ELLISVILLE, Fla. -- The last time Mike Fritts was at Columbia Motorsports Park to race a Super Late Model, there was only one barrier at the half-mile Columbia County speedway: The one protecting the crowd in the small frontstretch grandstand.

But even if there had been nothing but gentle moguls leading off toward the woods that seemed to be way less than 200 yards from Turns 1 and 2, and even less from the backstretch of the FASCAR track, Ricky Carmichael couldn't have been more comfortable there.

Carmichael, who only the weekend before had done his final AMA Supercross Series event, at Orlando -- while racing and back-and-forth to home in Tallahassee, Fla., to be with wife Ursula as she delivered the couple's first children, twins Kadin and Elise -- tested Friday for his stock-car debut Saturday night.

Fritts, a front-running veteran of Super Late Model racing throughout Florida and the Southeast who temporarily put his own driving career on hold to help Mark Martin Performance administer Ginn Racing's driver development program, joined the team only this week to provide guidance for Carmichael, among others.

Martin, who's taking his first weekend off in 20 years after 621 consecutive Cup races, was visiting his in-laws elsewhere in Florida and missed Friday's excitement, before he was scheduled to arrive Saturday.

Even though Carmichael, supercross' all-time victories leader spun on his sixth hot lap on the racetrack, Fritts was particularly impressed with his most high-profile charge, by the time the day was through.

"I was impressed with his driving," Fritts said. "I think we need to work on the car a little bit more -- and we knew that -- but for running up here at the last minute and never having been here with that car, I think everything went really good [Friday]."

How well? Doyle Boatwright, the 2006 CMP Super Late Model champion, turned a best lap of 16.94 seconds, reportedly on fresher tires than Carmichael did while testing all day on the same set of Goodyear Eagles.

Patrick Conrad, a Florida teenager to whom Martin himself once lent a Legends Car to begin his stock-car racing career and who's gone on to win Super Late Model races in Florida, also ran laps in the 16.90-second range in his first time back in a car in six months, after arm surgery.

But for Carmichael, for whom the stock-car tracks he's tested can be counted on one hand and whose laps in stock cars remain only in the dozens, it was an eye opener.

And amazingly, to anyone who's a longtime onlooker to stock-car racing -- for the 10 years Carmichael has raced professionally in motocross and supercross shows they've been one-day events in which the athletes showed up, raced the track and left.

He said he'd have a lot to think about on his two-hour commute each way between home and Columbia, Friday and Saturday.

"You know, I've never been to a track and come back the next day and drove it again," Carmichael said. "So I think I can improve. I drove pretty good [Friday] -- hell, I was only a tenth [of a second] off the track champion.

"So I want to go back and see where I can be better. I'll think about what I did wrong, same as I would at a supercross, where you'd practice, think about what you did wrong and then be better."

And on a day when the temperatures got up to a track-greasing, mid-80s level, he was unfazed by sitting in the car for long periods between chassis changes, helmet on and uniform fastened around him in sauna-like conditions.

"Cardio [fitness] is the thing when you're riding [motorcycles]," Carmichael said. "This, if you get it made up in your mind that you're just hot, it's OK. And when you're driving, I'm worried about what's in front of me, how the car's doing and where I can be better, so I don't worry about the heat.

"But when you stop, you can heat up."

Carmichael made seven runs in the car, each time doing from half-dozen to a dozen laps. The hit-your-marks mentality he developed in a 10-year professional motocross career and a record-setting number of victories continues to serve him well.

"It's very similar," Carmichael said. "And that's very important to me. I need the seat time, because every time I drive I learn something new and it helps me. So [testing] is very important."

In only his fourth time out in the car, he ran 10 consecutive laps covered by .25 seconds, between 17.10 and 17.35. His best lap for the afternoon was a 17-flat.

"Everything is a compromise, as you know," Carmichael said. "If you get the front working good, the back don't work good, so I think you have to adjust for what the conditions are, and minimize your shortcomings as much as you can do."

Fritts and Carmichael agreed Columbia -- as most do tracks -- had its idiosyncrasies.

"This is a pretty tricky track, for sure," Carmichael said. "Every track is different and has its own things about it -- but that's what's fun. Every track has its things that add to its character."

Carmichael proved he's got something of a character in him, as well -- as does his father.

How do you prove racers are racers? Watch 'em mingle. Carmichael, his dad, who signed the insurance waiver in the track's infield "Ricky L. Carmichael," and a couple friends arrived at 11:30 a.m. after a two-hour trip from home.

After greeting the five-man Mark Martin Performance crew that was going to field Super Late Models for Carmichael and Martin's 15-year-old son, Matt -- who's won a FASCAR Truck Series feature at Columbia -- in less than 15 minutes at the track, the elder Carmichael and his entire group had migrated over to the crew pitted next to, but 35 yards away from, Martin's.

In a matter of moments, Ricky joined them and seconds later Boatwright was engaging them in an animated conversation that lasted more than 15 minutes more.

"This is good and I think it's going to be an enjoyable ride, I hope," the elder Carmichael said. "It's just like the motorcycles, just one big family, I hope.

"Sometimes things happen on the track and you get mad at each other, but hopefully, eventually you'll be back friends and having a good time and keep on keeping on.

"If we can catch on to this and do as good as we did in the motorcycle racing [it'll be fun] -- but it's going to be a tough road, I can see already."

The elder Carmichael was talking about his son's spin in his sixth lap, maybe, but it was one of few he made.

"What I seen in him [Friday] was the competitor in him," Fritts said. "I'm trying to tell him, 'Don't worry about what other people are running for lap times, and this and that.' I wanted him to just go out there and have a good time.

"But he's a racer. He's out there going, 'This guy's going faster than me -- we've got to do something.' That's what's going to make him go, higher and higher and to be good when he gets up there."

Carmichael said tuning the Late Model, which is perhaps the most intricate of short-track racecars, resembled the changes he would make with his Supercross mechanic.

But switching it from two wheels to four, again, was a pleasant shock to the Late Model veteran Fritts.

"It really surprised me," Fritts said. "We did a couple things to the car, right when we got here and I went out in it, just to get it close. And that's all we did, really, is to just get it close.

"For him to pick it up from there and to get as much faster as he did -- that's impressed me, already. Yeah, there's guys out there going a little bit quicker, but you don't ever know what they're using or trying to accomplish.

"You've got to compare yourself to your competitors, but sometimes you've just got to do what he's doing, just get out there and get the car comfortable to you, and then see what happens in the race. And I think we've got a good start on that.

"Just watching his line, I know we don't have the car 100 percent right. I know we've got it close, for him to go that good in it. But he might be a lot better than the car is -- we don't know that yet.

"We're going to make some changes to it Saturday and I think we can get it a lot better for him."

At day's end, the feeling was mutual between the two champion competitors.

"It's been unreal," Carmichael said of his first day of working with Fritts. "This was the first time I'd met him -- and I know Mark was real excited about it, super-pumped. He's a great attribute to the team and it's nice, because when we go to New Smyrna [another half-mile FASCAR track located just south of Daytona Beach] he's got those tracks wired.

"It's going to be amazing, and it's nice to have that backing."

"He's definitely got it," Fritts said, shaking his head. "When he moves up to the upper levels, like, when he gets to Nextel Cup, they're going to be surprised [because] just from watching him [Friday], I can tell."