 | | A crew from Richard Childress Racing set up James Hylton's No. 58 Chevrolet for testing at Daytona. Credit: Autostock |
By David Caraviello, NASCAR.COM
January 15, 2007
06:25 PM EST (23:25 GMT)
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- The black-and-white image on the side of the nondescript yellow transporter shows the man in his prime, with dark, crew-cut hair and a jutting movie star's chin. James Hylton doesn't remember exactly when it was taken -- sometime in the late 1960s or early '70s, he says. Doesn't matter. He was a racer then, he is a racer now. How else to explain why a man 72 years old, who broke into NASCAR's top division nearly a decade before reigning Nextel Cup champion Jimmie Johnson was even born, was at Daytona International Speedway on Monday preparing to suit up for the second session of Jackson Hewitt Preseason Thunder? "It's in the blood so deep you can't get rid of it," said Hylton, the now white-haired Inman, S.C., resident, who won two races on NASCAR's premier level and was the series rookie of the year in 1966. "The way I'm looking at it is, I passed the physical and I'm still halfway healthy, so why not?" So armed with a racecar bought from old friend Richard Childress, backed by a childhood buddy who wears a black cowboy hat and sings country music, Hylton is on a somewhat quixotic mission to qualify for the Daytona 500. He wants to be the oldest man to ever make a Nextel Cup race, eclipsing the record of 65 shared by Jim Fitzgerald (Riverside, 1987) and Hershel McGriff (Sonoma, 1993). Why big, fast, sometimes dangerous Daytona? Because on restrictor-plate tracks, drivers can hammer the accelerator and let the car do most of the work. Because Hylton finished third here in a race won by Andretti -- Mario, not John -- in 1967, and cracked the top 10 15 more times here. "I've had success here," he said. "I don't know how many times I've been in the top 10, but I finished third here behind Andretti and Fred Lorenzen. I like these kinds of tracks. I like Daytona, Talladega. This is what I call an old man track. It's not like Charlotte, where you've got to rassle the car through the corner. Here, somebody my age can do it." He's done this kind of thing before, qualifying for a Busch race last year in Milwaukee only to drop out after four laps. That was part of what was supposed to be his "white-flag lap," a final season in which fans sometimes taped dollar bills to the hood of his car to support his financially strapped ARCA team. Retirement lasted only until October, when Hylton went to visit J.C. Weaver on his western Virginia ranch. The two old friends, who once hauled a car to Martinsville Speedway in a logging truck owned by Weaver's father, started talking about racing. And the unlikely comeback attempt was hatched. "He said, 'Well, who is going to sponsor a 72-year-old man?,'" recalled Weaver, who has toured with Johnny Cash, Conway Twitty and Charlie Daniels. "I said, 'I will, and we're going to Daytona.' And here we are." Well, not quite. With no owner points from 2006, Hylton will attempt to race his way into the Daytona 500 next month against a fleet of well-funded Toyota cars trying to do the exact same thing. He spent more than half of Monday's test session in the garage with radio problems. When he did make it to the track, he ran five laps and was the slowest of 34 drivers testing. He knows NASCAR will be watching him closely over the three-day test to see if he can cut it during Speedweeks. But thus far, there have been no public complaints from other drivers about a 72-year-old mixing it up at 190 mph. Hylton finished 21st in an ARCA race last year at Pocono, Pa., and placed 18th in series points. His Cup car is an old Robby Gordon hand-me-down bought from Childress, who also leased the team an engine and is providing technical support. RCR engineers even set up the car -- which Hylton calls "a rocket " -- at their facility in Welcome, N.C. "The ace in the hole for me is Richard Childress," Hylton said. "Officially, he's not backing this thing, but as a friend, he is. He and I raced together in the early '60s. We traveled together, doubled up our pit crew. I don't know what happened. He went on to be a multimillionaire, and I went on to be poor." But Hylton has earned the admiration of some of his younger competitors. "I hope when I'm 72, someone still feels like giving me a shot so I can keep doing this," said Carl Edwards, 45 years Hylton's junior. "That would be great." There are even bigger dreams, like a 19-race Nextel Cup schedule in which Hylton would drive on the superspeedways and 29-year-old Damon Lusk would handle the smaller, more physical tracks. Hylton has been wheeling racecars since he was a teenager growing up in Roanoke, Va. He's not ready to stop yet. "This is my life," he said. "I started racing when I was 18 up there in Virginia. That's all I've ever done. I'm not trying to be a hero or be a superman. ... I want to prove that even at 70 years old, you don't have to go off to an old folk's home. You can go race a little bit." | 
