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There was a puff of smoke on the backstretch, that is all I could see.

A voice on my race scanner said "This is gonna be a long one."

No replay on the Jumbotron...never a good sign.

"Who was it?" I asked someone next to me.

"Greg Moore."

My heart sank as I thought of what I had seen in pit lane that morning. My utter surprise to see him getting ready to strap into the car; my apprehension watching my friend, Geoff, help him get his glove over the brace on his right hand.

It had been injured the previous morning. He had been driving his scooter through the paddock on the way to morning practice. He couldn't avoid hitting a truck that was backing up. A bone in his hand was slightly broken.

He wasn't even supposed to be in the car on Sunday.

I could faintly see the safety trucks that surrounded the wreckage of his car.

I tuned my scanner to his channel. Nothing but static. I felt a twinge of panic.

This wasn't how my weekend was supposed to end. I was there for the Halloween parties; there to see who the new CART champion would be, not there to see my favourite driver end his day on the wall at 230 mph.

An ambulance drove to the medical helicopter on the infield. They took a long time getting him on it. Too long. My fear grew as the helicopter lifted away.

I waved a final goodbye to someone I had loved.

It was confirmed halfway through the race. "Greg Moore has passed on," said the voice over the loudspeaker.

The voice was met by my heart-piercing shriek. I didn't believe the voice, no, I got angry at the voice. I said the voice was lying.

Greg was young; Greg was immortal.

I put it out of my mind. The race continued.

Somewhere, someone radioed to Patrick Carpentier (Moore's teammate) to tell him the news. The other blue car went straight to the pit. He could not bear to go on.

Ten laps to go and a sudden dread came over me. I rushed out of the grandstands and headed for the garage. The race ended as I walked, but I didn't care, I didn't even care who won.

Something was more important.

I glanced up at the Jumbotron and felt a chill run through my bones at the sight. A large portrait of Greg and the dates 1975-1999. I watched as the image faded to black.

"99 in 99." I always said something big was going to happen to Greg this year. I was hoping for a championship. A championship seemed inevitable.

I began some sort of insane muttering, "We lost Greggie, we lost Greggie." ("Greggie" was a pet-name my friends and I used for him.) For some reason, saying that he was lost prompted me to try to find him.

I looked everywhere, but I'll never find him again.

It still didn't seem real. I wasn't crying. Greg wasn't gone if I wasn't crying, it wouldn't work that way.

My friend Sarah saw me, we met years ago while waiting to talk to Greg at a race, now she hugged me, tears streaming down her cheeks. She told me what had happened...things I didn't want to hear.

As we began to walk something hit me. Convulsive sobs.

I saw my friend Geoff, the same Geoff who hours before had been helping Greg with his glove. He held me for a minute and told me that everything would be all right. But nothing will ever be all right again.

He went on with the rest of the crew to pack up the equipment. I wondered if they realized that when they left the track that night they would be leaving without something far more precious than any million-dollar, high-tech machinery.

I walked along as in a dream. People around me were crying, hugging. A young girl sat on a pit cart in front of his trailer sobbing into her hands.

A group of Colombians were celebrating Juan Montoya's Championship victory. Their celebration was halted as they watched me on the phone with my mother, trying to choke out what had happened through my sobs, before she heard it somewhere else.

He was too big a part of my life.

I remembered years ago when he started in Indy Lights. A kind of dorky looking kid, big glasses, but an attitude mature beyond his years. He was 17 then, such a good driver that the series let him race below the 18-year age limit, he was too young to be allowed in the pit lane at most tracks.

I had watched him grow up. He had grown up with me. He changed from that dorky little kid into a beautiful man. Tall, sparkling blue eyes, and that warm, perfect smile.

He eventually would win the Lights Championship in dominant form, breaking many records along the way. That was his ticket into CART.

I met him for the first time in 1996 and quickly let him know that I was going to be his biggest fan. He never forgot me.

The time I saw Greg, after the 1997 Detroit Grand Prix, remains my favourite meeting with him. It was his second CART win, two weeks after his first, when he became the youngest winner in CART history.

I waited hours for him after the race. As soon as he turned the corner and saw me he came right to me, ignoring others that were around, and gave me a huge bear hug. It was not because he had to, but, I think, because he knew that the win meant as much to me as it did to him.

It seems unbelievable that I will never get a hug from him again.

I got a hug from my friend Bobby. He works on Montoya's crew. He and I had talked about my devotion to Greg before. Now, as he hugged me, he whispered in my ear, "We all feel the same."

I imagine some people feel worse. His mother, stepmother, siblings, girlfriend, best friends and fellow drivers, Dario Franchitti and Max Papis...but his father, Ric, I don't know how Ric will survive.

Ric Moore practically lived through his son. Greg was his world, his best friend. I can't tell you how many times I have seen him strutting up and down pit lane, chest puffed out proudly.

Ric had told Greg not to race on Sunday.

Greg could not be stopped.

He was a risk taker, his confident (cocky, to say it bluntly) attitude was one of the things I most admired about him. He knew the risk, but it was one he was willing to take. He was excitement personified.

Gil deFerran walked past me as he left the track, he seemed visibly shaken. He was to be Greg's new teammate next year; the two were new drivers for the legendary Team Penske.

Everyone agreed that it would be the new golden era of Penske racing. It seemed inevitable that Greg would get Roger Penske his 100th career win as a team owner.

Is there a curse on that win?

This is the second death CART has seen this season, the first being Gonzalo Rodriguez, who was driving for Penske at the time. Two deaths in one year, in a series that hadn't seen a single death in 14 years before the death of Jeff Krosnoff two years ago in Toronto.

It was five o'clock. Nearly four hours since Greg had left us, but it still didn't feel real. I looked around again, hoping to see him appear and tell us that it was all a cruel joke.

Instead I noticed a long procession of CART workers heading into the garage area. Someone passed by me and I overheard the words "prayer service," so I followed the crowd and squeezed my way into the small, bleak garage space.

People spoke, said prayers, expressed condolences. All around me I heard sniffles, an occasional sob; I saw women and men with tear-stained cheeks.

I don't remember much of what was said because at that point my sobbing became uncontrollable. Total strangers hugged me, handed me tissues, and tried to console me.

CART is a family. It is my family. A family that I have known for 10 years, and plan on staying with through the good times and bad for the rest of my life.

It was important for me to be there that weekend. To be with that family, those people who understand me, who lost what I lost, and who will return as I will return, because racing is in their blood as much as it is in mine.

Since becoming his fan, I have often tried to think of what I would ever do if something happened to him. I've learned that I could never be prepared.

The permanence is starting to set in. He won't be at Spring Training in February. I'll never again have one of my hare-brained conversations with him where I babble incessantly and he just smiles and nods and says, "Yeah, ok, sure."

I saw Greg for the last time on Sunday morning about two hours before the race. He was being driven through the paddock, huge smile on his face, braced hand held across his chest.

I reached for my camera to try to capture that look on his face. He seemed to have a total lack of fear that in a short time he would be flying between the concrete walls of the monstrous track; and not even Saturday's freak accident was enough to warn him against it.

He was gone too soon for me to take the picture.

He was gone too soon.


Rest in peace, Greggie. I love you.