Hylton not ready to hang up driver's suit just yet (cont'd)

"I understand their feelings. It feels like I'm the cheerleader or something. I think they're looking at me and saying, 'Hey, we've got a guy out there our age that's doing what he loves to do. Now we've got somebody to pull for.' I'm definitely building a Hylton senior citizen group that's backing me. I'm tickled to death about that," he said.

"Everywhere I go, I have people out at shopping centers and stuff coming up to me and recognizing me. It's pretty amazing. I kind of like that, to get that kind of attention after all these years. It's definitely built us a fan base. I can't say enough about it. If I never do another race, we accomplished something right off the start to help racing, to bring a lot of these race fans back from back in the Petty days and Allison days. Now they've actually got a driver out there they can root for."

As for all the questions about whether a 72-year-old driver should even be competing in NASCAR, Hylton hopes his performance in the Daytona qualifying event put them to rest. But he hill bristles at critics, one radio host in particular, who insist he should have parked his racecar long ago.

"She really stuck a knife in my back pretty hard about, NASCAR shouldn't have let me out there, that I was a hazard, that I could have taken half the field out and endangered people from running for the championship and all that. As far as I'm concerned, I was running eighth there until we had transmission problems, and was mixing up with the guys," he said.

"I didn't take out half the field, thank God. I didn't have any problems, and I didn't see any guys having any problem with me, other than they hung me out on that last restart. We don't have to overcome that now. I don't think we're going to have a problem with, should somebody my age be out there driving, and blah, blah, blah. Now we're going to race, when we go again. That part of the hoopla is done with."