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A Day At Daytona |
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Back in the late 80's and early 90's, testing was broken down to 3 days for each brand. They would come to Daytona: Buick, Pontiac, Olds, Chevy, Ford. Chrysler had stepped out of racing for a while. My youngest son’s middle name is Richard and watching all the races you know who became his favorite driver. Yep old 43 car was the best thing going. One Saturday in January, when Pontiac was in town for testing, he had to go see Richard. With me working for a Chevy dealer, I knew many other dealers in town and was able to get an open pass that weekend, but never told the boys. This was the first year Pontiac was using the new Grand Prix body style pace car and were testing it to prove to NASCAR they could keep pace lap speeds, etc. They kept playing with computer chips in order to make speeds needed to jump out in front of the pack. No lucky dogs then, they raced to the flag. Everything was working out until they bolted the light bar on it. The drag slowed it down again, but after testing more chips, they finally got it worked out and used it for several years. During this time, we walked the pits and garage area. All the current Pontiac drivers were there: Richard, Kyle, Rusty, several other Cup drivers, along with Busch and Daytona Dash cars too. My oldest son and I were looking at Kyle's car and turned around to look for my youngest and didn’t see him, but saw Richard talking and pointing. Yep, the youngest was the center attraction standing between Richard and Dale Innman chatting away, and before I could get over to him, he was being lifted up by Richard and set in the drivers seat. The next thing I knew, while I talked with Dale, the boys were in the hauler getting a full tour and signed pictures. To this day Richard is both of their hero. At 5PM, the track was closed. We were getting ready to leave when we heard this deep throaty exhaust type sounds. Everyone started looking around and finally saw a Motor home coming around turn 3 and 4. Security and a bunch of us ran to pit road to see what was going on. The coach stopped on pit road and Bill France Sr and his driver came walking out laughing like crazy, then we heard Bill said to his driver “I guess I’ll take it.” It’s a day I nor my sons will ever forget. |