Motorsport People Profiles
The World's Greatest Drivers, Owners, Engineers & Personalities
Profiles of past and present automotive personalities. The drivers who risked their lives in the early days to the engineers who creatively changed the world of automobiles, this is a celebration of the people who played a major role in the world we love.
Pantheon of Speed: Legends of Motorsports
Dive into a captivating collection of profiles and exclusive interviews with the greatest names in motorsports history – the drivers who defied limits, the engineers who pushed boundaries, the designers who shaped iconic machines, and the visionaries who built racing empires. From the daredevils of early Grand Prix racing to the modern masters of Formula 1, we celebrate the men and women who have etched their names into the annals of motorsport legend.
Phil Hill Biography Overshadowed by his fellow Americans Mario Andretti and AJ Foyt it was Phil Hill who became America’s first World Champion after the death of the popular German driver Wolfgang von Trips. Born in Florida his family would soon move to Santa Monica, California. Hill soon immersed himself...
“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...
Another of racing’s good guys left us on December 7, when Bill Scott lost his battle with cancer. The man who one observer called “a damn good driver and a better human being,” essentially ignored his doctorate in geophysics from Yale to let his passion for racing cars dominate his...
Joe Leonard who, like John Surtees, won major championships on two and four wheels, passed away last Thursday at the age of 84 following an extended illness. Leonard, a San Diego native who moved to San Jose, California, as a 16-year-old to chase his racing dream, established himself as one...
After years of research, Ed McDonough reveals the influences and pressures that drove Mexican racing hero Pedro Rodriguez to the pinnacle of motorsport…and an untimely death. July 11 marks 31 years since Pedro Rodriguez took part in what a number of writers subsequently called a “meaningless Interseries race” at the...
Emerson Fittipaldi Biography “Emmo” as he is known by legions of fans in America began his rise to fame in Europe. The son of well know Brazilian motor racing journalist Wilson Fittipaldi started racing motor bikes but soon moved to karts. In 1967, Fittipaldi with his older brother Wilson Jr. built...
Rob Walker Biography On his passport, under occupation, it read simply Gentleman, a description, a description to his many friends, one never more fitting. Someone once described him as “self-unemployed.” but never idle. Robert Ramsay Campbell Walker was born on August 14 1917. His father Campbell Walker was an heir to...
Being a dedicated student of the arcane (or having entirely too much time on my hands), I once calculated that in the entire history of Formula One, from its inception in 1948 to present day, only nine drivers ever managed to compete in three successive decades. They are Harry Schell,...
Enzo Ferrari Biography Enzo Ferrari was born in 1898 in Modena Italy. His father, Alfredo, ran a local metal-blacksmith business who forged axles for the Italian railways. When he was 10 his father took Ferrari and his brother Alfredo Jr. to an automobile race in Bologna. There he saw Vincenzo...
John Gunn, an independent entrant who contested some of North America’s most prestigious auto racing championships during a career that lasted 20 years, has died of heart failure at his Florida home at the age of 71. Gunn began racing on the Club level in 1965, winning the SCCA’s SEDiv...
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...
The woman who teamed with Pat Moss Carlsson to form one of the most formidable teams in international rallying during the late ’50s and early ’60s, Ann Wisdom Riley, has passed away at the age of 81. While they dominated the Ladies Class, the duo was also regularly competitive in...
Longtime sportscar entrant and driver Bruce Leven has died at the age of 79. Leven founded Bayside Disposal, the Seattle-based garbage collection and disposal firm, and grew it into an international concern, which allowed him to afford to go racing. As one of IMSA’s Gentleman Driver team owners in the...
Derek is the epitome of the driver who should have won the Formula One World Championship, but was just about always with the wrong team at the wrong time. He drove for some of the great names in the sport, like Renault and Lotus, but not when they were on...
Louis Chiron Biography Born in August 1899, the son of a French hotelier in Monaco he became that principalities most famous sportsman. Holding dual citizenship Chiron joined the French army prior to his 18th birthday, serving as an artilleryman during World War I. He later became the personal driver to...
Texas professional and historic racer Charles Nearburg has a long and diversified motorsport resume. At the profession level, he’s competed in everything from Super Vee and Toyota Atlantic to Le Mans and Champ cars, while even breaking the Land Speed Record for piston-powered, wheel-driven vehicles at 414.316 mph along the...
One of my favorite motor racing personalities was Piers Courage, a talented young gentleman racer, as well as a member of a famous British brewing family. A public schoolboy with an upper-class English accent, Piers was a charming person, completely devoid of the airs of the super rich—and very much...
Trevor Taylor’s life as a racing driver began on a windswept airfield at Gamston, Nottinghamshire, England. His father held a time trial between him and his older brother, Mike. The track was a straight, a hairpin bend and back to the start. Trevor, driving the X100 they had just built,...
Now here is a man of his word—and it cost him dearly. In 1961, Innes agreed to drive for Formula One team UDT-Laystall run by Ken Gregory and Alfred Moss, respectively Stirling’s manager and father. Literally a day later, Ireland was asked to become Graham Hill’s teammate at BRM but...
Christopher Arthur Amon MBE died this morning at the age of 73 in Rotorua Hospital in New Zealand, having battled cancer the last few years. Amon will likely be remembered as the best driver never to win a Formula One Grand Prix, though he did take a pair of non-championship...
This one picture is why I’m writing these thousand words. I’m doing so in the first week of August 2008—precisely 50 years since I exposed the negative at Lime Rock, made a print in my dad’s darkroom, and air-mailed it overseas to England’s Autosport magazine. When we duly received our...
Jacky Ickx’s motor racing CV is enough to make your head spin. Believe it or not, it all started with a 50-cc Zundapp trials bike his dad gave him to boost his tepid interest in motor sport. It did that alright. By the time Jacky was 38, he had won...
The boys from Brazil just keep on coming: Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna and, since 2002, Felipe Massa. The others won eight Formula One World Championships between them, but even with 11 GP victories to his credit, Felipe hasn’t made it yet. He almost did in a 2008 mind...
Markku Alén is the person-ification of his favorite rallying expression: maximum attack. Words he lived by throughout his illustrious career, firmly establishing himself as one of the world’s greatest rally drivers. Markku was World Champion in 1978, the last year of the FIA Cup, and ruled the rally world again...
Well. Me sir? Gosh sir. Writing an obituary of Bill Boddy is rather like an everyday cinemagoer writing the obituary of Marilyn Monroe—I feel very humble. Like thousands of my contemporaries, reading Motor Sport magazine in the 1950s and onward, one felt as if one was actually part of the...
Paddy Hopkirk’s strength and wit at the Monte Carlo Rally in 1964 launched the Northern Ireland racing driver into the United Kingdom’s most celebrated rally driver and propelled the Mini into racing stardom. Now 87, Paddy still enjoys his enthusiasm for the Mini and savors the trials of winding country...
George Herbert Skinner (also known as Bert) and Thomas Carlyle Skinner (also known as Carl) created the Skinners Union (SU) brand. Experimenting with fuel mixtures in the early 1900s they made their first carburetor in 1904 and went on to form The SU Company in 1910. Carl Skinner had two...
Les Leston was born in 1920 named Alfred Lazarus Fingleston. He worked in the motor accessory business and was an accomplished drummer in the Clay Pigeons jazz band that included Belgian racer Johnny Claes. Leston’s racing career began in the late 1940s driving a Jaguar SS100, but he soon turned...
With Ferrari being the featured marque at this month’s Monterey Historic Automobile Races, we thought it would be interesting to take a somewhat unconventional look at what is perhaps the world’s most famous racecar manufacturer. As such, in this issue we examine the history of Ferrari’s first 3-liter Grand Prix...
Margie Petersen, philanthropist, wife of the late publishing magnate Robert E. Petersen and co-founding benefactor of Southern California’s Petersen Automotive Museum, passed away peacefully at her home in Beverly Hills on November 25, 2011, following a long and valiant battle with breast cancer. She was 76. Born Margie McNally in...
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