A visit from a racing legend

This week: racing legend, James Hilton stopped by Truechoice with local ARCA race team owner, Greg Sarff (Capital City Motorsports) to get some Earls plumbing and Gaffer’s tape. It was great to be able meet and talk to a living legend like Hylton.

Can you imagine having a racing resume that reads:

Worked as a mechanic for Rex White in the late 50’s (1960 NASCAR champ)
Crew Chief for Ned Jarrett in 1964 thru 1967
Started as a Grand National driver in 1964
Nascar Rookie of the year in 1966
Became an Owner/driver in 1968
Won Talladega 500 in 1972
Moved from NASCAR to ARCA in 1982
Has 71 ARCA Starts
Oldest driver to start a NASCAR Race (Milwaukee June 2006)
Attempted qualifying for the Daytona 500 at 72 years old
Has driven in NASCAR, ARCA, Grand American, IMSA, USAC, GN East

Nascar Stats:

Starts 601
Wins 2
Top-5 140
Top-10 301
Poles 4
Laps Led 979
Avg. Start 17.0
Avg. Finish 13.5
Earnings $1,478,096

Probably the most impressive thing is that James was working on a race car with Greg to get it ready for the Nashville ARCA race. When you think about it, not very many folks at 74 years old would still be wrenching or racing. It had to be great to have almost 50 years of experience helping prep the car for Sarff’s new driver, Ben Stancill of Ayden, NC.

It’s exciting to meet somebody who is still that passionate about anything after 50 years but it is a bonus if that passion is racing!!!!

I have always believed that if you find work that you love, you will never work a day in your life or at least it won’t feel like work. Life is too short to spend doing things your not passionate about.

Just a Thought…

Brickyard 400

Brickyard 400



This weekend was our annual pilgrimage to Anderson and then on to Indianapolis, Indiana for a racing-filled weekend with the guys. What could be better then hanging out with your buddies, smelling rubber and exhaust and watching racing? LIFE IS GOOD, or so I thought


OMG… what a screwed up weekend of racing!


To start the weekend off on Saturday we watched the IRL race at BW3’s over some wings and beers. Boring!! HINT to the IRL: If a race is suppose to run 95 laps and runs out of time at 90ish laps that means either there were a lot of slow laps or too many cautions which translates to boring racing. LETS JUST RUN THE 95 LAPS for excitements sake. (We were waiting for the weekly Danica Drama)


Normally we go watch pavement late models at the Anderson speedway but they were running the USAC sprints so we opted to watch the Nationwide race at BW3’s. Yes, still at BW3’s, more beer, more wings! Good race even though Brett Rowe and my old team crashed out early. (Kind of miss the action but watching is the next best thing)


The low-light of the trip was Sunday’s Brickyard race itself. It was to be the highlight but we still had a blast. What were they thinking? Goodyear wrecked a great race with a bad tire. A yellow flag every 10 laps or so. Competition cautions they called them. Yep, they sure were not “racing” cautions (It kind of felt like Heat races on the local track) I felt bad for the pit crews since 15 pit stops in a race is a lot of work. The poor tire guy must have worn out his Intercomp tire gauge. Jimmy Johnson won so not all bad, but I do have a visual few observations:

It would have looked better if they had used colored racing tape when fixing the tire blowout damage to the cars.

Tires with 10 laps on them should not blow up during a burn out

Proper racing etiquette dictates you don’t stand for a large part of the race if it’s not exciting (if you paid for the seat use it)

But all being said it was still a BLAST

LIFE IS GOOD