A graduate in mechanical engineering, they called the nephew of Pinin Farina il dottore, the doctor. An austere, intolerant man,...
It was 11 in the morning. A 25-year-old German pastry cook was sleeping after a hard night’s baking. Until the phone squealed. He decided to ignore it, turn over and go back to sleep, but it was no good, the phone just rang and rang. So he answered it. At...
Hans Stuck first met Adolf Hitler in 1925, when a mutual friend brought the budding Führer to the racing driver’s...
Exotic doesn’t cut it when it comes to describing this gutsy, fun-loving, vivacious show-off of a beauty who was born...
Contracted to race as a senior driver for Mercedes-Benz in 1937, Lang validated his selection with victories in the Tripoli Grand Prix and at Berlin’s dauntingly high-banked Avus Ring, where he recorded a top speed of more than 237 mph with this streamlined W125.Photo: Mercedes-Benz Hermann Lang so nearly didn’t...
Now here is a man of his word—and it cost him dearly. In 1961, Innes agreed to drive for Formula...
When Jack Brabham was demobbed from the Royal Australian Air Force in 1947, even he did not realize he was...
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,...
Jacky Ickx and the smoky Martini Porsche 936 just made it to the end to claim the win for himself,...
Villeneuve won four races, including Indy, on his way to the 1995 CART Indycar crown. Photo: John Zimmermann Collection This...
“Sex – the breakfast of Champions” was the legend on the T-shirt the 1976 Formula 1 World Champion wore under his driving suit. Ex-public schoolboy irreverence that only partially sums up this deceptively talented, sophisticated and intelligent man. He personified that much overworked term charisma, but he was also an...
Immediately after the Second World War, Jean-Pierre Wimille, Louis Chiron, Philippe Etancelin, and Raymond Sommer carried France’s colors back into...
The 1936 Bugatti Type 57G was also known as “The Tank” and it won Le Mans in 1939, just weeks...
Born to a Paris butcher and his wife in April 1937, the late Jean-Pierre Beltoise had won the incredible number of 11 French national motorcycle racing championships, in three years, by the time he was 28. After that, he made a profession out of being a champion of many forms...
It had been a long, hard ride from winning masses of kart races when he was a kid to winning...
Jimmy Murphy Biography Jimmy Murphy was born in 1894 but tragedy soon struck the Murphy family when his mother died while Murphy was two and his father succumbed to injuries suffered in the great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906 which left Murphy an orphan. Forced to work for a living...
At the end of 1969, during the height of the Ferrari-Porsche World Sports Car Championship “wars,” Jo Siffert was wined...
Fluent in six languages, tall, with regular features set off by an immaculately clipped goatee beard and moustache, Jo Bonnier...
In Mass’ last full year, 1991, he teamed with Jean-Louis Schlesser in this C11 for the Mercedes-Benz WSC team as they shared 7th in the championship. With no less than 32 World Championship victories to his credit, Jochen Mass is one of the most successful sports car racers of all...
With no fewer than 32 world championship victories to his credit, Jochen Mass is one of the most successful sports...
Jochen Rindt Biography Rindt was born in Germany in 1942 of Austrian and German parentage. His parents died under Allied...
If he lasted long enough—that is, if he didn’t get killed in the process—canny observers thought this young South African could become a Formula One World Champion. Not even their crystal ball, though, could have predicted how: it was when driving a Ferrari 312T4 at Monza, the holiest of holies...
Surtees qualified his Ferrari 158 5th for the 1964 British Grand Prix at Brands Hatch and drove up to finish...
John Watson was one of those rare beasts: an Irish Grand Prix winner. It was a feat pulled off by...
Johnny of the ready smile and blonde hair was a motor racing shooting star who might have aspired to becoming the new Jim Clark. His rise to fame, however, came to a sudden—even if temporary—standstill after a horrendous 10-car, 150 mph Formula 3000 accident while driving Jordan Racing’s Reynard-Ford Cosworth...
Now, here was a giant killer. A man who beat the hell out of Mercedes-Benz at least twice and won...
Juan Manuel Fangio Biography Affectionately known as “bandy legs” by his many fans, Juan Manuel Fangio was born in Balcarce,...
A rule change intended to draw more European entries to the third annual Indy 500 in 1913 opened the door for Peugeot to bring two cars powered by its 160 hp four-cylinder engine with dual overhead cams, four valves per cylinder and domed combustion chambers, one of which Goux drove...
