"That Guy" is Chris MacAllister, who is very well-known in vintage race circles. He's got a great racket--he owns the Caterpiller distribution rights for the entire state of Indiana. If you want to buy a tractor or piece of heavy construction equipment in that state, you have to buy it from him.
It's a third-generation family business, the next best thing to having a magic wallet that automatically dispenses money.
To his everlasting credit, he spends his money wisely. Long, long before they were considered especially valuable, he started buying old race cars just because he thought they were neat. He never thought they would appreciate. He has exquisite taste in cars; besides his GT40 #1051 (which began life as a road car with wire wheels, and served as a Ford press car; he bought it in 1983),
he also owns a '70 Gulf Porsche 917 (!)
a '72 Gulf Mirage M6, powered by a Cosworth DFV:
and a '76 Ferrari 312 T2/026, ex-Niki Lauda. (Lauda drove this car in all the 1976 season races except for his famous crash at the Nürburgring)
I got to make his acquaintance several years ago, as at the Monterey Historic Races he was sharing paddock space with my friend's father, Bob Gregory, who was running a Chevron B16. Over the years I've bumped into him here and there; the last time I saw him was in the garage at Le Mans last year. He was running an LMP2 Pilbeam-Judd, powered by a 4.0 liter V8:
By total coincidence, the French Pantera dude that I was hanging around with knew the owner of the French race shop that was providing all the technical support for the English Pilbeam car, so we got to blag our way into the garage during the race in the middle of the night. I didn't realize he was part of the team until I saw him sitting quietly by himself in a corner. I reintroduced myself to him, and we wound up talking for 30-40 minutes about all sorts of things. As he was the sole American on the whole team, I suspect he might have been a bit lonely!
He really is a terrific guy; very modest, almost shy even. He looks like a tall Harry Potter. I took a photo of him in the garage; that's him in the glasses on the right, receiving a pep talk from the French pit team owner:
Sadly his Le Mans ended early. All three drivers on the team were 'arrive and drive' types, meaning that all of them bought the ride, which meant that money counted for more than talent. Chris is an excellent amateur driver, mature, and could be counted on to nurse a car around the track for 24 hours. One of his co-drivers was a young French hotshot whose father was financing his growing racing career; he had already flung the car into the gravel at least once during practice. By total coincidence I was standing at Virage d'Arnage in the rain later in the evening, when the hotshot came in too fast, spun under braking, and in so doing broke something in the drivetrain.
Anyway, Chris is Good People to the extreme. If you ever are fortunate enough to see him and one of his cars at a vintage race event, introduce yourself and you'll find him extremely personable. He will be racing his Mirage in Plateau 6 at Le Mans Classic this year.
And BTW that fantastic video of him spinning his car and then hammering it away is well worth watching, if you haven't seen it before:
YouTube - Gt40 losses control