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" No one knew what to expect. The flights and lodging were booked, the car was ready to race, and the team had been assembled. I had secured a couple days off from my job at Swap Shop and the permission of my federal parole office to travel out of state. I was taking a commercial flight for the first time in a long time. My destination was Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, where the American Endurance Racing series was being held that weekend. It had been about 28 years since I&amp;#039;d been on a track and, having been on the lam for two of those years, 26 since I&amp;#039;d driven a stick shift. This was going to be a very different experience. Just the idea of traveling out of Florida for the first time as a free man was a thrilling\u2014and daunting\u2014proposition.\u00A0 I had an e-ticket for the plane. I barely knew\u00A0what that was. They\u00A0didn&amp;#039;t\u00A0even exist when I went away.\u00A0 The last time I raced was the CART/IndyCar Michigan 500 in 1986. I cut a tire and went into the wall at 214 mph, badly breaking my femur. Not long after the Michigan race the U.S. government got wise to how I was funding my racing career, and I eventually wound up taking a very long vacation. Simply put, I was a pot trafficker. A really big pot trafficker. How big? I was convicted of trafficking upwards of 300 tons of Columbian marijuana to the U.S. market over about four years. For that, I received a life sentence without the possibility of parole in 1988\u2014two years after being named Rookie of the Year at the Indianapolis 500.\u00A0 It was my own doing, and my decisions had a negative impact on a lot of lives. The money I was able to earn from drug smuggling was impossible to resist, and the things that the weed enabled me to buy and do were enticing. But it all unraveled, and for a long time it seemed like I would never again experience freedom, much less get behind the wheel of a race car. But times and attitudes change, and with a little bit of luck, I was blessed with a second chance. My sentence had\u00A0been\u00A0commuted to time served, and flying high above Georgia, with my race team waiting for me, I faced the happy and frightening prospect of another chapter as a free man. And as a racer. \u00A0 Getting Back on the Track\u00A0 In the fall of last year, Autoweek, Jalopnik,\u00A0and a few other automotive websites covered my impending October release. A few weeks after my move to a halfway house under federal supervision, I got a letter from someone named\u00A0Mike Carr, who said he was with a low-budget race team called Rally Baby Racing. Carr had seen the Jalopnik piece and remembered watching me race my March Chevy in the 1984 IMSA Camel GT championship. A championship\u00A0I won against his hometown hero, Al Holbert, who was driving a factory Porsche 962. He wished me well, and said that if I wanted to get back into a race car, there was a seat waiting for me. I suspected that someone was playing a cruel practical joke\u2014Michael Carr also just happened to be the name of the federal prosecutor who had put me in prison. But I held out hope that it was real. I wanted it to be real.\u00A0  During my time behind bars I learned a lot about attachment to possessions and what really matters. I thought about my racing career and the camaraderie of the club-racing community. The grassroots level of motorsport is the inverse of the high-dollar pro level, which can brew nasty rivalries. I longed for the smells of rubber and gasoline and the sound of unmuffled engines.\u00A0 When I first got out, I didn&amp;#039;t have access to the Internet or my own smartphone, so I would borrow my buddy&amp;#039;s phone when he gave me a ride to work. I started researching the modern grassroots racing scene. That&amp;#039;s how I learned about the great fun the Rally Baby team was having in the 24 Hours of LeMons, Chumpcar World Series, and American Endurance Racing. \u00A0The cars looked a little chopped up and cobbled together, but I could tell that the\u00A0Rally Baby team members all clearly have racing in their blood.\u00A0As it turned out, Mike was a lawyer, but he was definitely not the guy who had put me away. More importantly, his offer was real, and I took him up on it. But no one\u2014not me, not him, not the guys on his team I&amp;#039;d be driving with, not the organizers of the series, not my parole officer, not the student-racers \u00A0I was\u00A0going to get paid to teach while\u00A0out there\u2014not anyone, knew what to expect.\u00A0  Some people were encouraging, saying that it would be like getting back on a bike, that the muscle memory would return, and I&amp;#039;d quickly get back up to speed. Others warned: You&amp;#039;re not going to be as quick as you think. I was deeply anxious and only hoped to experience something remotely close to the thrill you get racing with other drivers. I love to compete, and I love the common appreciation racers share of the risks and the rewards that come up with such huge investments of time, effort, and money. But it had been a long time, and I wasn&amp;#039;t sure if I could hit my marks the way I wanted to.\u00A0 The trip to Ohio got us into our hotel well after midnight. \u00A0I settled in and tried to sleep, but Friday morning came early and we were off to the track before the sun came up. Not much had changed at Mid-Ohio since my last visit with IMSA in 1984. A shunt into the guardrail while leading caused front-end damage and a flat, relegating us to second place finish but not interfering with our trip to first place for the season. \u00A0Some safety and spectator area changes were obvious, but the paddock and the garages were the same.\u00A0 I felt at home. \u00A0  The weather was cool, clear, and dry for practice and qualifying. Wearing a borrowed helmet and driving shoes that didn&amp;#039;t quite fit, I coached from the passenger seat, instructing drivers who had never been to\u00A0Mid-Ohio on proper lines and techniques. I also began testing myself and my recollection of the track. Fortunately, I was comfortable in my last IndyCar racing suit, which still fit after all those years. The atmosphere was welcoming, and it was fantastic to be back among racers, even if some of weren&amp;#039;t even\u00A0born when I went to prison. Most of all, I enjoyed soaking up the sounds and smells that I had missed for so long.\u00A0 I was here in part\u00A0to teach on Friday, but it was clear that I also had plenty to re-learn. Observers rightly noticed that I was rusty behind the wheel, and the cars were a lot different than anything I&amp;#039;d ever driven\u00A0on this track. I needed work if I was going to be of any value to my team on Saturday and Sunday. But slowly it all started to come back. My hands remembered how to hold the wheel gently. The racing line began to appear. Shifting, heel-toeing, and trail-braking returned. \u00A0 Saturday dawned cold and rainy. Mid-O in the rain is unforgiving, and cars were spinning everywhere, even before the green flag dropped. The track was so slick that lap times weren&amp;#039;t really worth worrying about. I was just glad to finish my first 90-minute stint safely.  Later in the day, the Rally Baby E30 convertible suffered a couple of mechanical problems. A new radiator and water pump quickly solved the overheating issues, but almost as soon as the car went back out, it had to return to the paddock for a clutch. The team got the car back on the track, but it was out of the running for the Saturday win.\u00A0 While Rally Baby&amp;#039;s amazing tech guys, Pete Hartkorn and Adam Khorshid, worked on the car, Mike and I had put a few Swap Shop\u00A0logos from the Camel GT days on the race car for old time&amp;#039;s sake. With our\u00A0hopes for victory on Saturday dashed, we at least made sure the car was as good as it could be for the Sunday race.\u00A0  That night we had a great meal with a few dozen AER drivers at KC&amp;#039;s Steak and Rib House. This is a place that can&amp;#039;t be missed if you&amp;#039;re at Mid-Ohio. I had heard of Karaoke, but this was the first time I tried it. There might be video out there\u00A0of me and Mike attempting to sing &amp;quot;Lawyers, Guns and Money&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Smuggler&amp;#039;s Blues.&amp;quot; If so,\u00A0I hope that never surfaces.\u00A0 A Surprise Turn of Events\u00A0 With the car ready to go for Sunday&amp;#039;s race, Mike and I drove to the track for the driver&amp;#039;s meeting before sunrise. On the way over we confirmed driver lineups and a strategy, but all that went out the window when we arrived and\u00A0the guys from Road &amp;amp;amp; Track\u2014who were\u00A0going to be down a man that day after winning their race against\u00A0Jalopnik the day before\u2014told me the unthinkable: &amp;quot;Suit up and get in our car for the first stint.&amp;quot;\u00A0 Mike was fine with it, so I said\u00A0&amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s rock!&amp;quot;\u00A0and eagerly jumped into the great Spec E30 prepared by DriveGear&amp;#039;s Andrew Zimmerman. My co-drivers were R&amp;amp;amp;T&amp;#039;s editor-in-chief Larry Webster, Jason Nikic, and Sam Smith. I did 90-minutes in the R&amp;amp;amp;T car, handed it off, and got\u00A0into the Rally Baby car, which swapped\u00A0positions with the R&amp;amp;amp;T car for much of the day. I made some fast laps, including the fastest lap of the day for Rally Baby. I wanted lunch, but the R&amp;amp;amp;T\u00A0guys needed me to hop back into their car, which I brought home to a solid victory over the Rally Baby car.\u00A0  There is something inherently unfair about racing in two cars that are in direct competition with one another, but hell, the point was to get faster, and I did! Over the weekend, my lap times kept dropping\u2014 first in seconds, then tens of seconds\u2014and there really wasn&amp;#039;t anything I could do about the fact that the car I was in at the end of the day won the battle. With some more time in the Rally Baby car, I&amp;#039;m pretty sure I could have found four or five more seconds a lap, but the checker had fallen.\u00A0 It&amp;#039;s pretty clear that AER is grassroots racing at its best. The street-tire rule keeps budgets lower than most club racing, and the camaraderie is great. AER racers are a competitive but collegial group. There was a level of trust and acceptance that enabled me to get past the anxiety of returning to something that I had left so long ago. The Friday night potluck and the Saturday BBQ\u2013 provided by the series\u00A0for free!\u2014also didn&amp;#039;t hurt.\u00A0 All weekend long I kept pushing the cars and myself, and by the end, I didn&amp;#039;t want it to end. I wanted to wring another few seconds out of the car. I knew I could. There were\u00A0a few more marks I wanted\u00A0to hit better, but I&amp;#039;d like to think I can compete here again\u2014and maybe elsewhere.\u00A0 Above all, though, I&amp;#039;m grateful. Grateful to be free, grateful for all I&amp;#039;ve learned, grateful for new friendships, and grateful that I got to go racing again. After the weekend, Mike got in touch with me to let me know that he had edited my Wikipedia page. Now there&amp;#039;s no longer the word former before race-car driver.\u00A0 That really feels good. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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