Benny Parsons AP

Last week SI writer Richard Deitsch interviewed Benny Parsons for the magazine's Q&A. The 65-year-old NBC and TNT NASCAR analyst won 21 races in his career as a driver, including the 1975 Daytona 500. Here are additional excerpts from the interview:

SI: You recently received a diagnosis of lung cancer. How did you know that something was wrong?

Parsons: I'd try to take a couple of stairs rather than an elevator just to get that little bit of exercise, and it got to the point where I'd be at the top of stairs saying, Man, I'm out of breath. I blamed it on the summer ozone because I have been taking allergy shots for 18 years. Finally, I thought I'd better check this out. We've all had conversations about cancer, but all of a sudden [my doctor] was talking about me. It was the most surreal feeling.

SI: You last smoked in 1978?

Parsons: Yep.

SI: Were you a heavy smoker before 1978

Parsons: I was not a light smoker. I probably smoked a pack a day.

SI: Did your doctors tell you the cancer is a result of smoking?

Parsons: They don't know, but I'll say two things: No. 1, everyone I tell that I have lung cancer, it doesn't matter who I tell, medical people, friends, casual acquaintances, strangers, the first question they ask is do you smoke or did you ever smoke? The second thing is if I had to blame anything for this problem my guess is it would be asbestos. In the '60s I worked at a gas station on a fleet of taxi cabs. Brakes would not last very long on these cabs. We had to replace them every 5,000 miles. In the '60s friction lining on brake shoes was asbestos. So when I took those drums off that dust would be a quarter of an inch deep and I would take an air hose and blow all that stuff off. So every week I was exposed to asbestos dust. That would be my guess.

SI: What is your treatment schedule like?

Parsons: I started on July 26 and I do three straight days of chemotherapy every three weeks. The radiation will be five days a week.

SI: Will you remain in the booth during your treatments?

Parsons: As long as I am able, I will.

SI: Are you staying positive?

Parsons: Practically every person I talk to, be it medical people, friends, casual acquaintances or strangers, they all say a positive attitude when it comes to this is everything. If you feel like you can win, you've got a much better chance. I am a positive guy and all of the doctors I've seen have told me the same thing: We have a chance to win.

SI: You make your living with your voice. Does your voice hurt?

Parsons: It does not hurt a bit. They say that I may end up with some irritation in my throat and my voice may be affected.

SI: There's an e-mail address -- bp@goprn.com -- where fans can send words of encouragement. Thousands have, right?

Parsons: Ain't it cool? A couple of thousand people wishing me good luck and Godspeed? It's fantastic.

SI: Tony Stewart recently said that if Dale Earnhardt Sr. were still with us, NASCAR would not be having all these instances of drivers taking each other out. You drove against Dale. What's your thought?

Parsons: I'm not a big fan of self-policing. In vigilante justice every once in awhile the wrong guy gets hung. At Pocono the wrong people got hung. I have not talked to Clint Bowyer, but what I read was that he saw Tony come in behind him and decided to give him the inside, the preferred groove coming off Turn 3, and moved up the racetrack to give Tony that space. And Tony had chosen to go to the outside. Clint did not know he was there and he kept coming up to give Tony room and crowded Tony up against the outside retaining wall. And that made Tony angry, so the vigilante in him popped out: I'm going to show him. He hits Clint Bowyer, and he goes down and wrecks Carl Edwards. The wrong people got hung.

SI: Is winning Daytona your most memorable moment?

Parsons: Daytona is the one I'll always remember. I didn't start driving till I was 21. It was 1963. This fella I went to the racetrack with asked me if I wanted to try driving. He just bought a car for 50 bucks and said I could have it. So I took this car, put on some new sheet metal and went to a quarter-mile dirt track. Twelve years later I'm in Victory Lane at Daytona. A lot of things happened in those 12 years.

SI: What was your pit crew like back in the day?

Parsons: A lot of them were farmers. Half of them had another job and they just did this on Sunday to help us out. We might have paid them 50 bucks. Today those guys that go across the wall are athletes. They aren't farmers. That's what it takes today. They also get paid well to a job they do well.

SI: Who is your pick to win the championship?

Parsons: The cars that are really good right now are Jeff Gordon, Kyle Busch and the two Richard Childress cars -- Jeff Burton and Kevin Harvick. Burton has not won a race this year but he's there every week with Top 5s. Jimmy Johnson does not seem to be as fast as his teammates. Kasey Kahne has been so-so lately. But all in all, if I had to pick somebody, I'd pick Tony Stewart.

SI: What's your take on Danica Patrick one day appearing in NASCAR?

Parsons: Obviously, it would be one of the greatest p.r. things to happen to NASCAR. But at this point in her life, if she were to ask me and she is not going to because she does not know me, I would say stick with what you know, which is open-wheel racing. Learn to win in open-wheel racing. Win the Indy 500, win a championship, but win at open-wheel racing. Then when you want to go out and make some money and ride off into the sunset, come down to NASCAR and somebody will pay you a lot of money.

SI: There are rumblings that the Chase format could be tweaked. Do you like the current format?

Parsons: I love it the way it is, but what I would do is give more points to the winner or Top 5 of a race. Unfortunately, the problem we have with the current points system is the champion is based on consistency rather than performance. The final 10 races of the year -- the Chase for the NASCAR Nextel Cup -- you can win four races, fall out of two, and the guy that finishes fifth or sixth ever race is going to beat you. I'm not sure that is the best way to crown a champion.