[Click here to read the first installment] Poland, Denmark and Norway had fallen to Nazi Germany and the blitzkrieg up...
The first few years of the 1950s saw sports car events evolve from chummy club gatherings for “gentlemen racers” into...
His signature sky blue helmet firmly strapped to his head, Alberto Ascari poses for a Pirelli publicity picture before the 1952 Italian GP at Monza. Photo Pirelli One spring day in 1961, two boys gazed enraptured through a light post-and-rail fence at a fantastic motor race that was going on...
Photo: Hal Crocker In the world of motor sports, the wind genie escaped from his bottle during the mid-1960s, and...
Environment affects evolution. Case in point: racing sedans. European sedans, contending with high fuel costs and operating on winding and...
By the mid-1950s international motor racing was beginning to flourish in Africa, south of the equator. In September 1957, international racing spread to the west coast of Africa and the first Angolan Grand Prix took place. It had an international flavor and TAP, the Portuguese airline, ferried a trio of...
The more in-depth summaries of the life and career of Phil Hill have focussed on three significant aspects: the racing...
Michael Andretti slides the all-conquering Ralt RT-5 Super Vee to victory at Riverside Raceway in 1981. Andretti was just one...
In 1955 Denis Jenkinson wrote of the EMW sports racers: “By comparison, the well-known 300 SLR Mercedes-Benz sports cars have a poor air-flow over the bodywork with their numerous louvers, scoops and bulges.” Praise indeed! The prototype BMW 340-1 Sportswagen was produced in 1949 and intended for series production. For...
2007 SAFETY GEAR DEVELOPMENTS Some significant new products for vintage racers seen at the 2007 Performance Racing Industry Show. LEATT-BRACE...
We all know their names, and they all would tell you that we do because they won this one race....
Prior to the 1914 French Grand Prix, the ultimately successful Mercedes team lines up in preparation. Eventual winner Lautenschlager’s car is second from left.Photo: Daimler AG It was the race every manufacturer and driver wanted to win. Having created the Grand Prix de l‘Automobile Club de France in 1906, France...
Aston Martin entered the1959 sports car season targeting just a single race, Le Mans, but walked away the deserving winner...
Only four names come to mind when one recalls which drivers have driven their self-constructed cars in World Championship Grands...
Sam Hanks may have been a quiet man who preferred to keep to himself, but at the wheel of a racing car he became a formidable force Between the two world wars, as Americans watched the Roaring Twenties tumble into the Great Depression and erode into the Dust Bowl, any...
Sixty years ago, an American sportsman built his own cars to tackle the world’s greatest endurance race Many in America...
“Gregg, Peter (FA),” was filed between “Greenwood, John” and “Gregory, Masten.” The file, dog-eared and stained with the outline of...
Alfa Romeo will be 100 years old on June 24 and its motor sport pedigree almost 99—one of only a handful of companies that can trace their motor racing heritage back to the start of the 20th century. But Alfa’s is a kind of pear-shaped pedigree, in which the Italian...
If you are even just slightly interested in Australian motor racing there are two Sundays of the year that are...
Alfa Romeo has a long history in racing that dates back to 1910 and extends to Formula One today. Throughout...
Jack Johnson behind the wheel. Black participation in American motorsports dates back to 1909, when then heavyweight champion Jack Johnson won several races in a Southern California race carnival. In 1910, at a time when the American Automobile Association (AAA) approved racecar driver licenses, Johnson submitted an application. It was...
Although it has nearly been forgotten now, in the late 1950s and early 1960s there was a professional road racing...
The Resurrection of an Indy Icon John Cooper sits at the wheel of the Kimberly Cooper prior to Tech inspection...
Harry Arminius Miller (1875–1943) was the greatest individual designer and builder of racing cars and engines of the 20th century, a statement I write advisedly, fully aware of the many brilliant individuals who have contributed to the sport of speed over the previous 100 years. Harry Miller began his career...
Patriotic Races “It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that, in consequence of a persistence by Germany of...
Karl Abarth was a magician. A waver of wands whose magic brought the exquisite pleasure of higher-performance motoring and motor...
Hermann Paul Müller’s Auto Union heads into Schwantz Curve in 1938.Photo: Simon Lewis Donington devotee John Bailie is researching, designing and editing a book, planned for launch later this year, which focusses on the venue’s pre-war history and the dramatic progress it made in just a few full seasons of...
One of the great things about the growth of historic racing over the past decade is the wide variety of...
Agility and power. Those were two key demands of the 3,000 and more hairpins, corners and bends that made up...
E.D. Martin’s all-conquering Ferrari 315S awaits the start of the Feature Race in April of 1958.Photo: Benita Lane The revised January 1960 layout of the Dunnellon Park course resembled an arrowhead. Program cover for the inaugural SCCA races at Dunnellon. The course was actually 3.4 miles long. Located in North...