Johnny of the ready smile and blonde hair was a motor racing shooting star who might have aspired to becoming...
Lloyd Ruby hailed from Wichita Falls, Texas, up in the north central part of the state, not far from the...
Tucked away in a little potato-farming town, 250 miles south east of Buenos Aires, is one of the most important motor racing museums in the world, a tribute to the little town of Balcarce from the man whose life story it tells. It is the Centro Tecnologico-Cultural y Museo del...
He was elusive. Confined to a wheelchair, but more difficult to pin down than most people with the full use...
This large, domineering man invented the job of motor racing team manager and in doing so changed the way the...
The last time a car featured in my Heroes column was months back, when I wrote about the 1935 Alfa Romeo Bi-turbo, a fast if erratic machine with an Alfa P3 engine, front and rear. It was dreamt up by Enzo Ferrari and his designer Luigi Bazzi in a desperate...
Wealthy Belgian aristocrat Olivier Gendebien has the unique distinction of being Ferrari’s most successful GT and sports car racer. He...
Some time ago, Vintage Racecar published ”Absent Friends,” my story of astonishing heroism of another kind. It involved three motor...
René Dreyfus Biography The story begins in 1914 when René was nine years old. The middle of three children he speaks of his early life with fondness, growing up in Nice. He later joined the Moto Club de Nice, which was sort of a junior league Automobile Club de Nice....
Fluent in six languages, tall, with regular features set off by an immaculately clipped goatee beard and moustache, Jo Bonnier...
Austrian Berger scored four of his 10 Formula One Grand Prix victories while wearing the fabled Italian Racing Red livery...
Today, Franco Cortese is, perhaps, one of motor sport’s forgotten stars and he shouldn’t be. He was the driver who put Ferrari on the map in a career that spanned 156 races, 20 victories and top placings as long as your arm. During more than four decades, from 1926 to...
Now here is a man of his word—and it cost him dearly. In 1961, Innes agreed to drive for Formula...
Berger drove the Benetton B197 to pole and victory at the 1997 German Grand Prix.Photo: Jim Hatfield The world held...
Jochen Rindt Biography Rindt was born in Germany in 1942 of Austrian and German parentage. His parents died under Allied bombing in 1943 and he was taken to Graz in Austria where he was brought up by his grandparents. He took his place in the family spice importing business on...
John Watson was one of those rare beasts: an Irish Grand Prix winner. It was a feat pulled off by...
The boys from Brazil just keep on coming: Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna and, since 2002, Felipe Massa. The...
Woolf Barnato is the man with a perfect score. He entered the 24 Hours of Le Mans three times and won it three times: in 1928, 1929 and 1930, driving his own beloved Bentley cars. A record that still stands today, despite many attempts to break it over the last...
Luigi Bazzi Biography He was called the soul of Ferrari. He had been there from the beginning and Enzo Ferrari recalled his...
A rule change intended to draw more European entries to the third annual Indy 500 in 1913 opened the door...
Villeneuve won four races, including Indy, on his way to the 1995 CART Indycar crown. Photo: John Zimmermann Collection This self-confident Canadian is one of the élite. Only he, Mario Andretti and Emerson Fittipaldi have won motor racing’s grand slam, the CART Championship, the Indianapolis 500 and the Formula 1...
The British are usually all for the underdog and just love a giant killer. Well, they certainly got their money’s...
It was a word-of-mouth, invitation-only affair organized by his lovely wife Susie and a friend without Stirling Moss knowing a...
Nelson Piquet Biography Nelson Piquet was born on August 17, 1952 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The son of a government official he spent much of his childhood in the Brazilian capital, Brasília. At the age of 14 he was participating in kart races and was crowned Brazilian kart champion...
Hans Stuck first met Adolf Hitler in 1925, when a mutual friend brought the budding Führer to the racing driver’s...
Now Auto Union’s number one driver after replacing the dead Bernd Rosemeyer, Tazio Nuvolari and his Auto Union Type D...
Derek is the epitome of the driver who should have won the Formula One World Championship, but was just about always with the wrong team at the wrong time. He drove for some of the great names in the sport, like Renault and Lotus, but not when they were on...
Just about everything there is to write has been written about American racing legend Mario Andretti, but we would be...
Juan Manuel Fangio Biography Affectionately known as “bandy legs” by his many fans, Juan Manuel Fangio was born in Balcarce,...
Eddie Irvine has been a shrewd operator for most of his adult life. He carefully maneuvered himself into the second seat at Ferrari and kept it for four years—no mean feat in itself—where he developed just the right blend of acquiescence and competitiveness to create a positive working relationship with...