Where is ... Lake Speed? (cont'd)

"The timing was perfect. I fought it, fussed about it and was ill about it for quite a few years, but finally came to realize how blessed I was and, really, that things had turned out for the best."

Speed says that he gets calls on a routine basis from drivers looking to get into the sport. They want to know how they should go about it, where they should start, how they should drive and so forth.

Invariably, he tells them it's not all about what they do on the track. It's a lesson he learned the hard way.

"I really believe that God's got a plan for each one of us, and I think that my plan worked out exactly the way He wanted it to work out," Speed said. "Would I have chosen to do it differently? Yeah, I would have chosen to do it differently. I emphasize to each and every one of them [who call for advice] that there's a lot of people who know how to drive good. There are a lot of people who know how to work good on these things. The difference is that the ones who know how to market themselves, they're the ones that make it. The others fall aside.

"If you can't market yourself and acquire the sponsorship money it takes to race, I don't care how good a driver you are, you're not going to make it. I think God's skilled me with the driving ability and mechanical ability, all that. The part that He left me short on was not knowing how to market myself. I think we had the best value to offer a sponsor out there. I could do more with less money than anybody that's ever come down through there. The way we ran on 10 percent of the funding that everybody else had pretty well stood up for that."

In the end, being out of racing "is not the end of the world" for Speed.

"There is life after racing," Speed concluded. "Most of us have done it all our lives, but believe it or not, there's other things out there ... your family, your children, your friends. It's a pretty cool thing to be able to give them some attention, especially when you realize they forgive you for being gone so much. They still love you and care about you."