The Winner Who Walked Away

"But I don't want to win," says Phil. "I just don't want to stuff it and make an ass of myself. I should never have agreed to this."

"Well, why did you?" says Dan.

"I'll be damned if I know.... I only know we're gonna make fools of ourselves."

"Just one more time, Philip, that is all," Graham says.

"Oh, it's all right for you to say, Graham. You've only been retired a few months, and Dan's been practicing at Riverside! I'm an old man."

"Oh, Philip, you are not an old man," says Graham. "You are an old lady. You are an old lady exactly as you were years ago."

"Yes, I am," says Phil. "I haven't changed, Graham, and I'm proud of it."

When they reach the starting line, jammed with spectators, Graham says, "Well, chaps, I am simply going to put on my helmet, crawl out on all fours and hide behind a tire." The truck stops, and they get out to thunderous applause and the flashes of dozens of cameras. Gurney is the favorite. He turns, smiling, to wave at the shouts of his name. Graham poses for a pretty woman photographer who coos, "He's such a dreamboat!" Phil signs autographs on the back of LBGP programs that carry a biography of him. He says, "Graham, will you look at this! It mentions how I finished third at Monaco in '61! I finished SECOND in '62! Why the hell didn't they mention that?"

They pose for one last picture, standing side by side with their arms around each other's shoulders. Phil, in the middle, is dwarfed by the other two, each over six feet. Their racing suits are sleek-fitting while his is old-fashioned and baggy as if he has shrunk and no longer has the stature of the man who once wore it. The photographer asks them to put on their helmets. The helmets of Gurney and Graham Hill have dark Plexiglas spaceman visors that cover their faces. Phil's helmet looks like a beekeeper's hat. It has a small peak and a colorless Plexiglas visor that only covers his eyes. Inside the helmet is printed: "Herbert Johnson, 39 New Bond Street, London, West. By appointment hatters to the late King George VI."

The picture taken, they get into the Toyotas. They start the cars, whose open exhausts sound, according to Phil, "like a flatulent cow. What I wouldn't give for the sound of a Ferrari now."