Bobby Rahal A.J. Foyt 1 Sports car racer James “Hap” Sharp is born (1928). 6 Indy 500 winner Pat Flaherty...
The Lola T70 certainly had a rich and storied racing career. This ex-Foyt T70 is seen here doing battle during...
Bernd Rosemeyer Ferdinand Porsche 6 Chris Amon wins the Pukekoke, New Zealand, Tasman Cup race (1968). 7 Gioacchini Colombo joins Alfa Romeo. He will later design the Alfetta 158 (1924). Become a Member & Get Ad-Free Access To This Article (& About 6,000+ More) Access to the full article is...
Pedro Rodriguez A.J. Foyt 1 FIA declares there can be sponsorship on cars participating in racing they sanction, provided the...
Gilles Villeneuve Carroll Shelby 2 The first South Africa Grand Prix, held on the Kyalami track near Johannesburg, is won...
Graham Hill Ronnie Peterson 1 Bobby Rahal, Bob Garretson and Brian Redman drive a Porsche 935 K3 to victory in the 24-Hours of Daytona. First IMSA GTP race (1981). 1 Mike Lawrence buys his first copy of “Motorsport” magazine. Twenty-seven years later, he becomes its editor (1957). Become a Member...
A.J. Foyt Peter Gregg 4 Six-time IMSA Camel GT champion and two-time SCCA Trans-Am champion Peter Gregg is born in...
There’s no middle ground with A.J. Foyt, no compromising your feelings. You either love him or hate him. You either...
Mario Andretti at speed in his Ferrari 312B with flat-12 engine. Andretti was the race favorite having won the opening round of the Formula One season in South Africa just three weeks prior to the Questor GP.Photo: American Racing Museum For decades, racing fans around the world have continually debated...
Andre Ribeiro Len Sutton 1 Glenn Seton drives a Nissan Skyline to victory in the Australian Touring Car race at...
“Dinosaurs,” we called them, ridiculing their bulk, their weight, their mindless loyalty to outmoded dogma. Indy Roadsters; they were rife...
Prior to 1959, I ran pretty well on the mile tracks with the dirt cars, but at Indianapolis, I never had a car that was quite suitable. Finally, in 1959, I got a chance to drive for Bob Wilke and A. J. Watson, who was Wilke’s chief mechanic. I have...
My first experience with a front-engine roadster was when I first went back east to race. I wound up driving...
1957 Kurtis Kraft 500G2 The author gets up to speed on the banking of England’s Rockingham Speedway. Photo: Mike Jiggle...
Bruce Leslie McLaren won the first-ever Grand Prix of the United States in 1959, but really established his life’s legacy eight years later. It was September 3, 1967, at Road America, when his Can-Am team began a five-year run of dominance in the fastest kind of road racing the world...
In early August, Indy 500 and Le Mans champion A. J. Foyt narrowly escaped a grim death, when the bulldozer...
Antonio Brivio Mario Andretti 1 A.J. Foyt wins the USAC Championship race on the dirt track at Sacramento, California (1967)....
How amusing, I often smile, that a breed of racer I associate with conservatism generally speeds around to the left. But we don’t do politics here, just history, so let’s have a look back at interesting times when oval drivers first tried their hands at turning both ways. The big...
Rodger Ward Vincenzo Florio 1 Colin Chapman and Michael Allen form the Lotus Engineering Company (1952). 2 The First South...
In the history of motor-sport safety, few names are as universally recognized as that of Bill Simpson. Initially an active...
It’s time to talk NASCAR. It usually is. NASCAR’s calendar is the longest in racing, so it has the shortest off-season, and by the time you read this, NASCAR will have started up again. NASCAR also has captured the largest fan base in America, the vast bulk of available American...
Respected Indianapolis Crew Chief, Howard Gilbert, passed away on February 4, 2008, at his home in Payson, Arizona. He was...
Someone once said that Indy car drivers would be lost if they had to turn right as well as left. They also said that at Le Mans they’d never find their behinds with both hands when it got dark or if it rained. Obviously, they never met Lloyd Ruby. During...
My brother, Jim Hurtubise, started out racing on dirt tracks in California against seasoned drivers like Parnelli Jones and Allen...
Rodger Ward Jim Hurtubise Photo: IMS 1 Jim Clark wins the South African Grand Prix driving a Ford Cosworth-powered Lotus...
Dan Gurney, as American as we make ’em, was once proposed to be President, and I still think our conflicted country would have been the better for it. But Big Dan did achieve immortality as the first American to create an American F1 car. Wonderfully, he called it the Eagle,...
In the days before data logging transformed our sport into a science, the judge of all things was the simple...
When I first talked with Vintage Racecar editor Casey Annis in 2005, the conversation revolved around the subject of me writing about the fifties, the fabulous fifties as it were. After all, this was what I was known for. I had written seven books about the decade. One of my...