MEXICO CITY -- If you could paint a picture of perfection, what strokes would you use?

I'll save you the trouble. Just call Adrian Fernandez, and when he finds some time in his schedule, he'll fill you in.

Or better yet, here's a sneak preview.

“

Rumor has it in 1997, Fernandez arrived a little late to a Rolling Stones concert and shut it down when the crowd began chanting his name.

”

"I've said that my overall situation, right now, is that of perfection," Fernandez said on Friday evening, as he walked from the Nationwide Series garage and his No. 5 JR Motorsports Chevrolet's transporter at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez to a helicopter that would take him to the airport. "Because I can stop [racing] right now -- I don't need to race. I'm not racing because I need to make more money. I race because I still love it."

Even as he focused on getting out of the racetrack to take the next step on an arduous weekend of bi-country commuting, Fernandez virtually glowed when he spoke of his family life, which blossomed in 2005 when he met his wife, Catalina.

Ironically, a fellow Latin American open-wheel competitor Juan Montoya and his wife, Connie, introduced Fernandez to his future wife at the inaugural fundraising kart race for Montoya's Formula Smiles charitable foundation in Colombia.

"That really changed my life," Fernandez said of the situation in which the couple has a daughter, Valentina, going on 1 year old, and a son, Niko, due in a few weeks. "It's been the best thing ever."

As much as it was a life-changing moment for Fernandez, despite his best efforts, he's still inextricably tied to his racing -- though his credibility has allowed him to put himself in the position he's in.

"I have a fantastic sponsor in Lowe's, a very well-organized, fantastic company that lets me spend a lot of time with my family -- because I'm living the best part of my life with my family," Fernandez said. "But you can also not spend all of your time with your family, because you'll go crazy, right? You have to have a balance."

That was what prevented Fernandez from making a move to NASCAR racing full time in 2005, when he made his debut for owner Rick Hendrick with a ninth-place finish in Mexico City. Fernandez made five more starts that season, with limited success, and had realized, by the end of that season, it was not for him.

"If I would have done [the whole] schedule with NASCAR, that would not be balanced," Fernandez said. "So I think what I've managed to accomplish, doing the American Le Mans Series and then one race here, with NASCAR, and then spending a lot of time with my family is just fantastic.

"I was very honest with Rick [Hendrick]. I wanted to try and to see if it was what I really wanted to do. I mean, I don't know nothing about these cars, I don't know if I wanted to do that many races, so I said, 'Let's do a few.'

"At the end of the year, I said, 'You know what? This is not really what I want to do.' I was honest with them, but that was when Lowe's came and said, 'What can we do together?' (Continued)