outside. 'If you go to the outside, you can hold it, the car will stick.'

During the race, I told my crew chief I think I can do this on the outside. So Sunday morning, I called my crew chief and my car chief and the first thing I said was the line from the movie: 'If you go to the outside you can hold it.' We just laughed! It was kind of funny!

Q: Priceless! Now when ya going Cup racing?

Leicht: Don't know. You've been around long enough to understand probably that the driver is the last one to know on these things. I think a lot will depend on sponsors and if RYR decides to run a third car, but we are just going to continue our focus on running well.