fter a few quick laps on Daytona’s press day, Austin Forkner found the fastest line through a big rhythm lane. It featured two quads and a triple, and it probably took him all of three laps to figure out on his 250F.

“There were a lot of jumps, so I was, like, in the air looking down, trying to figure out what I would do over the next section,” he explained.

Ricky Carmichael was also supposed to ride some laps. He was wearing a helmet camera, a LitPro GPS tracking device, and a microphone so he could narrate each section to the fans as he rode. Carmichael designed this Daytona track, and he clearly made it challenging for high-flyers like Forkner, who is 20. But I thought about the quad-quad-triple. Were Ricky’s tracks starting to get too challenging for RC himself?

“You know, I hadn’t really thought about that until now, but I think so,” said the five-time supercross champion known as the GOAT, or Greatest of All Time. “I wouldn’t say I’m scared, but I definitely don’t look forward to it anymore. Maybe the amateur track on Sunday and Monday would be good for me! This stuff should just be left to today’s guys. I’m more like double-double-double through all of that!”

Carmichael has been narrating laps at Daytona since 2008, his first year of retirement. Because Ricky still sports a #4 Suzuki RM-Z450, Monster Energy graphics on his helmet, and Fox gear, it looks like he’s frozen in time. Yeah, he’s certainly not at his old fighting weight, but we’ve seen post-retirement RC ride for so long now that we kind of forget that he hasn’t raced a supercross in 12 years. He’ll turn 40 later this year.

So as the GOAT rode press-day laps with today’s riders, he found a cheat sheet: Carmichael filed in behind 450SX points leader Cooper Webb and matched his speed, letting Webb tow him over the jumps. It’s a time-honored technique, and now not even the GOAT is above using it. In 1999, Carmichael could have looked down in the air, like Forkner, and figured out what to do next.

Outside the grandstands of Daytona International Speedway sits the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America, into which Carmichael was inducted in 2015. Inside the building sits one of his RM250 two-strokes, which made a quick trip Down Under for the AUS-X Open supercross, and then back to Daytona. Carmichael considered grabbing the bike to race the Daytona Vintage Supercross on Tuesday, but he had to get back home for a day before heading to the Indianapolis Supercross. Today’s biggest jumps are getting to be a stretch even for the GOAT, but some vintage action could give him his racing fix.

It never really goes away. A few days later, Jeff Ward, at 57 years old, lined up for the American Flat Track opener.

Wrote Wardy on Instagram: “I always go into everything I do with the mentality of ‘I’m going to win! Will that happen? Well most the time at my age (57) it doesn’t. If I don’t think that way before I hit the track I won’t get the best out of myself.”

Ward is the racer’s racer, and in his heat, he battled hard for the lead with Jacob Lehman and Morgan Mischler. Ward came into a corner too hot and drifted wide—way wide, like right up to the wall of Daytona’s famous front stretch. No other rider had even come close to that wall, and Ward was drifting toward it. He kept it pinned, his twisted right grip coming within inches of the concrete as he grabbed gears and pulled back away from Mischler. Later, in his semi, he bobbled on the first lap and fell back to last place. Ward charged into the second turn wide open on the outside, hoping to dive bomb past 20 riders and get all of those positions back.

“I almost got them,” he said. It wasn’t enough to make the cut into the main event.

Ward didn’t beat the kids, but even at 57 years old, it seemed like he hadn’t aged a bit.