In motor racing we meet some very able people, and some very fine ones. It’s wonderful when they’re the same...
In racing, we sometimes get to cheer wins that come first-time-out. At the other end of the scale lies the...
Some of us – we know who we are – go all slack in the knees before certain racing machines. One example for me is the Reventlow Scarab sports car of 1958. They still rivet my eye more than 44 years after I first saw their lovely lines. Why? I...
Among the array of anniversaries we’ve been celebrating recently, one is a particular standout for me. It’s now 50 years...
Peering forward along Brian Blain’s long blue hood, I could see far back into the past. That square radiator cowl...
Did your heart rev up when you heard Dan Gurney was trying to resurrect his old Eagle F1 team? Dan told me about it during the recent U.S. Grand Prix at Indianapolis. He and two business partners had been trying for two years to get the funding in place and...
Can Chris Pook save open-wheel road racing in America? Whatever the answer turns out to be, I reckon every reader...
One sunny spring day in Spain, twenty-three Grand Prix drivers shut themselves into a van in a race paddock, refusing...
Anyone who saw the terrifying tape of Mario Andretti’s 200-mph “blowover” at Indianapolis on April 23rd will easily visualize the same guy booting Duncan Dayton’s Lotus 79 around Long Beach 11 days earlier. No, happily, the historic F1 car came back unscathed. But Mario, a racer of legendary stature, sure...
We aren’t timeless, but our artifacts can be, and the achievements they represent should live forever. That’s at least some...
Fifty years ago, in 1953, an American-made Cunningham sports racing car won the second-ever Sebring 12 Hour race. Then Briggs Swift Cunningham’s team carried the blue-and-white competition colors of the USA to the 21st 24 Hours of Le Mans, earning 3rd place overall and 1st in class. “Mr. C” died...
Watching it happen, it was hard to appreciate the magnitude of the achievement. The big blue roadster hardly made any...
Some of you model makers, I know, and probably you historic artists too, have been wondering why Jo Siffert’s 1971...
Thirty years ago the world was no less crassly simplistic than it is today, and many people glancing at Peter Revson only wanted to see his glamorous lifestyle and gorgeous girlfriends—a privileged, pretty boy at play. What I preferred to see was his marvelous talent, his quiet, thoughtful intelligence, and...
The first time I went to VIR-ginia International Raceway was in 1960, and road courses like this pastoral gem were...
The other evening I watched a panel of motorsport reporters on a TV show name their “driver of the year.”...
Recent discussion in these pages about a supposed sixth Grand Sport racing Corvette rang two bells with me. First, I can confirm at least part of the story. Zora Duntov himself once told me that he’d built an extra GS, in secret, for Chevrolet engineers to play with. But he...
Friday evening before the 1975 Austrian Grand Prix, over dinner in a quiet countryside hotel, Mark Donohue told us about...
Pete Lyons Fifty years—let’s set the old timescope at that fulsome number today. It’s been a long time since 1954,...
Speaking to a room packed with eager ears, Vic Elford was well into a detailed description of how he used to drive the Chaparral 2J’s “automatic” transmission in 1970 when he abruptly paused. Poker-faced, he turned to the long-secretive creator of the fabulous Road Runners, who was standing nearby and...
In a Millennium when Ferrari seems all-conquering in F1, it’s hard to remember the bad old days of the late...
The happy driver you see here is not Henry Gritzback, aka “Grampa.” How I came to know that is a...
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...
Shanghai’s gaudy new, $300-million supercircuit, home of the first-ever Grand Prix in China, has a truly distinctive first turn complex....
This month Pete is recovering from a “close encounter of the surgical kind.” Pete is doing well and will return next month. Please enjoy one of Pete’s best from a very early issue of VRJ. “Absolutely amazing, what you accumulate. Photos, trophies; as we were going through, we thought we...
Pete Lyons Mr. Cozza lifted the right side of the center-hinged bonnet and bent over the long, bristling racing engine....
It was one of those good races spoiled by bad scoring. After taking the checkered flag at 10 pm, Phil Hill and Carroll Shelby had about 20 minutes to savor their “win” in a Ferrari. Then Jaguar drivers Mike Hawthorn and Phil Walters were called to replace them in the...
