Here's a shot that brings back fond memories. "Hurley" bio/new, 3-volume "Brumos Racing" author Sean Cridland found it and passed it along. It was taken in victory lane at the ad-hoc "street" racing circuit running through Tamiami Park in Miami in 1987. Tamiami was the closing event of that year's Indycar series (that was back when Beatrice c.e.o. Jim Dutt was doing his best to make a diverse--dare I say "discombobulated?"--array of random, household-name brands like Martha White Cake Mix, Samsonite luggage, Culligan Water, Wesson Oil and Stiffel Lamps into one great, instantly recognized marketing/branding colossus. He was likewise spending a HUGE amount of money on motor racing--Indycar and F1 alike--because...well, because he could, I guess.

One of his key friends/advisers at the time was Chicago-area restaurateur, promoter, used-Ferrari salesman, entrepreneur, extraordinaire, hustler, visionary, friend and for several years my racing sponsor/car-owner, Joe Marchetti. Joe was a kingpin in the emerging vintage racing world, and that's how a vintage race came to be one of the curtain-raiser sideshows at that Tamiami Park season finale. I was driving the not quite original, 2.0-liter (hey, it was never a secret) AUSCA Alfa Duetto I'd barn-found, Joe financed and I built and raced the living crap out of for something like two-and-a-half years. That was in the early days of vintage racing, when most of the drivers were more-or-less collectors just putting their collective toes in the competitive water (translation: if you had any experience at all, you looked like Mario Freaking Andretti) and we racked up something like 13 wins in 15 races with that car. And just a single DNF thanks to a Facet fuel pump that went Tango Uniform and resisted all attempts to revive it.

But the moist memorable one of all was at Tamiami Park. First of all, there was a BIG crowd filling the grandstands (they were actually there to see the Indycars, of course, but there's something about having all those eyeballs on you) and, second, the track was just PERFECT for my Alfa, what with a lot of hard braking into perfect, third-gear corners that the Alfa could really sing through and no long straightaways where the "big iron" types could show off their horsepower. I'd qualified on the second row, with all but one of the Corvettes, Mustangs etc (and my soon-to-be-friend Monte Shalett, who'd just bought a very nice, used, alloy-bodied 250 Short Wheelbase Berlinetta from Joe) behind me. Monte bulled his Ferrari past on the green-drop run to Turn One, and I decided to hang back a bit as Monty was all arms and elbows (he was new to racing then) and looked to be somewhere on the far side of "determined." But that didn't last very long, as later that same lap he tried the impossible (i.e.: taking it without lifting) into the fast, sweeping final corner. I can still see that lovely Ferrari ricocheting off the concrete Jersey barrier on the left and shooting across my bows--banks-shot style--to do the same thing off the barriers on the right. Monty was fine, thank goodness (and went on, with a little seasoning, to become a fast and more-than-competent racing driver) but in the meantime he'd managed to turn his new-to-him Ferrari into an an even shorter-wheelbase Short-Wheelbase Berlinetta than it had ever been before...

In the end the Duetto and I finished third overall (not to mention first in the U-2.0-liter class), and, as you can imagine, I was really chuffed to be on the victory podium with overall winner/Brumos Porsche kingpin Bob Snodgrass (Mazda-powered Chevron B16) and 2nd-place finisher Bob Bondurant (yes, that one!) in somebody-or-other's full race-spec 289 Cobra.

I remember Bondurant looking down on my bellissimo, bright-red Duetto--heat waves still rising off the brakes and from under the hood--and asking, rather incredulously: "You finished third in THAT thing???"

Boy, did that ever make my head swell!

Don't think it's gone down all the way even today...