It was a race with high stakes. First place prize: $100k. I was up against some "old friends," and some famous drag racers. There was also another racer, who I had neither heard of or seen before. I didn't quite catch his name, but at that point it didn't matter, I was excited to race him. We got in our cars, and revved our engines, a common thing, as a form of intimidation. A man in a striped suit, a referee's uniform, stepped out on a platform above the road. Laughing to myself, as others probably were, at the unorthodox arrangement, he dropped a checkered flag and we took off. We had to complete five laps, something else I wasn't used to. I had gone four laps and was tied with that unknown racer.