I love racing and I've always enjoyed racing. I love to try and go back to the local short tracks and do those races. And sometimes I do.
I can't remember what made my dad take us karting for the first time, I can't remember really. I was into motorsport by then and I knew everything, and every driver, it was around 2009, 2008. That's when I first properly knew about Formula One. Those were the days.
I used to watch MotoGP quite a bit, I liked MotoGP. I had a motorbike before I had a go-kart and before I had a motorbike I had a quad bike but I was too dangerous, and before I did quad biking I did horse riding, so it's been a long journey.
Growing up, I would say, when we were racing go-karts back in the day, it was always our uncle. We were always looking up to our uncle. I mean, he won the Daytona 500, he's a very well-respected man, and we've always looked up to that.
My plan was to put him on a go-kart track when he was six years-old but he was with his mum at a track in Genk and he called me up crying because he saw a younger guy driving on the track. He said to me 'Daddy, I want to do this,' so when I got home from the Canadian GP, I bought him a go-kart and that's how he started.
The biggest thing is getting the kid in a kart - they have to buy it and that's the biggest thing. You can go to a sporting store and buy a basketball for 30 bucks or a football for 30 bucks. You go buy a go-kart and that's 300 bucks. What are you going to get? A basketball or a go-kart?
In my city of Maracay, there is a go kart circuit about five minutes from my home. When I was about three or four years old, I said I wanted to race, but I was too young; then, when I reached the age of seven, my father gave me a kart and we started from there.
You do a period of go-karting until you're at the age of qualifying for a ride in a 'school-kart,' then you qualify for driving school. And several of the driving schools have a competition series for their own students.
I turned away from bikes when I got a bambino kart for my seventh birthday and started doing some karting, just around some cones at home, but I didn't think at that point I knew I wanted to go into F1, it was more just for fun.
I think that when we were younger, the fact of knowing our uncle Derrike won the Daytona 500. We were racing go-karts then, and I think that really kind of motivated us.
I think I was five when I had my real first go-kart.
What I'm really trying to do is make karting important like it is. I mean, karting is our sport, this should be really important.
When you are a kid racing karts, you want to be an F1 driver.
When I jumped in a go-kart at three or four, with my friends, I was super fast without anyone really teaching me.
I've never been to a race car race before.
I used to go to work with Dad on the weekend. We'd drive past an indoor go-kart track every now and then, and we went there a few times. I was never tall enough, so I always left upset. I think I was seven when I was the right height, and I was like, 'Please let me have a go.' It was love at first sight.
A lot of the kids we have coming up through our ranks now have been in stock cars since they were 12 or 13 years old. It's much different. I think you have to pick a path. If you want to race open-wheel cars and do those things, it's probably going to be carts and into an open-wheel series.
Goal begins with "GO."
