Motorsport Legends Speak
Interviews & Words With The Heroes of Motorsports
This is where the rubber meets the road, where the smell of burnt rubber and high-octane fuel mingles with the sharp insights of those who have lived and breathed motorsports. Here, the legends of racing take the wheel, sharing their firsthand experiences, hard-won wisdom, and unique perspectives in a collection of captivating articles and exclusive interviews.
The Driver's Seat: Insights from Motorsports Legends
This is where the rubber meets the road, where the smell of burnt rubber and high-octane fuel mingles with the sharp insights of those who have lived and breathed motorsports. Here, the legends of racing take the wheel, sharing their firsthand experiences, hard-won wisdom, and unique perspectives in a collection of captivating articles and exclusive interviews. Get ready to dive deep into the minds of champions as they dissect race strategy, reflect on career-defining moments, and offer a glimpse into the intense pressure and exhilaration of life at the limit. Hear from visionary engineers, team owners, motorsport executives, and influential figures who shape the sport from behind the scenes.
In Mass’ last full year, 1991, he teamed with Jean-Louis Schlesser in this C11 for the Mercedes-Benz WSC team as they shared 7th in the championship. With no less than 32 World Championship victories to his credit, Jochen Mass is one of the most successful sports car racers of all...
In 1980, people laughed when they heard Audi was developing a four-wheel-drive rally car. Hadn’t Ford tried that with their Capri 10 years earlier and drawn a blank? But the detractors stopped laughing when an Audi Quattro won the 1981 Janner Rally in Austria by 20 minutes. And they were...
Parnelli JonesPhoto: John Zimmermann This year marks the 50th anniversary of Parnelli Jones’ 1963 Indianapolis 500 victory. That win, from pole position, turned out to be his only one although at least three others slipped from his grasp through various misfortunes. In his rookie year of 1961, he was leading...
For a “round peg,” John Cooper Fitch fits remarkably “squarely” in the pigeonhole marked “True American Hero.” In his 85 years so far on this planet, he has risked life and limb for his country as a WWII fighter pilot as well as for his own pleasure in racing cars...
Paddy Hopkirk’s name is almost synonymous with the rise of the rallying Mini Cooper. His win in the Monte Carlo Rally in 1964 made him a household name. However, he raced as much as he rallied and has a phenomenal 280 events to his credit. He started rallying in a...
Although my home was near to the Zandvoort circuit in Holland, my family had nothing to do with the motor industry or motor racing. However, as a young boy I became involved with the ground staff at the track. My job was to help out at the Skid Control Center,...
His contemporaries called him the “Garibaldino,” a term they reserved for the best of their select band. Like Giuseppe Garibaldi, the general who kicked the Austrians and French out of Italy in the mid-19th century, Antonio Ascari, was a courageous and determined fighter. He was the one who always got...
Derek Bell initially made a name for himself, racing in open-wheeled cars including Formula 2 and Formula 1. However, it is long-distance sports car racing, particularly in Porsches, where Bell forged his legacy as a champion with five overall victories at Le Mans, three victories in the 24 Hours of...
It was a very difficult decision at the time to go to Audi, which seems strange now. But then I was doing very well and had a few good possibilities to do rallies with other manufacturers, but Audi persuaded me to come to test the normal Quattro car. I could...
Miss Moss wrestled the beastly Austin-Healey 3000 to victory in the 1960 Liege-Rome-Liege Rally, likely the greatest drive of her distinguished career. Really, this column should be called “Heroine” this time, because it’s about one of the greatest stars of post-war world rallying, a woman who took on the best...
Rick Mears will always be known as one of the few men ever to win the Indianapolis 500 four times, but despite an Indycar career of legendary proportions, the guy once called “Rocket Rick: The Fastest Man on Four Wheels” was no one-trick pony. As we know, he started out...
“Among my drivers, Giovanni Bracco was, perhaps, the one who scored the most spectacular success,” Enzo Ferrari once said about the fun-loving, booze-loving winner of the 1952 Mille Miglia. Bracco won other races, but he will always be remembered for his climb from nowhere to victory, chain-smoking and swigging red...
Tony DeLorenzo Photo: Courtesy of Tony DeLorenzo Tony DeLorenzo’s father, Anthony G., was a newspaperman, a reporter for UPI who then went to work for the Kudner Agency where one of the clients was GM’s Buick Division. There he was “discovered” and hired away by GM president Harlow Curtis. This...
A million clichés come to mind. Giant killer is probably the worst, pummelled to death by a thousand newspaper hacks, but that’s exactly what the original Ecurie Ecosse was. A meteor that came from nowhere and took the world’s endurance motor racing crown—twice. It was a shoestring operation working out...
Surgeon, Author, Avid Collector VR: Why don’t we start off at the very beginning? How old were you when you were first bitten by the bug? No Subscription? You’re missing out Any Text Here Get Started Already a Member? Sign in to your account here....
Event Director, Motorclassica Having just celebrated its sixth successful year, Australia’s Motorclassica has gone from strength to strength with preparations very much under way for its seventh staging in October 2016, once again in Melbourne’s iconic, heritage-listed Royal Exhibition Building. It is the only such event held in Australia. No...
No way did Elisabeth Junek look like a racing driver. She was, well, a woman to begin with, and there were not many of them hefting potent racing cars around in the 1920s. And she was petite, her fair hair framing a kind, gently smiling face. Even when she raced...
Lory Lockwood, David Snyder and Dan Reed During The Elegance at Hershey, this past June, VR Contributor J. Michael Hemsley moderated a seminar on collecting automotive art, where three artists shared insights into the origins of their automotive art and the process of how it is created. No Subscription? You’re...
Oklahoma-Based Collector, Brass-Era Enthusiast VR: How did you develop your interest in automobiles and brass era cars in particular? No Subscription? You’re missing out Any Text Here Get Started Already a Member? Sign in to your account here....
Growing up as young lad near the metropolitan borough of Wolverhampton, a city in the West Midlands of England, I was interested in cars from an early age. Indeed, my father had a couple of garage dealerships, one with Ford and the other with BMC, or British Leyland as it...
Carol Spears In the late ’60s, a boyfriend introduced me to motor racing. Until then it had been all horseback riding and 4-H. The big thing then was the Can-Am, so we went to the l967 race at Laguna Seca and sat outside Turn 9. When the relationship ended, I...
My first race was a small event at a BARC Goodwood Members Meeting, at the wheel of my Jowett Jupiter. Although my father enjoyed cars, there was no history of anyone in my family competing, so I was on new territory and learned as I went along from personal mistakes...
With no fewer than 32 world championship victories to his credit, Jochen Mass is one of the most successful sports car racers of all time. He was only beaten to the unofficial title of the most successful by his longtime co-driver, Jacky Ickx, who has 37 wins. Born in Munich,...
Clive Cussler is an American adventure novelist and marine archaeologist. His thriller novels, many featuring the character Dirk Pitt, have reached The New York Times fiction best-seller list more than seventeen times. Cussler is the founder and chairman of the real-life National Underwater and Marine Agency (NUMA), which has discovered...
My first exposure to Formula Ford came as a lot of us began hearing about how neat it was in Britain, and certainly in 1968 I was aware of all the car importers and the future American manufacturers getting started in the class. By 1968, my career racing sports cars...
Jacques Laffite has enjoyed a reputation for many years as an open and straightforward person, willing to talk seriously about his career and motor racing in general. He was very helpful when VR’s European Editor asked him to contribute to his Alfa Romeo Tipo 33 book, and he was just...
Vittorio Jano Biography Born on April 22, 1891 as Viktor János in San Giorgio Canavese to Hungarian immigrants, Vittorio Jano was the son of the Technical Director at one of Turin’s two arsenals. At 18, after completing instruction at the Instituto Professionale Operaio in Turin he took a job as...
From 1950 until his premature retirement from road racing and hillclimbing just three years later, Tommy Hoan set his competitors on their collective ear with the sheer speed of his 1949 MG TC. In the Queen Catharine Cup race of 1952, he also shot out the window of the Grill...
I had seen this well-used Lotus 18 sitting in a grumpy little foreign car repair shop hard along Ventura Blvd. in Studio City, California. The guy who owned the shop and the Lotus was named “Buck” something or another as I recall. I kept driving by and looking at that...
The McLaren garage was filled with former F1 cars and a crew of technicians and laptops to support them. © Rex McAfee Saturday November 13th, I sat down with McLaren Racing’s Chief Executive Officer Zak Brown. The conversation took place in McLaren’s vintage Condor motor home, painted in…you guessed it,...
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