GARTH STEIN, PATRICK DEMPSEY AND THE 24 HOURS OF DAYTONA

High Banked Turns

When my publisher said they wanted to send me to Stuart, Florida on January 23 to promote my book, "The Art of Racing in the Rain" at a library event called BookMania!, I was a little skeptical. Florida, after all, is in the opposite corner of the country from Seattle, and it's a hypotenuse that stretches to 6.5 hours when flying east-to-west against the jet stream. But I checked my calendar, and what did I see? The 24 Hours of Daytona was the same weekend! I immediately accepted the invitation to BookMania! and called Hertz to rent a car....

Now, Daytona Speedway is a real trip. It's absolutely, staggeringly huge, filled with masses of people, motor homes, tents, campfires, and strange aluminum beer cans in the shape of bottles (what, the cylinder doesn't work any more?). From the infield, the scope of the place is incredibly massive, with the high banked turns and the black-and-white checkered bleachers, and the screaming of Daytona Prototypes....

I arrived just as the race was beginning at 3:30 pm, and was met at the gate by Debbie from Grassroots Motorsports. She whisked me in and under the track to the infield and to their tent, where I had a signing session and signed a ton of books for people. The GRM tent had a lot going on: food, beer, a 24 hour slot car race, and two full iRacing.com stations. (iRacing.com is a totally cool racing simulator with impeccable graphics and track detail. Try it and you'll humiliate yourself for hours before you get the hang of it--it's really hard!)

Right after the race began, my father called me on my cell phone.

"They just announced on Speed," he said, "that Patrick Dempsey has acquired the rights to make The Art of Racing in the Rain into a movie!"

"I know that, Dad," I said. "In fact, you know that! I already told you."

"I know, I know," he said with a laugh. "But they said it on TV, so it must be true!"

I did a quick interview with Amber from Speed, and then I hooked up with my Mazda contact, Dean Case, who took me to the catering tent for dinner. (Last summer, I was able to race for Mazda in the MX-5 Cup Portland Grand Prix. I finished miserably, but without incident, and we got a lot of good publicity for the Oregon Humane Society. I may just get the chance to race in the MX-5 Cup again this summer!) After dinner, I met Lyn St. James, the former Indy 500 driver who loves ARR and incorporates parts of it in her public speaking program--she's a wonderful person. And then Dean and I went to find the Hyper Sport/Dempsey Racing #40 Mazda RX-8 team. Patrick was racing as part of a five man team to raise money and awareness for Avon Walk for Breast Cancer.

They weren't in the hot pits--not a good sign--so we went to the garage area and, sure enough, one of the drivers had crashed the #40 car pretty badly. It took 2.5 hours for them to rebuild the front end and get the car back on the track, but they got it done. And at around 9:30 in the evening, I found myself standing in the hot pits with Patrick Dempsey, talking script treatment and screenwriters.

Just for the record, PD is a really wonderful person, nice guy, and he's totally into the book and very excited to make it into a movie. I know there's a long road between now and it getting done, but he seems genuinely enthusiastic and excited about the whole thing.

Later, I went into the media center with Kevin York, my friend who drove the Compass 360/GoEnzo.com car last season in the Koni Challenge. Kevin's son, Evan, an up-and-coming karter, was with him to watch the race. What was strange was that in the media center, suddenly I was a celebrity (it's pretty unusual for anyone to notice or care about a writer). J.J. O'Malley, the Grand Am Manager of Communications, announced that I was in the room, and several reporters introduced themselves to me and told me how much they loved the book. J.J., then led me outside to do an interview. We were talking into a wireless microphone and I had no idea what kind of an interview it was because I couldn't hear anything. About half way through our chat, I tuned my ears away from J.J. and toward the sounds around me, and I could hear my voice echo through the entire stadium--he was interviewing me over the public address system! I mean, that was surreal.

Patrick got in the #40 car for his stint and I watched and wandered for a bit, and then I caught a few hours of sleep. At about 7:30, I got up to see how the team was doing. It wasn't doing well. The car had crashed again and was out of the race. PD was very upset, but tried to be upbeat and philosophical: "That's racing," he said. It is, but he added: "We've never not finished this race," so it was clear he was hurt by the result.

Later Sunday morning, I did a signing at Wine Country Motorsports, who have really championed ARR from all their stores and trackside. They sold a lot of books at Daytona, and Dave Lipsky, the owner, chided me for doing the track interview and bringing in too much business. "If I knew you were doing that, I would have ordered more books," he said.

After checking in with Patrick one more time, I said my goodbyes to the wonderful Mazda folks (including Jim Jordan, who also calls strategy for Patrick Dempsey's race team), and headed off for Orlando and the long flight back to Seattle. And while the flight home was somewhat bittersweet--I wish Patrick's team had been able to finish--there was still the buzz of the track in my ears--the smells, sights, and sounds that I tried to capture in my book. The electricity of a big race is absolutely tangible; hopefully, in the talented hands of Patrick Dempsey, that electricity will translate to the big screen and ARR will be a movie some day in the future.

Garth Stein
www.GoEnzo.com