SC&M: What were your realistic goals when you first went out with the Outlaws? I mean, you‘re ninth on the all-time win list with the World of Outlaws. Is that something you could have dreamed of being able to accomplish back then?
DP: No. Never. My realistic goals … when I started out, I was just trying to figure out, OK, how do I do this? How do I do this where I can do this for a living, and driving a sprint car and getting paid to do it was all I could think about and more than I could even dream of.
So, to sit there at a young age and think … yeah, I mean, you would maybe have dreams of that, but for me to have accomplished as much as I have is more than I could have ever imagined at a young age. And, obviously, I think your goals change as you get older. You know, at first it‘s like man, I just wanna race with the Outlaws. And then it‘s, I just wanna make a race with the Outlaws. And then you‘re getting a little better and it‘s, I think I can win one of these eventually. So, you know, you get one and then it‘s never enough.
It‘s a drug. You taste some success and you want to work harder to find more of it. So, never in my wildest dreams could I have ever imagined looking back at the stats that we have now, and thought that those were possible.
Would I have thought about them and hoped we would? Absolutely! But I definitely knew it was pretty lofty goals to ever look back and think I would eventually be a World of Outlaws champion and ninth all-time, or whatever, and been able to have won as many of the crown jewels as we have.
SC&M: And you‘ve also earned a World Series championship in Australia, as well.
DP: Yeah, there‘s very, very little I can say that I‘ve got over Donny Schatz, and I‘ll take whatever I can. And that‘s one of them. He‘s tried three or four times, and I tried once and we were able to do it. Trust me, it doesn‘t keep him up at night, I know. But it definitely is an accomplishment that I‘m definitely proud of.
SC&M: One last question. You released a statement on Aug. 19 and missed two races after contracting COVID-19, and at the time had a fever and body aches. Are you back to 100 percent from that?
DP: Yeah, absolutely. I‘ve been 100 percent since two days after the statement came out. We were very fortunate. Three of the four of us all tested positive for it and our symptoms were extremely mild.
Luckily, we were able to keep it away from my parents and maybe older people that we were around and we pretty easily recovered from it.