"You drove the finest race I've seen in a long time," Tom said. "Kurt and I are both agreed on that. Right before the start, to be honest, I didn't know whether you were going to make it. But you came through like a veteran. You had me plenty worried those last few laps." "I had the willies all right," Woody confessed. "Say, Kurt," said Tom. "What were you doing right before the race tearing up all those cigarettes?" "Me?" said Kurt surprised. "I wasn't tearing up any cigarettes, was I?" "You sure were." "Well, if I was, I didn't know about it. But right before the start I'd made up my mind that this was the last race I was ever going to drive in. That's how I felt." "How do you feel now?" "Right now," said Kurt, "I think that was the silliest decision I ever made in my life." The Mayor presented Kurt with the trophy for first place--a cup of such proportions that Worm said afterward it was big enough to boil a haggis in. When Kurt had accepted it and expressed his thanks, he paused for a minute, looked around the room, and said, "Most of you people here tonight are drivers or mechanics or fans who are interested in sports-car racing. It's a new sport in the United States, but it is rapidly developing to the point where it's becoming a national sport. Its long-range results will be better cars, with more safety features and better drivers. "Some of you guys, like me, have been in the game a long time. We know that it isn't the winner who makes the race. It's all the other competitors who are in there trying to win and their mechanics who put in a lot of unpaid work fixing up their cars. It takes just as much guts to lose a race as it does to win one. What I'm trying to say is that it's the effort that matters and the courage that goes into it. Not the result. "In this connection, I think there's one driver here tonight who is more entitled to this trophy than I. Before I mention his name, I'll tell you something about him. He's a pretty young guy, and he's been racing something less than a year. "He didn't drive any well-known make of car. In fact, the car he drove had a hundred per cent accident record. It had been on the track only twice before. The first time its steering went out. The second time the brakes failed and the driver, Jimmy Randolph, was killed. "Randy believed in that car, and a lot of us were asked to race it after his death. I was one of the people asked, and I refused. I refused because I didn't trust it, and I believed that it might crack up again. A lot of the rest of us turned the car down for the same reasons. "But one guy didn't turn it down. He probably had the same doubts and fears to overcome that we had. But he had the guts to put them aside and drive the car anyway.