Back in 1998 or so, I taught my then 2 year old son to look at a matchbox sized die-cast and tell me who the driver is. We have a video somewhere of him naming 20-25 drivers by their cars.
Soon after, we went to a race at Michigan Speedway for a corporate event. We had a large tent where my wife stayed with him during the race, but before that, we went trackside during Cup practice. I took him down to the catchfence and held him us as Mark Martin came out of turn 3 and toward us at turn 4. My son looked out over the track and his eyes got really wide seeing a huge, full sized Matchbox car come screaming at him at 180 mph. He looks at me and said “That’s Mark Martin!...And that’s Jeff Gordon!” Man, was that ever cool.
Cool story. Bet the lil on was thrilled. I know racing hasn’t been the same for me since mark & the other drivers of that generation retired.