For the last 20 years or so of his life, Rodger Ward and I were friends. Even though I had...
Last year we celebrated a century of Grand Prix racing. The Grand Prix de l’Auto Club France was the first...
Back in late May, I flew over to England to, among other things, be a part of the GPLive event held at historic Donington Park. While England currently has over 16 different racing circuits, few if any, can claim the depth of history of Donington. Built in 1931, Donington Park...
Like Mario Andretti and Nigel Mansell, Emerson Fittipaldi is one of the elite. A driver who has won the Formula...
As I mentioned here, a few months ago, for several years I sorted the boxes of stuff that Eoin Young...
One of the most enjoyable—at least for me—of fifties events was the Pebble Beach Sports Car Road Races. The last one was held during April 1956 and, from then on, races in the area were held at Laguna Seca Raceway. In my May column in this magazine, I remembered the...
In early April, I made my way to Las Vegas for the inaugural Champ car Vegas Grand Prix. This new...
Louis Chiron Biography Born in August 1899, the son of a French hotelier in Monaco he became that principalities most...
Recently, I bought a ticket for the European Lottery, prompted by the fact that the jackpot was £66 million. The £1.50 I paid for my ticket bought a few days of fantasy, cheaper than Playboy. Apart from the anonymous acts of charity such booty would enable me to perform, my...
Like any good race-nut, over the years I’ve tried to chip away at my list of the “great automotive wonders...
David Purley was a hero you have probably never even heard of, but a hero he most certainly was. If...
Art Evans Fifty years ago, the world-famous Laguna Seca race course was created by a tree. It’s interesting as well as tragic to see how it happened. Interesting in that a lot of circumstances had to come together; tragic in that it involved the death of a good friend. First,...
Since the very dawn of motorsport, automobile racing has been governed by rules. The very first motoring competition was the...
This son of a German garage owner had never raced a car until May 26, 1935, at the superfast Avus circuit near Berlin. But by the end of 1936, he was the king of all he surveyed—the 1936 European Champion, with six Grand Prix victories to his credit. All scored...
Sexual debauchery, a regime’s imminent downfall and a kidnapping fit for a gentleman were some of the highlights of the...
In the early 1980s, the Marlboro British F3 Championship was reckoned the most desirable to be in. The top three...
Late last month, just as we were going to press, we learned of the tragic and untimely death of ’70s Formula One star Clay Regazzoni. Regazzoni was driving on the Italian Autostrada, on his way to a club function, when he lost control of his specially-equipped Chrysler Voyager and crashed...
Achille Varzi was the opposite of his capricious nemesis Tazio Nuvolari, who was steeped in instinctive talent. Varzi was a...
I’m writing this column during the waning days of 2006. Fifty years is traditionally a significant anniversary. What I remember...
A friend phoned saying he had been offered a CTG, and the vendor claimed it had been designed by Len Terry. I knew Cyril Malem, who ran CTG, and much of the outfit’s work was subcontracted to the racing industry. Len Terry did design a CTG for FF2000, and it...
Now that VR has editorial offices in the U.S., the UK and Australia, I’ve been fortunate to make a lot...
Niki Lauda Biography Andreas Nikolaus Lauda was born to a well-to-do Vienna family on February 22, 1949. His family’s social status...
During the fifties, I not only had a business relationship with Bill Devin, but we were also friends. We saw each other rather frequently in later years when he and his wife, Mildred, (we called her “Middie”) moved close to my Palm Springs house. When Bill passed away in November...
As we’ve become familiar with, over the past two decades, the concept of ground effects—that is managing the airflow underneath...
John Michael Hawthorn was a Yorkshire lad of 24 with hardly any top-level motor racing experience when he drove the race of his life and beat the 1950, 1951 and 1952 Formula One World Champions, Giuseppe Farina, Juan Manuel Fangio and Alberto Ascari in the 1953 Grand Prix of France....
As old age creeps up, I think of things that are a must for me and perhaps also for readers...
I find it really hard to believe that this issue of Vintage Racecar is our 100th! I recently had a full set of back issues bound and it is kind of amazing to look back at all those issues and the improvements that the magazine has gone through over these...
