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.
Swiss-born Bernard Juchli is the Higgins to Jay Leno’s Robin Masters and serves as the Major Domo for the Big Dog Garage where he is, at various times, mechanic, engineer, fabricator, manager and auto historian. Despite his full plate, he still looks forward to going to work. VR: So how...
To have a successful career as a racer and then parlay that into a successful career as a team owner is admirable. To have won several championships, qualified for the Indy 500 and the inaugural Long Beach Grand Prix, while giving numerous up and coming drivers their start, is impressive....
Oosthoek’s first car was this ’50s Fiat 1100, which was so rusty, he covered the holes with decals! VR: How did you first get started with cars? No Subscription? You’re missing out Any Text Here Get Started Already a Member? Sign in to your account here....
While best known in current racing circles as the Director of CART’s Indy Lights Series, Roger Bailey has had a long and colorful career in motorsport that includes working as a mechanic for teams like Ferrari, McLaren and Cooper. John R. Wright sat down with Bailey during the CART Toronto...
I think I would point to three big moments in my past career, in addition to what I am doing now in team management in the FIA GT Championship. The first was when I won the European Championship in Formula 2. The next moment wasn’t my first win in Formula...
Tom Walkinshaw began his racing career as just another youngster trying to find ways to indulge his passions, and by the time he stepped away he had amassed a number of championship titles for himself and his corporate partners, including Jaguar’s last two victories at Le Mans and their pair...
In this concluding installment of our interview with Trans-Am record-breaker Tom Kendall, we pick up the narrative just after he’s won his first Trans-Am crown and been invited to compete in the International Race of Champions. Then came the downside, and his big leg-smashing GTP crash at Watkins Glen, where...
Now, here was a giant killer. A man who beat the hell out of Mercedes-Benz at least twice and won Ferrari’s very first World Championship Grand Prix by beating the most successful racing car of all time. Born in Arrecifes, Argentina, in October 1922, Gonzalez was a tubby baby who...
My story of Formula One came into being after I’d driven my GT40 and got all that out of the way. I thought I could become a decent single-seater driver in the various club events that existed at the time. I was studying Autosport one day in late 1968 and...
Billy Krause started his racing career driving midgets on California oval dirt tracks. He went on to race his own Jaguar D-type, which he later converted to Chevrolet Corvette power. His list of accomplishments is impressive. In 1960, he won the Times Grand Prix against some of the best opposition...
In the 1920s and 1930s, British schoolboys devoured every word they could find about their favorite comic book heroes, like Biggles and Dick Barton, Special Agent. In Sir Henry Birkin Bt, however, they had a real live, walking, talking hero and they idolized him all the more. He was passably...
Starting his career in the early ’60s behind the wheel of a Mini, John Fitzpatrick quickly worked his way to the top echelons of the endurance racing world. From winning the British Saloon Car Championship, Fitzpatrick went on to factory rides with Ford and BMW, as well as notching up...
Two heroes and a heroine. What unites them? The Audi Quattro, rallying’s first four-wheel-drive, turbocharged car. Hannu and Stig each won a world drivers title with the German groundbreaker, and Michèle would have done the same if Walter Röhrl hadn’t got in her way. But she still beat 21 top...
During my mid-teens a particular photograph in Motor Sport caught my eye. It was of an old Aston Martin racing at Silverstone, and there was something about it that somehow encapsulated the excitement of motor racing and what it could be about. Peter SutcliffePhoto: Mike Jiggle No Subscription? You’re missing...
The son of a wealthy textile manufacturer from Vercelli, near Milan, Italy, Marquis Antonio Brivio was one of the great Italian prewar racers: a gentleman driver every bit as professional as his main rivals, Tazio Nuvolari and Achille Varzi. He, like his two more famous contemporaries, was a tough and...
I was blessed with car-friendly parents and grandparents. My mother, who took part in several rallying events as a driver, was an only child and had been influenced very much by my grandfather’s love of motoring. I remember one day my grandfather arrived driving a wonderful Ferrari 365 GT 2+2....
I recently had the pleasure of chatting with professional race car driver, Max Hanratty. As part of the Fast MD Racing team, Max currently competes in the IMSA LMP3 class where he pilots a Nissan-powered Duqueine M30-D08. No Subscription? You’re missing out Any Text Here Get Started Already a Member?...
Jürgen Barth There is no question that the greatest race for me was winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1977 with Jacky Ickx and Hurley Haywood. There was the story of running from the back of the field, of all the problems we had, switching Ickx from his...
Bricklin Company namesake and founder, Malcolm Bricklin. Malcolm Bricklin has more balls than a Christmas tree. Charismatic and effervescent, his personality bubbles over with enthusiasm for his next project, sometimes at the cost of his present project. Jonathan Bricklin, Malcolm’s son said it best: “My father started 30 companies and...
Unlike those of Jim Clark, Mario Andretti and Michael Schumacher, not a name at the forefront of all our minds. Yet it was one that had been hovering about in my subconscious for years, though I never took the trouble to find out who the hell he was. Then Renault...
Jean-Pierre BeltoisePhoto: Thierry Lesparre Over a period of years, VR’s Mike Jiggle and Ed McDonough have had the opportunity to interview French racing driver Jean-Pierre Beltosie who died recently at his summer home in Senegal, at age 77, following a stroke. They have pulled their interviews together in this tribute to...
Mark Hyman is the proprietor of Hyman Ltd in St. Louis, Missouri (https://hymanltd.com/). Founded in a rented garage, in 1989, the company has become a premier buyer and seller of antique, classic, and special interest automobiles. They currently occupy a 67,000 square foot facility that houses their sales department, restoration and...
In addition to being a successful real estate developer, Ted Gildred was appointed Ambassador to Argentina during the Reagan administration. VR: You were born in Mexico, as I understand. No Subscription? You’re missing out Any Text Here Get Started Already a Member? Sign in to your account here....
One of a baker’s dozen of American citizens to have won the 24 Hours of Le Mans overall, Carroll Shelby accomplished the feat 50 years ago this month, driving an Aston Martin DBR1 in company with Roy Salvadori. Shelby had begun racing back in his native Texas shortly after returning...
Fathers and their sons who have each won the Formula 1 World Championship are few and far between. There are only two dads and their lads who have pulled it off. The first to climb that particular Everest were the Hills: Graham won the 1962 world title driving a BRM...
Major Anthony Peter Roylance Rolt, Military Cross and Bar, had a philosophy. After surviving the Second World War, in which he almost died several times and won two Military Crosses, one of Britain’s highest awards for bravery, he reasoned that the rest of his life would be a bonus. So,...
Ken Gross is an automotive journalist whose work has appeared in Playboy, and a number of street rod and hot rod magazines; he has curated automotive exhibits in North Carolina, Georgia, Utah, Tennessee and Oregon; has written numerous books; has been a judge at Pebble Beach for 25 years; and...
Pierre Beltoise. The motor racing career of Australian Vern Schuppan has been written up extensively over the years. Born in South Australia, Vern was smitten with motor racing early in his life, initially with karts before setting off to the UK, in 1969, with his wife Jennifer to become a...
Charlie Kemp was born in Mississippi, and his inimitable southern drawl once led Carroll Shelby to say that had Charlie raced as slowly as he talked he’d never have won anything! Charlie did win, however, and he won big. He finished 3rd in his very first race in a jalopy...
Enthusiast, Collector and Driving Force Behind the Glenmoor Gathering VR: Let’s just start off at the very beginning. When did you first get bitten by the car bug? No Subscription? You’re missing out Any Text Here Get Started Already a Member? Sign in to your account here....
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