Okay.

It’s time.

Just what the hellfire is a-going-on here!?

There’s a man with a plan over there . . . as well as there, there and assuredly there.

And I’m telling you, it’s one that’s certainly got me aware. (With a considerable apology owed to one Steven Stills, a Gainesville type who in his freshman year assuredly knew what and where he was going with his career, even if others, especially blood kin, thought him crazy, if not just plain lazy.)

But “of what?” What has me aware?

There’s nothing written that a plan must be something of which everyone is aware. And there’s supposed to be at least one there, somewhere.

Indeed, insofar as your faithful, even if now-only-occasional scribe is aware, a plan’s purpose need only be completely known but to one. That no one else at all may, must know or have imagined anything at all is not a given. It’s darn sure not demanded.

Heard now is someone claiming or demanding knowledge of the plan.

Hasn't made, didn't make a hill-of-beans' difference, did it now?

In war, those things which become suddenly, glaringly and even explosively evident are often called “surprise attacks” . . . and for good reason.

And such has not to be a very, um, “wonderful” surprise, at that, often isn't to those who are the least prepared for its reveal.

Isn't it curious that a “surprise” can be both pleasant and not, depending on perspective; all boiling down to the “side of a fence” on which one stands?

Yet, in another regard, well, one can do without a surprise. Huh?

Okay. Let’s get along to a tangential subject of late: "megalomania."

With credit due to Merriam and-everyone-knows Webster:

“meg-a-lo-ma-nia”

“: a mania for great or grandiose performance

: a delusional mental disorder that is marked by feelings of personal omnipotence and grandeur.”

Well, if that don’t seem confused, then what might?

“Grandiose” kinda has been a favorite of mine but for reasons likely foreign to others: “gladiolas.” That’s right: “Down the aisle a bit; just on the other side of the petunias you'll find the grandioses" . . . or something like that.

Okay, so let’s give “mania” a whack (again crediting Merriam and-everyone-knows Webster):

“ma·nia"

": excitement manifested by mental and physical hyperactivity, disorganization of behavior, and elevation of mood ; specifically : the manic phase of bipolar disorder

: excessive or unreasonable enthusiasm —often used in combination”

Well, we all certainly know of at least one member of the paddock disposed of said “hyperactivity,” although it seems Merriam and-everyone-knows Webster get a little weak when used in an explanation is a derivative word of the one being defined: manic and mania, respectively.

I mean, can’t one just say, “crazy?” Such is certainly not to say that mania necessarily is crazy, it’s just that if one is looking to cut to the chase, “crazy” pretty well does it. 

Right?

Well, for what it’s worth (get it, right?), seen upfront and personal just a couple or three days ago was the fella who’s supposed to be more disposed of it than anyone else at all. Megalomania, that is.

Well, clearly a Professor Irwin Corey he's not.

Yet now confused only further still, one can’t help but wonder: Just what in hellfire is a-going-on here!?

Frankly, it’s doubtful there has ever been a time when more uncertain is the future than this time. Don’t you think?

It is a time when, say, 18 months ago everyone would've been thought by now to be in-sync yet, at least to your not-really-humble-at-all scribe, we’re talking “dysfunctional” now occurring (preferred from this perspective is “getting down”) at a level that few have previously seen.

It feels so whacked that not unexpected are a left turn, right turn, sudden deceleration and acceleration all occurring simultaneously at the next green flag’s drop - and all by Pruett, alone. Got another maneuver to drop in there? Go for it. Hell, if anyone can, Pruett's the one.

May as well. Drop in another there, after all.

Unsure for darn sure is the plan or, perhaps, even the man supposedly with that plan.

What a time to be alive! When one can't help but see a great mystery unfold (or might that be unravel?) before one's very eyes!

Later,

DC

LIT-UHL BRUTHER DOES IT

In most families for most of the time an odd dynamic exists between older and younger siblings: The one somehow feels compelled to outdo the other.

On the one hand, an older brother or sister somehow believes he or she must “lead” by example while a younger brother or sister somehow believes it necessary to outshine that older brother or sister so as to “prove” oneself.

A little brother or sister can be, often will be “out-shined” by an older sibling whether by intent or circumstance and, many times, that “intent” originates with parents pitting one against the other at the earliest of ages.

And an older sibling may not have at all asked for that competition; they just happened to “be there” at the time.

Many older siblings have no clue of any “competition” and yet occurring at some very odd moment are damned for its existence. Indeed, once discovered they might not, probably do not even want that competition’s existence.

It can be among nature’s most vicious cycles . . . for there exists a very, very fine line between love and hate.

Ask Cain and Abel.

Okey-dokey, then; Look ‘em up should the reader be unable to “channel” (no, Menendez, not the cable box).

Alternatively, ask Rick and Jordan Taylor.

(By the way, as a dear friend nick-named “Rick” long ago advised after this correspondent misaddressed an envelope to a more formalized but nonetheless misperceived “Richard”: “My name is ‘Frederick.’” So then, what IS “Ricky” Taylor’s proper given name? Is there any such similar question asked of Jordan?)

How about Brian and Burt Frisselle? (And what the heck is a “Burt,” anyway? But we don’t ask that about Brian’s name, huh?)

Hugh and Matt Plumb? (The pair likewise score on the secondary question, too.)

All of the above, sans Cain and Abel (even though the two likely raced camels), are brothers in motorsports – and elsewhere, too.

Then, there are George Dario Marino Franchitti and Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti.

In the brotherly pair’s racing existence, Dario’s scored 34 overall wins; Marino, 3.

Of course Marino has “won” more than three times; one needn't dig any farther into history than the 2013 Mobil 1 Sebring 12 Hours to ascertain such. Still, history shows his Level 5 LMP2 “win” came in a secondary class – if one digs deep enough. But outside of that, the Level 5 team is shown as having finished just one position better than at which it qualified: 6th vs. 7th, respectively.

Question: With overall victories in mind, is Dario 11.1333 times better than Marino?

How about “wins vs. attempts?” Dario = 1 in 12.12; Marino 1 in 43.3.

While probable that this writer’s available data may have a hole or two, when existing for analysis are 400 and 130 races for Franchitti and Franchitti, respectively, it’s doubtful a differential of great proportion would exist in the final product.

So then, an old question – as old as Cain and Abel – begs revisiting: Did George Dario Marino Franchitti discernibly exceed the abilities of Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti, thus gaining access in quantity and quality to teams, equipment, engines, chassis, tires, engineers and really cool steering wheels?

Or did the younger sibling, Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti, suffer a dearth of rides just because he was the younger brother riding some coattails?

Years ago at Daytona International Speedway in the garages located behind the Daytona 500 Club, Elliott Forbes-Robinson, his bride, Lounette, and your humble servant were chatting during a “historic” weekend.

Unexpectedly joining us were George Dario Marino Franchitti, fabulously well-known spouse, Ashley George Dario Marino Franchitti Judd, and a third party whose bald head, when within a couple or three feet, clearly was such largely by genetic design and partially due to a razor’s edge. Introduced to this conversant only as “Marino,” the only patently obvious thing was his hangin’ with Barry Green’s best-yet driver and that driver’s newlywed spouse. Ain't nothin’ new; life’s “third wheels.”

Later in the day and in the same garage from which, it seemed, Ashley George Dario Marino Franchitti Judd didn't seem enamored of vacating (at least, not until “closing time”), George Dario Marino Franchitti would explain Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti is, indeed, his “lit-uhl” brother and that he, Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti, was hoping to get a stateside ride for the following season after a poor Petite Le Mans during the preceding October.

“Ah, so that’s it,” Ol’ DC says to Ol’ DC. “Big brother - big more-successful brother - is gonna help find kid brother a ride.”

Yep, yours truly did it, too, sorry to say.

And that’s the way Ol’ DC tended to think of Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti for too many years to follow.

That is, until Saturday, March 15 at, oh, roughly 10:15 p.m. (22:15 hours) EDT, in a little south-central Florida town whose karma is utterly destroyed many times over whence comes the annual Mobil 1 12 Hours of Sebring.

(The Sebring-area residents are probably much like Daytona Beach’s: It’s largely a welcomed event should one have been raised in the area; not so had someone originated elsewhere. Multi-generational Floridians have a name for such folk, who ride into town and tell us how to do things: “Carpetbaggers.”)

(Still, small isolated Florida towns and cities tend to be insular in thought and morality, though I’m certain the Sebring I knew as a kid no longer is as, um, narrow as once might’ve been the case. However, all that is another story for another type of publication, some day. Not here. Not today.)

Actually, awareness of Marino Alessandro Cesare Franchitti’s ability probably came a little before that, at say 10:13 p.m. EDT. But whenever it came, come it did.

Flatly: Marino Franchitti could've blown winning – outright – the Mobil 1 62nd 12 Hours of Sebring Fueled by Fresh From Florida but didn't.

He could've missed his turn-in, apex and track-out marks, but didn't
.
On the final restart he could've failed to have a properly selected gear, but didn't.

He could've stalled the 3.5-litre, 24-valve, twin-turbocharged Ford EcoBoost engine but didn't.

He could've mistaken “blow” for “go,” but didn't.

He just didn’t do a lot of things wrong when he darn well could've done any one thing wrong and become a goat of massive proportion.

Actually, there are worthy other contenders for race-win honors; among them Ganassi team Director Mike O'Gara.

O'Gara was part of the original Chip Ganassi Racing Grand-Am Rolex Series onslaught (at first done without Felix Sabates, but corrected retroactively before the season was done) in 2004.

Between sometime in 2005, when O'Gara split in his return to open-wheel racing, and March of this year, Tim Keene was Ganassi's Numero Uno on-site guy.

In a pre-Sebring shocker, Keene turned in his keys to the shop. No matter the reason: Keene had played the game pretty darn good. Keene brought home a boatload of wins, championships and walked after having steered the No. 01 Telcel nee Telmex teams to a string of racing records that’ll be around for a long, long time to come.

No matter the reason, O'Gara had some serious shoe-filling to undertake when he returned to the sports car helm at Sebring. In the time he’d been away the team had managed to do some serious derriere kicking and Chip Ganassi isn't exactly fond of the word “retreat!”

Thus, at just after the 11th hour of the 12-hour race there were more than a few folks who thought O'Gara managed to slip on a pair of dancing shoes – as in that which he would wear when he, too, waltzed into the daytime air for the last time through Ganassi's Woodland Drive, Indianapolis shop doors.

This scribe was among those who thought O'Gara unlikely to return to Sebring. So much so, yours truly even ordered some dancing wax to spread on the front sidewalk at the Target Chip Ganassi building because at Sebring, O'Gara had at his disposal a couple of driving superstars who in 2014 were to the No. 01 TelCel Ford EcoBoost Riley as Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt were to the No. 1 Ford GT40 MkIV in 1967.

In general, the more incredulous among the observers wondered not so much how Memo Rojas or Scott Pruett could win as much as how either of that pair could possibly lose in a car they've together called their racing home since 2007.

Pruett, easily one of the more underrated drivers in modern times, rarely screws up. He certainly can and has certainly done so, but such is rare. Very rare. If there was anyone who is steadfast in manor and upon whom can be counted in pressure situations, it’s Pruett. He’s proved such time and again.

For a guy who at first in 2007 appeared little more than your standard accomplished bumbler – and thereby providing fuel for bigoted types – Rojas has not throw away what amounted to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to learn from a master and well suffered that tutelage. From a youngster who could mash the gas and go with abandon (and did), Rojas under Pruett has matured into another steadfast driver who can be counted upon, not counted out.

If Pruett and Rojas are considered a couple, O'Gara went for the car’s third wheel, the odd man out who’ll really be “out” when time comes for the TUDOR United SportsCar Championship sprint-race schedule. He might even be “out” when time comes for The Glen’s 6-hour race, if the Ganassi team’s past tendencies are taken into consideration and followed.

On the other hand, Marino Franchitti, that “little brother to Dario Franchitti,” should no longer need that extra weight appended to his name, for Marino Franchitti demonstrated he has what it takes to be a champion, at least to this race watcher.

When that last green flag was waved with about 20 minutes remaining in the race, there were all sorts of things that could've gone wrong . . .  but didn’t.

With recorder in hand as Marino Franchitti climbed from the No. 01 TelCel Ford EcoBoost Riley DP at race end, asked if he was nervous in that final 20-minute sprint to the checkered flag, he coolly answered, “No, not at all. All I had to do was hit my marks. That’s what I am paid to do.”

And then he went to celebrate with his new-found friends: the entire Ganassi organization, Ford Racing and, hopefully, a full-time ride wherever it may be – as long as it’s first-rate so the man can win a championship in his own right.

Later,

DC

At The Rolex 24

Nope.

This, the day of the 52^nd Rolex 24, will not be the ol’ infamous picks column by yours truly.

Lessen’ you’re talkin’ of pickin’ a nose.

And for Gawd’s sake, please, please don’t go into gross-out mode because everyone does it. Ev-ery-one. Besides, Larry The Cable Guy (a.k.a. Daniel Lawrence Whitney) wrote a book about taking a crap. Now, talk about “gross.”

This year’s 52nd Rolex 24 At Daytona is one very big race – gridding twice or thrice the number of cars seen in sports car sprint races – and at the end of which any competitor might be victorious over all others (overall), within which a predetermined number of other races along with an undetermined number of personal grudge matches simultaneously end: for whom then comes a trophy for some; great personal satisfaction for many; and, for still others a crushing, almost debilitating defeat.

Looking inward from the outside and when seeing automobile racing as a whole, the uninitiated often think it folly.

Yet, someone within racing, especially those actively involved, surely disagree.

When lives are voluntarily at risk, as they surely are, the activity isn’t and shouldn’t be a foolish one. Skilled craftsman, scarcely found nearly anywhere else today, are at work in race shops across this vast land and in which before a race all but take an actual comb to race car in a search for imperfection because just one, any one can be deadly to more than one driver.

Still, an answer to the question of “Why?” often isn’t easily forthcoming.

Instead of dwelling on the negative, then in order a look at the positives.

At others, especially at Ford – a multifaceted company employing tens-of-thousands that directly and indirectly touches hundreds-of-millions more – the company owes its very existence to a first race car named “Sweepstakes” and which won money that started what we today know as Ford Motor Company.

Racing is a multifaceted activity providing positive results across its chalkboard. From better widgets to improved thingamabobs. Racers can come to a track ready to go racing and win. Sometimes they do and sometimes they don’t (profound, Williams, profound.)

Some say it’s more to do with marketing than not and, frankly, I won’t disagree. It’s not that Ol’ DC necessarily agrees, it’s just that he really doesn’t care because, after all is said and done, provided to me was entertainment, if not a job, and the great pleasure of meeting and knowing people who for myriad reasons have chosen to challenge self, whether crew, tire changer, driver, engine guy or team owner.

However, if not for Ford, this verbiage would not be here. For it is Ford who pays yours truly a wage which enables him to write this fluffy extracurricular stuff and without Ford’s interference even those in the Ford camp have supplied this scribe with knowledge of things and matters which he may not have otherwise been allowed or able to know.

And, having spoken glowingly of writing, yours truly will now return to that task.

Pushin’ and A-banging

Speaking of teams, owners, drivers, tires changers and associated others, those same folks at Daytona International Speedway are girding for what they see as an imminent 18-hour Crash-A-Thon – anticipating the final six hours as being one of relative tranquility for “no one will be left.”

May the Lord bless and keep ‘em all, but they’re as wrong as a hard rain when there’s just been a flood.

Michael Gue, father of James and of the Tiga (well, co-father at the very least)(of the Tiga) and now of expert eye with respect to inspecting and pricing parts necessary to repair said vehicles having participated to the fullest possible extent in the impending Crash-A-Thon, has probably ordered extra crash materials, that is pencil and paper, so as to record and present said Impending Crash-A-Thon results to one John Gorsline, whose insurance company of nearly the same name has a direct-connect phone to Lloyds of London.

It is safe to say the price of poker has gone up. Seriously so, if only temporarily.

“Why is that,” you say?”

Because everyone, ev-ery-one, up and down the length of pit road, paddock and the luxurious motor homes parked to the immediate east of the “Sprint Cup” garage (hint to DIS Marketing Department: Read contract fine print. It’s quite possible it must only be “Sprint” when the stock car crowd is in town)(then again, nobody reads contracts ‘ceptin’ attorneys, and we all know how poor they be) believe the high banks and corners having proximity thereof will be war zones wherein and upon everyone is gonna tear up the equipment, a.k.a. “wrecked.”

Here is Ol’ DC’s official prediction: Gustavo Yacaman is the only guy anyone need watch. He’s in one of the cars, for sure. He’s been seen at the track.

Yacaman, an official “Junior” copy of the Great South American Columbian rally car driver Gustavo Yacaman (no, everyone in Colombia is not named “Juan Valdez”), isn’t necessarily hell bent on bustin’ anyone, including Memo Rojas at Detroit. It’s just that the Mexicans, of which the latter mentioned racer is one, don’t like Columbians and the Columbians don’t like Mexicans. Methinks there are those who remain shirty after the stalemated Great Mexican-Columbian War of Great Conquest of 1703 or the Great Columbian-Mexican War of Great Conquest of August 1703, the ordering of the title depending on the nationality of whomever first talks of that considerable conflict. Those born of USofA citizenship, that is to say, “You and Me,” mostly never heard of it because we mostly don’t hear of anything or, perhaps, retain what we are told outside of Gray’s Anatomy or similar.

What’s the Great Mexican-Columbian War of Considerable Conquest of 1703 or the Great Columbian-Mexican War of Considerable Conquest of 1703 got to do with anything? Hell, I don’t know but the deal is, “It might.”

Now, both of the Yacaman racers were and are fast. Inasmuch as he no longer rallies, he elder Yacaman probably drives fast on the civilian streets but he is known to be fast when just standing still because Ol’ DC is plagued with poor accomplishment in understanding his Spanish. Señior Yacaman can afford a translator, Ol’ DC fakes his knowing Spanish, Arabian, French and a few others. I’d next like to fake Rooskie, of which the Media Center has one, maybe two who are here to cover still more Rooskies in the pits. But that’s another story for another day.

Insofar as Gustavo The Junior is concerned: people misunderstand him. He’s very fast, too, and as a result tends to stick his nose where no one expects him. They crunch and, given the right set of circumstances we’re back to Michael Gue and John Gorsline; the former using a magical formula to figure dollar amounts conveyed to the latter who then calls Lloyds of London, the insurer of practice. Somehow, all maintain a straight face during the process.

There are so many people so doggone sure that wrecks galore will occur that everyone’s gonna be looking for wrecks and they just ain’t gonna see them to the degree expected. It’s an inverse proportionality.

In the meantime, the guy who hauls the mail in semi-circular fashion will either be a rabbit or the winner with a new record or two.

Speaking of Pushing and Shoving

Saturday’s clean-up crews did a marvelous job once cut loose, but the yellow flag to green flag process drew a lot of criticism Friday evening following the Continental Tire Sports Car Challenge.

“It appears it was all about the process,” one knowledgeable racing type said. “Should the same be done during the Rolex 24, you’ll have people turning off the TV and walking out of the stands as a result.”

Helton, Mike Helton

Before being kicked from a seat occupied for as long as the Daytona International Speedway’s Media Center has existed, your lovable journalist in 2014 had twice seen NASCAR president Mike Helton enter the room, walk for 20 ft., sit on the ledge of a permanent camera platform and listen as others held sway over the roomful of reporters, journalists and people on hand for whatever reason they are on hand.

What’s odd about it, if anything? Mike Helton, who was recognized by at least half if not more of those in the room, wasn’t mobbed. Just move his earlier mentioned movements ahead by a couple or three weeks and get him shuffling around in a media room for Speedweeks and what’ll you get? A mob scene. Scrambling reporters, whose numbers start with an even dozen, all holding extended arms at the end of end of which are tiny machines with red lights aglow and awaiting, breathlessly so, Mr. Helton’s next words, if only to then hear there is “nothing new.”

If anything is to be taken from this, it’s not that a world-leading motorsports sanctioning body leader is ignored as much as he is thought irrelevant to those on hand. Yet, Helton is relevant and to think otherwise seems a mistake for, like it or not, NASCAR is IMSA’s guiding light. There are things brewing. The likes of which have already been placed in the public arena, some recently, some not so, but for which to be seen one must look, hear, listen and ask.

And yet, perhaps there’s no better way for a non-sports-car guy to come to understand what constitutes the difference between sports car and stock-car mentalities, both of whom either find or have found joy in the process of making money but one of which was able to bring it to the car-racing dance – then throw it away.

Now, back to THE 24.

Later,

DC

This Is Daytona

DAYTONA BEACH – (02 Jan., 2014) – Simply known for decades as an unimaginative but highly descriptive “Test Days,” it was a long time before someone from marketing conjured “The Roar Before The 24.”

Whatever the name, it is the one annual event when racers from around the world gather: racers who may or may not be actually racing; racers who are looking to see and be seen; still other racers who hope more than anything else to rekindle friendships once broken by racing’s vagaries and demands with still others hoping for one more paycheck of the kind that once came as easily and as steadily as the sun’s rising in the east but which have gone away as quickly when the lifestyle sunk like the sun in the western horizon.

It is a place where someone like 2012 Indy 500 and 2008 Rolex 24 winner Dario Franchitti, forcibly retired before 2013’s end by a broken body doctors said they could no more mend, tottered (the latter part of "teeter") on crutches supporting healing limbs as he made his way through the paddock Thursday, yet again speaking and laughing with those against whom he formerly wished no worse than to embarrassingly best at the end of a contest of men and machines.

With Daytona International Speedway’s Sprint Cup and Nationwide garages as full of sports cars as any can recently recall, 66 Rolex 24 cars are on hand at the monster track through Sunday, all hoping to find that fastest line through a once bedeviling turn or establish a fastest speed for the entire 3.56-mile track.

Still others are hoping to capture enough drivers, thus perhaps money, too, to offset 24 hours of gas and tire bills, the latter's cost for some alone approaching a small house’s value.

Five-time Rolex 24 At Daytona winning driver Scott Pruett has reached a point where awaiting the Jan. 25-26 race “is darn near unbearable,” said he.

“I can’t wait to get this show on the road,” the driver said during Thursday’s “move-in” day, during which team haulers disgorge a seemingly unending stream of still-smaller, usually people-powered trailers that carry everything from basic supplies to complex tools used during the two days and one evening of testing undertaken by the teams. A test session, by the way, which will not remotely come close to duplicating the number of miles - something on the order of 2,500-or-more - that the race itself will see come its checker-flagged end on Sunday, Jan. 26.

Yet at this Rolex 24 At Daytona, the 52nd such example, much will rest upon the new shoulders of the Tudor United Sports Car Championship (“tusk,” phonetically speaking) as gone this year is the race’s sanctioning body of the past 14 years, the Grand American Road Racing Association, and a nemesis as well, the American Le Mans Series which, of course, looked upon the former with the same alacrity as did it see the latter ("Will the circle be unbroken, bye and bye, Lord, bye and bye . . ."

Working in its stead is the newly forged United SportsCar Championship - a name derived from a fan-naming contest whose submitter focused upon what has not been since deep into the preceding century: a split sports car racing series that apparently to all concerned was doing no good at all.

Getting rarer now are those who once wished to grow up and be a “race car driver” but who could only be such because there are, probably always will be race teams willing to trade souls for money. Besides, a race team absent of a race car is no race team at all, for ‘tis better to at least partly pretend one is a race team and eat than not a race team at all.

Also gone with the stroke of a pen and massive money transfers are the long-distance squabbles and snipes as to which race organization was the “real” sports car racing authority and which possessed the better racing real estate, replaced now by the usual petty envy and quarrels as to who has the better office and who proudly best sucks up to those holding the supreme authority.

Remembering that it takes two to tango or, as was the case in this matter, not dancing at all, the former other member in this affair was the American Le Mans Series, whose aging founding father, Dr. Don Panoz was rumored to be the last in his family to be remotely interested in owning a sports car racing series that at times so struggled to field enough cars that even a “run whatever you brung” class was once given serious consideration.

Arising yet again as would a phoenix (no, Darren, not the city) from the ruins is yet another International Motor Sports Association that in the grand scheme, if not precise practice, is The Third and therefore distilled becomes IMSA v. 3.o.

Would-be detractors howl at the indignity of what has become of what had been before, whether unwittingly or ignorantly, all the while conveniently perpetuating an incorrect history that all too often entirely omits IMSA as actually having come home, for it was Big Bill France who in the late 1960's telephoned John Bishop and said, "The time is right in America for professional sports car racing" and then made certain the newborn was funded.

This one race, this Rolex 24 At Daytona, is unique in a world of racing that in Daytona Beach began over 100 years ago in the simplest of fashion: One kid, in heart if not of age, challenging yet another of similar constitution, to determine the fleetest of foot or fastest self upon beach sand not too far removed from the 3.56-mile asphalt ribbon that is as much a part of sports car racing heritage as is a once-unique Trioval to stock cars and beneath which the whole of Florida was one day long, long ago built.

No matter who when first seeing this hallowed ground, and it truly is that, the most talented of fender benders speak in reverent hushed tones no different than the best of those whose feigns and fakes leave a competitor dumbfounded and tongue tied.

This is Daytona.