The rain came down cold, heavy, unrelenting, and my lightweight sweater was instantly drenched through. By half distance I was...
Pete Lyons Any idea what we’re looking at here? Don’t wait for me to tell you, I only have the...
Pete Lyons Got paper and pen at hand? Or simple fingers will do: Try coming up with a list of...
Pete Lyons Something is missing. Look around the race tracks, the city streets, the holiday hotspots … see what isn’t...
Howden Ganley stopped by our vendor booth at the recent Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion, where one of the old photos...
When I were but a lad, my notion of a perfect Saturday was to walk down to the train station in our suburban village and ride the half hour into New York City, where I would spend hours upon hours wandering the marvel-strewn halls of the American Museum of Natural...
The steering feel; that’s what I remember best. The pinion perfectly meshing with its rack was a tactile delight in...
Third-time charm! That’s what we Can-Am fans were hoping for 40 Septembers ago. On the first of this month in...
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 &...
With F1 about to try another comeback in the U.S., next year in Texas, our minds inevitably reach back half...
This is the sad tale of my first chance to own a sports car and how I blew it—the chance,...
For all its color and commotion, which I do enjoy, I also like vintage racing for the moments of quiet reflection it offers. It’s Monday after the Monterey Historics, and as I review kaleidoscopic mental images from a long, action-crammed weekend, I find what stand out brightest now are sights...
Sixty years ago was when—for me—the world became modern. Many people will laugh at that; some will understand but have...
In a Millennium when Ferrari seems all-conquering in F1, it’s hard to remember the bad old days of the late...
Pete Lyons Stirling Moss deliberately steering his Lotus into rain puddles around the Nürburgring—reading about that may have been the first time I ever really thought about racing tires. It was the German Grand Prix of 1961. The 1.5-liter formula had just come in, and the tiny, 4-cylinder Coventry Climax...
Forty Memorial Days ago, I sat in the Indianapolis grandstand across from the pits and witnessed Graham Hill capturing the...
I’ve had a dream, one of the rare ones I remember clearly and can’t stop thinking about. That must mean...
Here’s a sure bet: a lot of what you know about the Mille Miglia, and most of how you feel about it, came through the writings of a short, towering genius of a journalist named Denis Jenkinson. Can there be any racing fan who has not thrilled to the epic...
Can Chris Pook save open-wheel road racing in America? Whatever the answer turns out to be, I reckon every reader...
The late news—very late—that U.S. open-wheel racing’s long uncivil war has finally staggered to its hemorrhagic conclusion, fell with less...
One sunny spring day in Spain, twenty-three Grand Prix drivers shut themselves into a van in a race paddock, refusing to come out and drive their F1 cars. The event promoters threatened to seize the cars and all other team assets. Feelings escalated almost to the point of guns. Tragically,...
Like all heroes, Brett Lunger denies being one. To him, running into fire broiling from Niki Lauda’s crashed Ferrari, its...
It’s time to talk NASCAR. It usually is. NASCAR’s calendar is the longest in racing, so it has the shortest...
Pete Lyons Come with me to Italy, if you’ve got a minute, I want to show you something neat. We’re standing along a sun-drenched country road, waiting for old race cars in the Mille Miglia Storica commemorative rally to appear. It’s a scene of joyous beauty, with flowers spangling the...
In motor racing we meet some very able people, and some very fine ones. It’s wonderful when they’re the same...
Pete Lyons The year was 1970. The year the ground turned over under America’s greatest sports racing car series. It...
Interview most any racecar designer and you’ll likely hear a beautifully turned tale of insight, and enlightenment, and clever science artfully applied. Then, there were the Coopers. Neither father Charles, nor son John, were science-minded. In fact, they had no more than basic formal education. What they did bring to...