I am unsettled. I know it. But I don’t know why. Is it this grass, groomed to unnatural golf course...
Dan Gurney once tried to show me how to wring the neck of a recalcitrant racecar to squeeze out that last tenth of a second, and I blew it. The lesson, I mean. Couldn’t take in a thing… except something important about Dan Gurney. You don’t get a lot of...
Mainstream media are chattering these days about “green” cars. Like it’s some new idea. Well, I’ve been a fan of...
Dan Gurney, as American as we make ’em, was once proposed to be President, and I still think our conflicted...
Pete Lyons F1’s 3-liter formula that began in 1966 was hospitable to American constructors. All three U.S. domestic marques that achieved 1st place in a Grand Prix did so in that period. The winners were Dan Gurney’s Eagle at Spa in 1967, John Watson in a Penske in Austria, 1976,...
This month Pete is recovering from a “close encounter of the surgical kind.” Pete is doing well and will return...
My colleague Tim Considine cordially feels I was unfair in my recent column about Cooper’s development of mid-engined race cars....
In the youth of our racing enthusiasm, we tend to think obituaries are for drivers. We don’t foresee, or at least don’t want to, that time also will rob us of friends who don’t court risk on the track. Art Eastman, artist, photographer, writer, editor, passionate enthusiast, and friend, departed...
Le Mans champion Roy Salvadori once wrote in a UK magazine, decades ago, about driving his winning Aston Martin DBR1...
Howden Ganley stopped by our vendor booth at the recent Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion, where one of the old photos...
The last car ends its cool-off lap, sending one last snap of delicious sound echoing away across the raceway. This is when another kind of fun begins. Pete Lyons In the quiet aftermath of a sports car race the other day, I was asking one of the younger pro drivers...
Here’s a big four-oh for me: That many years ago this month the Can-Am began, and basically so did my...
It remains beyond my sight whether the story of life has a happy ending, but I do see that some of us have the knack of living happily. One of the secrets, I think, is to create good that lives on. My friend Bill Devin – I feel that way...
Interview most any racecar designer and you’ll likely hear a beautifully turned tale of insight, and enlightenment, and clever science...
Like all heroes, Brett Lunger denies being one. To him, running into fire broiling from Niki Lauda’s crashed Ferrari, its...
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...
Pete Lyons Hail the “Mod Scot!” Such a thought must have flickered through many minds as 27 Group 7 machines...
Pete Lyons The year was 1970. The year the ground turned over under America’s greatest sports racing car series. It...
We aren’t timeless, but our artifacts can be, and the achievements they represent should live forever. That’s at least some comfort as I mourn the loss of a friend while simultaneously celebrating the rebirth of a car he did much to make immortal. My friend was Carroll Smith, author, engineer...
Can Chris Pook save open-wheel road racing in America? Whatever the answer turns out to be, I reckon every reader...
Pete Lyons Stirling Moss deliberately steering his Lotus into rain puddles around the Nürburgring—reading about that may have been the...
I didn’t see the accident happen, and it was many laps later when my photo trek around South Africa’s Kyalami circuit brought me to the blackened wreckage. Thanks to the public address speakers, I knew Clay Regazzoni was alive. Still, his burned-out BRM was a grisly sight and I thought...
Pete Lyons News that Formula One is so financially distressed… Wait! Let us savor this! Become a Member & Get...
New race courses keep blinking onto our radar screens, which seems like a good thing until they turn up on our TV screens. Or at least on mine. For me, the new breed of supercircuits mostly invokes disappointment and, worse, boredom. There are exceptions. Even on TV, which tends to...
Let’s call her “Debbie,” because that’s what Derrick Walker called her and I never did get her right name. Must’ve...
For all the great drivers who contested the old Can-Am, few did well. Your Amons, Andrettis, Brabhams, Elfords, Joneses, Halls,...
Pete Lyons The little Speedster stared out the dealership’s window like a puppy, its big eyes pleading mournfully: Won’t you take me home? A young couple kept stopping by to gaze in at the radiant red roadster. “Every week—sometimes more often—we fell in love with it.” Become a Member &...
