1on1: Jimmy Spencer (cont'd)

Q: Any regrets or mistakes you'd like to take back that you've said on the air?

Spencer: I've only had to apologize one time. I made a mistake when I said Ray Evernham was going the wrong way with his teams -- and he had to prove me wrong. And he proved me wrong. And when he did, I came on the air and said I made a blunder here. I said I couldn't believe that he would put two or three people in charge, but it turned out he just beat everybody to the punch.

Now you don't see just the crew chief in charge anymore. You see engineers and specialists. The sport has changed. The crew chief is still the leader of the group, but there are four or five people that make decisions with them.

Jimmy Spencer hasn't made a start in NASCAR since 2006 when he raced in both Cup events at Pocono.

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The desire to do it is not there like it was a couple years ago. ... I guess I just don't want to put all the effort in that it would take.

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Q: When you were driving did you ever get ticked off at TV announcers or other media?

Spencer: The media in general? God, yeah. I got mad at some announcer for saying I caused a wreck, or I spun a guy out, or whatever. Yeah, and then I wouldn't talk to 'em for a while; then he would say something good about me and I would forgive him. All he was saying was what he thought I did wrong at the time.

Q: Do you have a better understanding of the media's role in all of this now?

Spencer: I have a better understanding simply from the standpoint that not everybody likes Jimmie Johnson. Not everybody likes Jeff Gordon. Not everybody likes Dale Earnhardt Jr. So you have to realize that. I mean, there are people that like Kasey Kahne; people that like Kurt Busch; people that like Derrike Cope or whatever. And people have opinions.

So when you say something, you're going to rile some people up. But the way I figure it is that as long as people are listening, some people aren't going to like you, and that's life.

Q: How much do you miss driving?

Spencer: I just made so many mistakes in my career. I stayed too loyal to people. I passed up opportunities and aligned myself toward the end of my career with some people who probably didn't give me as good a shot as I needed, and blamed me for it. And it wasn't me.

In fact, one guy is not in the sport any longer. Just so many things happened. But that hurt me. And I still think I could be driving.

I was really proud of Mark Martin at Phoenix a few weeks ago. Mark aligned himself with the right people and he's doing well. I don't think a 40- or 50-year-old driver is as good as a 20-year-old kid, but then there are more failures in their 20s coming in. A lot of them aren't nearly as prosperous as the older drivers, and I think there's a lot to be said for that.

Q: Did you ever consider going back and driving in the Craftsman Truck Series or something just for basically the fun of it?

Spencer: I've had some offers to drive some [Nationwide] cars and some trucks. But they weren't as competitive as I thought they should be, so I turned 'em down.

An example last year was it was two weeks before the All-Star race, and a guy told me, 'I'll give you X amount of dollars to drive my car. All I want you to do is start it and park it.' Because he was going to get paid X amount of dollars for that. So he was like, 'Just go out and make a lap, qualify it, pull in and park it.' I said, 'Nah, I've never done that in my life -- and I ain't gonna do it now.' He was like, 'I can't believe you're gonna turn down X amount of dollars to do that.' And I was like, 'Hey, the money is nice, I won't deny that. But I can't go on TV and say I've never done that, if I do it. So I'm not gonna do it.'

As far as starting and parking, I just think that is not a viable option. If I can't feel like I can run good in a car, run in the top 10 and have a shot of winning with, then, no, I don't wanna get back involved with it.

Q: So you're definitely done with it, as far as driving?

Spencer: I think I'm done now. I'm 51 years old, and there's no way. (Continued)