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" At this very moment, Alex Wurz is preparing to drive the No. 7 Toyota TS040 Hybrid LMP1 car from pole position at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The dude probably has his game face on. He&amp;#039;s also wearing different colored race boots\u2014one red, one blue\u2014as he&amp;#039;s done since his Formula Ford days. Don&amp;#039;t give Wurz the head-tilt and big-eye, though. He&amp;#039;s far from the only superstitious driver out there, and his little habit is no more or less strange than some others we&amp;#039;ve come across. Valentino Rossi has an elaborate ritual before Moto GP heats. Michael Schumacher only liked to race under odd digits. Many wheelmen think green cars are a bad omen. For Friday the 13th, here are a few other bizarre superstitions from the world of motorsports.  Alberto Ascari thought his blue helmet and t-shirt had cosmic cache, and refused to let anybody touch the briefcase he carried those items inside on race day. The Italian Grand Prix ace was killed testing a Ferrari 750 in the summer of 1955 after sending his lucky lid off for a chinstrap repair. Tazio Nuvolari had a lucky golden tortoise brooch, gifted to him by Italian poet Gabriel D&amp;#039;Annunzio prior to the &amp;#039;32 Targo Florio. Nuvolari won the race, became convinced reptilian motifs were good luck, and began adorning his racing sweaters with monogramed turtles.  Dale Earnhardt, Sr. had an array of superstitions, most prominently an instance on exiting buildings through the same door he&amp;#039;d entered from. The Intimidator also wouldn&amp;#039;t touch $50 bills (a common stock car racing faux pas), and kept a lucky penny from his first Daytona 500 win glued to his dashboard. Stefano Modena believed wearing his racing gloves inside out was good juju. Though he never made an enormous impact racing in F1 with Brabham, Tyrrell, and Jordan between 1987 and 1992, he did win the Formula 3000 championship. NASCAR drivers famously have an aversion to unshelled peanuts on the paddock. Nobody is quite sure where this one originated, but it has existed in one form or another since stock car racing&amp;#039;s infancy during the 1930s. Soda cookies are okay, though.  David Coulthard admitted to having several pairs of tattered lucky underwear, given to him by his &amp;quot;aunty Elaine&amp;quot; during the Scotsman&amp;#039;s karting days. He quit wearing them after a crash at a 1990 junior series race at Spa\u2014not because they&amp;#039;d lost their charm, but because Coulthard was humiliated once the medical center cut off his firesuit and discovered his threadbare skivvies. He continued carrying them in a plastic bag. Mark Weber has said he always enters and exits single-seater cars from the left-hand side, even after a shunt. Go ahead and scour YouTube. All left, all the time. Force India&amp;#039;s Nico Hulkenberg (amongst others) also has a similar habit. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/features/a3488/for-racing-drivers-every-day-is-friday-the-13th/>