After sending in last month’s column, I was prepared for the Editor’s call to discuss corrections, or photo selection, or...
In motor racing we meet some very able people, and some very fine ones. It’s wonderful when they’re the same...
Nearly 12 years ago, Parker Johnstone walked away from a strong career as a professional Indy car driver with 2...
Sometime in the rainy wee hours of the recent Rolex 24 at Daytona, a race I find myself covering again after a lapse of, gosh, decades, one of my younger colleagues turned and asked, “So what do you think?” My response wasn’t prepared, but it was instant. “Well, it’s not...
Pete Lyons Take something for granted, and we risk having it ripped away. For me, foolish me, Peter Bryant was...
Our sport is gaudy, so noisy, so cherished and studied and conserved … how can so much of racing’s history...
Forty years! That’s how long it’s been since our man Philip Toll Hill, Jr., became the first American to win the World Driving Championship. There are two ways to look at such a span of time. I’ll bet some of us – maybe even Phil himself – would like to...
Pete Lyons I edged my toes to the brink of an abyss a thousand feet deep, issuing my own small...
Like a flawlessly cut gemstone, the latest iteration—is it the seventh?—of Porsche’s ageless 911 looks perfect to my eye. They’ve...
Its svelte silhouette has been a fixture of our sport for—take a breath—practically half a century. Incredibly, the lines and layout of the original Porsche 911s are recognizable in the most recent ones. And next year we’ll see yet another model iteration that will look fresh and new, but still...
A sudden snarl under my elbow, the mighty baritone of a big, twin-cam six with open pipes. Then a flash...
For all its color and commotion, which I do enjoy, I also like vintage racing for the moments of quiet...
Pete Lyons Have you ever crushed an aluminum can, then found yourself wondering, “Could I straighten it back out, like new?” Of course you couldn’t … unless you’re a metalsmithing sorcerer like those at Classic Motor Cars Ltd. (CMC), one of those fabled restoration shops in the dear old UK,...
Pete Lyons You’d need a piece of paper the size of Texas to write down all that should be said...
There was the time I went to the Targa Florio and was strolling by a restaurant in the night-dark streets...
Riverside has at last completely disappeared, wholly obliterated under new development. No longer can you find your way to the last remaining section of the old International Raceway and pluck out a souvenir chunk of asphalt, as I wrote about doing in the VR of September 1999. Pete Lyons By...
“Dinosaurs,” we called them, ridiculing their bulk, their weight, their mindless loyalty to outmoded dogma. Indy Roadsters; they were rife...
Peering forward along Brian Blain’s long blue hood, I could see far back into the past. That square radiator cowl...
We sprang over the crest of Paddock Hill Bend at 80 or more, the little Lotus Europa cocked way sideways, scrawny tires screaming. I was trying to burrow into the passenger side of the cockpit, jamming my knees against the insides of the legwell, both hands gripping…whatever they could grip....
It’s time to talk NASCAR. It usually is. NASCAR’s calendar is the longest in racing, so it has the shortest...
Pete Lyons Fair warning: I know very little about my topic, which is Rush, the new movie set in the...
Pete Lyons Fifty years—let’s set the old timescope at that fulsome number today. It’s been a long time since 1954, yet it’s still within reach of mind—of mine, anyway. For me, photographs of that age have eerie dual powers—they depict a world so distant as to seem alien, yet often...
It was one of those good races spoiled by bad scoring. After taking the checkered flag at 10 pm, Phil...
Speaking to a room packed with eager ears, Vic Elford was well into a detailed description of how he used...
Racing lays down rich strata of history with every passing season, but even though their glory days mostly lie four decades in the past, Carroll Shelby and his Cobras are at no risk of sinking into the fossilizing ooze of obscurity. Both names are true icons in American motorsports lore,...
Maybe I’ll change my mind by the end of the column, but as I tap out this opening sentence, I...
Pete Lyons Corvette didn’t show well at Le Mans this year, which is unusual, and I suppose in time we’ll...
David’s repeated defeats of Goliath this summer—American Le Mans Series victories by Porsche’s RS Spyder over Audi’s much bigger and stronger R10—takes us right back to the early days of Porsche, when it made its name as an upstart giant-killer. Pete Lyons It’s a natural human trait to root for...
