Ageless Hylton still yearns to start one final Cup race (cont'd)

That was decades ago at Rockingham, when Hylton slid through oil dropped by Bobby Isaac's car and wound up in a hospital for three weeks. Hylton was a media favorite when he arrived in Daytona two years ago, with a bright orange car supplied by colleague Richard Childress and backed by a friend who made hit country-music records. These days, he operates a little more under the radar. There were hopes to try and make the Cup race at Talladega, but Hylton isn't optimistic. And he still rues what happened in Daytona this year, when he was unable to make a lap of practice, and therefore not allowed to attempt to qualify for the race.

He climbed in the car, he said, and it just wouldn't start. His crew spent five minutes pushing the vehicle up and down pit road, trying to get the engine to fire. Later they discovered that an epoxy had somehow gotten on a part of the carburetor, interrupting the mixture of air and gasoline. By then, it was too late. This wasn't the feel-good, near-Cinderella story of two years earlier, when Hylton stayed out on a pit cycle late in a qualifying event and nearly raced his way into the 500. This was a debacle that made people question what a 74-year-old man was doing at Daytona in the first place.

"It was the most frustrating thing that's ever happened to me in my life," he says, and you can tell by looking at him that he's telling the truth. "My pride was destroyed. We looked like a bunch of monkeys out there, pushing the car up and down pit road. That's hard to live down. Something like that destroys your team morale. Since then, Carter and myself, we've thrown up our hands and not done much on this Cup deal."

Episodes like that make it easy to forget what Hylton has accomplished. He was a crew chief for former champion Ned Jarrett before he struck out on his own in 1966, buying one of David Pearson's old dirt cars from legendary owner Cotton Owens for $5,500. He used only one car, that square-backed 1965 Dodge with a hemi engine, for all 41 races of his rookie of the year campaign. He finished second in points, still the highest for a first-year driver. He finished second again the next year, too, and might have been capable of more had he not remained so adamantly independent.

He did it all with the No. 48, which Johnson has driven to three consecutive championships. "I still feel like it's my number," Hylton says. Some time ago, when the Cup and ARCA circuits were both competing at Pocono, Hylton needled Johnson. "You've got to pay me something for that number," he told the Hendrick Motorsports driver. In actuality all he wanted was a cap, which crew chief Chad Knaus eventually brought to him.

Sitting in Hylton's little shop, surrounded by loose spark plugs and stacked telephone books, it all seems so outrageous. While other drivers shoot commercials or make sponsor appearances, Hylton works on his farm. While other teams operate out of modern steel and glass palaces, Hylton's crew works in a little brick building down the street from a feed shop and an abattoir. Two years ago, when Hylton began this somewhat quixotic journey to make one final race, it all seemed so irresistible. Now, in many eyes, it looks desperate. He understands this. It doesn't matter. Age has not tempered the desire within.

"I feel like I can still race, and I can be competitive once I have a good enough car to make the race. To make it now, you've got to have a rocket," he says. "If I never make another Cup race, I can't say I've been a failure. But believe me, I'm not giving up yet. They talk about having a fire in the belly. Well, I've got a furnace in there now."

The opinions expressed are solely of the writer.