If you ever see a photograph of Philippe Etancelin in action, chances are you will never forget him. Because he’s...
Nelson Piquet Biography Nelson Piquet was born on August 17, 1952 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The son of a...
The man at the wheel of the 2.8-liter, six-cylinder, Ford Sierra XR4i may have been a schoolmaster, but he certainly did not drive like one. In fact, beads of sweat were breaking out on my forehead as he stylishly doorhandled the winged Ford along the narrow roads of the Targa...
It may sound corny, but Dick Seaman’s short life really was the stuff of Hollywood movies. He was tall, handsome,...
The story of the Alfa Romeo 158 is packed with heroes, starting with its designer, Gioacchino Colombo. He submitted his...
Denny Hulme was one of the most reserved men in motor racing. He seldom showed his emotions, which he camouflaged with a likable but sometimes gruff personality. Hulme never regarded himself a star, even if that were the case, and often went unrecognized in the most public of places, among...
Georges Louis Frederic Boillot Biography Georges Louis Frederic Boillot was born in Valentigney, France on August 3rd, 1884 A mechanic...
How will history remember Count Wolf-gang Alexander Albert Eduard Maximillian Reichsgraf Berghe von Trips? “Von Krash,” as the dim-witted sniggeringly...
Three weeks after he had won the 1966 Grand Prix of Monaco in an aging, works, 2-liter, V-8 BRM P261, Jackie Stewart lay trapped in the wreckage of his car after having left Belgium’s Spa-Francorchamps circuit in the pouring rain at 165 mph. His BRM had smashed into a telegraph pole,...
A graduate in mechanical engineering, they called the nephew of Pinin Farina il dottore, the doctor. An austere, intolerant man,...
St. Chamond in the Loire Valley of France was once known as a production center of ribbon and rayon, as...
Some time ago, Vintage Racecar published ”Absent Friends,” my story of astonishing heroism of another kind. It involved three motor racing greats, Robert Benoist, William Grover-Williams and, to a lesser extent, Jean-Pierre Wimille. The story told of their selfless devotion to their country, their indignation at the theft of their...
With no fewer than 32 world championship victories to his credit, Jochen Mass is one of the most successful sports...
Tall, handsome, and charming, Roy Salvadori was everything Hollywood ever wanted a racing driver to be. He was a ’50s–’60s...
Shot by the Gestapo, executed at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, killed on a death march from Sachsenhausen. All of those horrific things are said to have happened to Captain Charles Frederick William Grover-Williams, Grand Prix winner, member of the wartime ultra-secret French section of Britain’s Special Operations Executive and French...
I guess genius rather than hero is the correct way to describe Ferdinand Porsche, whose cars mobilized humanity and provided...
John Watson was one of those rare beasts: an Irish Grand Prix winner. It was a feat pulled off by...
Enzo Ferrari telephoned his driver Peter Collins before the 1956 Grand Prix of Italy for one of “those” conversations. The Great Man said he would not ask Peter to give up his chance of winning the year’s Formula One World Championship in favor of Fangio, but he wanted to know...
No way did Elisabeth Junek look like a racing driver. She was, well, a woman to begin with, and there...
Now, here was a giant killer. A man who beat the hell out of Mercedes-Benz at least twice and won Ferrari’s very first World Championship Grand Prix by beating the most successful racing car of all time. Born in Arrecifes, Argentina, in October 1922, Gonzalez was a tubby baby who...
Ken Tyrrell once said that, contrary to what had been written about him, he had no special talent for spotting...
Wealthy Belgian aristocrat Olivier Gendebien has the unique distinction of being Ferrari’s most successful GT and sports car racer. He...
Hans Stuck first met Adolf Hitler in 1925, when a mutual friend brought the budding Führer to the racing driver’s farm near Freiburg, Germany, for a day’s hunting. Hitler never forgot his day out and, after taking power on January 30, 1933, telephoned Stuck, who had been bemoaning the lack...
Dario Resta competed in the first race ever held on Britain’s hallowed Brooklands circuit on July 6, 1907, and died...
Just about everything there is to write has been written about American racing legend Mario Andretti, but we would be...
In the March 2009 VRJ I wrote about Don Blenderman’s Kurtis obsession and his wonderful Sutton-bodied 500KK. What I failed to mention was his lengthy quest to capture an example of Frank’s most prolific sports racer, the legendary 500S. The Kurtis 500S is a masterpiece in function and design. Introduced...
This is the story of a hero who was more heroic than most. You may not have heard of Archie...
Keke Rosberg was a kind of motor racing Cinderella Man. He went from the drudgery of retiring or not even...
Dan Gurney’s motor racing career as a driver, car constructor and team owner is just about as star-spangled as his country’s flag. After Phil Hill, he was the second American to win in Formula 1, and is considered the equal of that other American superstar, Mario Andretti. He is also...
