IT’S TIME

DAYTONA BEACH – Search the world for an opinion as to the one culture considered to have the most persistent romantically inclined males and, hands down, Italians rule.

Substitute "sports car" for "romance" in a similar search for "the most" or "the best" and, again hands down, Italians rule.

It seems only natural that an Italian appreciative of both worlds would wax metaphorically, as if the two actually were one, while he stood highest on the 1998 Rolex 24 At Daytona Victory Lane podium.

"For many years I think, 'Daytona doesn't love me,'" a suave, salt-and-pepper-haired, 50-something Italian male said in halting English about a race in the pursuit of which he had spent enough money to perhaps have bought not just one Rolex, but Rolex itself.

"I said, 'Well, Daytona is like a woman, I try again and again.'"

Having just won a race he'd been pursuing on and off for nearly 30 years, the Italian's win in a Ferrari 333SP likewise plied a 500-lb. winless-at-Daytona monkey from the back of Italian sportscar-maker Ferrari, who hadn't won at the famed track since another Italian, Lorenzo Bandini, and New Zealander Chris Amon won in it 1968 while driving a Ferrari 330P4.

A cheering throng, chanting "Moretti! Moretti!" had gathered around Daytona International Speedway's victory podium while Gianpiero Moretti wasted little time in fastening a new Daytona Cosmograph to his wrist (unlike today's winners who stiffly stand while photographers almost endlessly snap pictures of drivers displaying watches in boxes, "Right hand here; left hand there. That's right, just like everyone else," a brand manager endlessly coaches).

The watch secure to his wrist, the chant gave way to raucous victory cheers when Moretti thrust his fist into the air, co-drivers Mauro Baldi, Arie Luyendyk and Didier Theys heartily celebrating, backslapping their team owner -- who for the moment celebrated as much as might have Gaius Julius Caesar in claiming Rome after crossing the Rubicon.

Moretti wasn't interested in winning just any DIS race -- for in 1980, driving with Reinhold Jöst in a Porsche 935J, he'd won the season-ending sprint race at Daytona -- it was the Rolex 24 Moretti had fervently pursued and, in so doing, had grown a little older, a little slower and tired more easily.

Noting his weaknesses as much as his strengths, after wheeling two Saturday race stints Moretti handed the 1998 Rolex 24's Saturday night and early Sunday shifts to his three younger drivers.

On Sunday afternoon, with victory in sight, though, Moretti wanted to take the checkered flag and, most of all, drive the MOMO Ferrari into DIS' Victory Lane.

With just under an hour remaining in the race and the team having reversed an early race 18-lap deficit to a net eight-lap gain over second-place Rohr Motorsport's 911 GT1 Evo, team manager/part owner Kevin Doran called Baldi in for the car's final pit stop and driver change, whereupon Moretti climbed in with 50-minutes to go.

"This is a feeling I want to have. I want to see a picture of my car, me in the car in Victory Lane in Daytona," Moretti emphatically said after the 711-lap race. Clearly, he felt it was something he'd earned and wasn't about to blow the opportunity.

Fielding a reporter's following question, Moretti responded: "You ask me what I want to win, here or Le Mans? The answer is easy; if I win Le Mans, I will be happy." Then, raising his arm for all to see the Rolex on his wrist, he said, "No doubt, the Rolex is what I want. It has been my desire. Today, I did it!"

Moretti, having previously tried and failed 15 times to win the Rolex 24, was asked if he'd return for another go in 1999, so that he might have a Rolex for each wrist.

"I'm 58 in two months, it's time . . ." Moretti said, words failing him at that moment and his eyes welling with emotion.

Those who well knew Moretti were aware beforehand that the '98 race likely was his final Rolex 24 At Daytona. He was tired.

They knew that had Moretti not won he would at least know his best effort had been given, even if it meant defeat, as is sometimes the case in love for a woman. Indeed, some later opined, it may well have been his recognition of that being his last Daytona try; a soul-calming acceptance and resignation that made the win possible.

Finally, even though at times exasperated beyond despair in the past, he in 1998 would win the chase for his "love."

Moretti was a man of class, a man of his word and served well as the very definition of "gentleman racer" or, for that matter, "gentleman," alone.

On Saturday, Jan. 14, 2012 -- just two weeks shy of the 50th Anniversary of the race he loved and which 14 years ago finally loved him back -- gentleman Gianpiero Moretti passed.

"It's time . . ."

Later,

DC