F1’s 3-liter formula that began in 1966 was hospitable to American constructors. All three U.S. domestic marques that achieved 1st place in a Grand Prix did so in that period.

The winners were Dan Gurney’s Eagle at Spa in 1967, John Watson in a Penske in Austria, 1976, and Alan Jones at the same venue the following year, when the future World Champion drove a Shadow to his first GP victory. For this carmaker, as for the other two, it would be an only win.

The post America’s Last GP Winner appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

One day during an autowriters’ junket in Europe, we checked into our small country hotel with a good hour to spare before supper, so I went for a ramble. Drawn by the pock … pock … of shotgun fire, I came to a field where several people were taking turns at clay pigeons with an over-under.

All were men but for a lone woman. Her turn came and she smoothly shouldered the elegant weapon, called for release, and powdered her first clay. There was a general murmur of approval.

The post Women at War appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Fair warning: I know very little about my topic, which is Rush, the new movie set in the 1976 F1 season. We’ll see it shortly, and I’m keen to. My wife even intends to buy the DVD.

This movie matters to all of us in motorsports. By early accounts, it’s a good representation of racing as it really is. About time. We enthusiasts still revere the likes of Grand Prix and Le Mans, but you know how long ago they came out.

The post Rush and Reality appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Try throwing your arms around all the richness of racing … too immense to embrace, isn’t it? Racecars, raceways, races, innovations, news, controversy, history, drama, beauty, excitement, emotion; a single day at the track produces far more than a single enthusiast can harvest, and we haven’t yet mentioned racers.

Its human facet is the sport’s most colorful, complex and captivating, yet throughout my years of race reporting I often felt I wasn’t doing justice to the people.

The post Troy Rogers appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Corvette didn’t show well at Le Mans this year, which is unusual, and I suppose in time we’ll find out where the speed went. But sometimes falling short can emphasize how often a competitor lands on top.

For Chevrolet, the tally of success at the Sarthe still stands at seven class victories since 2001, or ten counting back to 1960.

The post Sixty Years of ’Murrican Muscle appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Fifty years ago, when people communicated on paper delivered by hand, her brother’s letters from far-off England would be eagerly opened and avidly read by the whole family back in Auckland.

Often flowing over half a dozen pages or more, Bruce’s back-slanted penmanship was casual, his phrasing newsy and chatty. Sometimes this trained engineer would clarify a point with a sketch: his diagnosis of carburetor trouble on a racing engine, or how a surgeon proposed to implant a “steel ball-ended thing” to repair his hip, damaged by Perthes Disease in his youth.

The post The Bruce and Jan Show appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Our reigning World Champion has forced us to think, once again, about sportsmanship in motorsport.

Whether or not you monitor modern F1, you must know of the controversy that Sebastian Vettel brewed up in this year’s second GP at Malaysia. Late in the race he found himself coming out of the pits in 2nd place to his teammate, Mark Webber, but lapping faster. Red Bull management ordered Vettel to maintain his position. He refused.

The post Does This Mean War? appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

If you have a two-car garage, do you keep two cars in it? That would suggest you’re fairly normal.

In Robert Judy’s, there must be a hundred racecars. Plus somewhere beyond 1000 racing books. Also magazines and videos and photographs and posters. Then there are passes and badges and plaques and patches and pennants. Add in some racing shirts and jackets and hats. Race-themed clocks. Mugs. Ashtrays. Flags.

The post Little Box, Big Treasure appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

There is no great genius without a trace of madness,” declared the Roman philosopher Seneca, and can we have any doubt he was looking ahead 1.9 millennia to designers of Can-Am racecars?

The wonderful old Canadian-American Challenge Cup series of 1966 through 1974 is justly famed for many memorable machines, but let’s not forget the forgettable ones. By its very scantiness, the Can-Am’s rulebook attracted mad geniuses whose imaginative audacity deserves our respect, even if their crazy cars didn’t really work.

The post Oh, the Madness of Genius! appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

THIS IS OLD news to you, but as I write, we mountain folk are still buzzing about February’s Great Manhunt and Shootout.

That burning cabin you saw on TV was about half an hour by road from us in Big Bear—fewer than six miles in a direct line over the ridge where the ski slopes are. The nut-job former cop who murdered four people (to clear his name of telling lies, he said) spent days in hiding precisely 4.7 driving miles from our home. Almost daily we take routes he had to have followed on his way out of town to his fate (and that of his final victim).

The post Getting it Right appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

This is absurd, but I think I want the new Corvette. And as I write I haven’t even seen it yet.

You’re better placed in time than I as I commence writing this, on the Saturday before Sunday evening’s Great Reveal of the long-awaited C7. You, dear future reader, already know all about what I won’t begin to learn for a whole 24 hours. I feel like you’ve slipped through some secret fourth-dimensional portal, leaving me behind.

The post Corvette appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Stirling Moss deliberately steering his Lotus into rain puddles around the Nürburgring—reading about that may have been the first time I ever really thought about racing tires.

It was the German Grand Prix of 1961. The 1.5-liter formula had just come in, and the tiny, 4-cylinder Coventry Climax behind Moss’ shoulders made a mere 150 hp. But this was World Championship combat in fragile, incendiary F1s, and it was the fearsome ’Ring, all 14-plus miles of it. One minor misstep could have gruesome consequences.

The post Colors of Black appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Partway through an evening of kind words, warm recollections and congratulations, the moderator came on the mic and said: “George, we’ve had several speakers here; I’m surprised the term ‘anger management’ hasn’t been used yet!”

Poor George Follmer could only join the laughter filling the Petersen Museum’s banquet hall. This racer’s long, honor-rich record is replete with powerful drives and hard-fought victories, but even he must agree that—in those days—his mastery of a racecar outmatched that of his temper.

The post In Honor of a Warrior appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Howden Ganley stopped by our vendor booth at the recent Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion, where one of the old photos we showed him started a discussion so interesting that I’m keen to share it with you.

The picture was made by Art Evans at Palm Springs in November, 1956. It shows Carroll Shelby in a John Edgar Ferrari, and it’s a fine and satisfying image in itself, but look at the very front of the car, down below the radiator intake.

The post Before Their Time appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Got paper and pen at hand? Or simple fingers will do: Try coming up with a list of the long-distance sports racing cars you’ve seen or learned of over the years, and that you still hold in reverence. Cunninghams, Jaguars, Ferraris, Fords, Porsches, classic enduro racers that you may keep framed on a wall, or enclosed in model cases, or would gladly travel far to see.

Now, with those images in mind, think about September’s declaration of peace between America’s two long-warring sports car camps, ALMS and Grand-Am.

The post Tomorrow’s Sports Racing Standouts? appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Any idea what we’re looking at here? Don’t wait for me to tell you, I only have the faintest of notions.

These are scans of 4×5 negatives that I’ve just found in my father’s archive while prowling for something else. He left these images unlabeled as to place, date and subject, passing down a pretty mystery, and I immediately wanted to bring you in on it.

The post The Age of the Specials appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Sixty years ago was when—for me—the world became modern. Many people will laugh at that; some will understand but have a different date in mind; maybe a few will feel as I do.

The Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing coupe is—for me—the first GT car of our contemporary era.

The post Mercedes’ Modern Marvel appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

You’d need a piece of paper the size of Texas to write down all that should  be said about Carroll Shelby, so I’ll fall short here. But I’d like to share a few personal recollections.

Years ago, during a supposedly formal banquet at the auto museum in San Diego, Carroll acceded to go to the podium and tell the story of the Anglo-American hot rod that made him famous.

The post Rememberin’ Pappy Cobra appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Back in the free-and-easy days when you still could cozy up to naked racecars right out in plain sight, some of us journos enjoyed the challenge of trying to figure out new speed technology on our own, without asking the team for explanations.

And anyway, when the team was Penske-cum-Porsche in the Can-Am of 1972, there was no point in asking. That was as flinty-eyed a bunch of uncommunicative competitors as ever iced a poor paddock prowler.

The post The Komplizierte Kompressoren appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Telling about cannibalizing a pickup truck engine for his racecar, he said, “Any of you would have really enjoyed” that caper. And a grinning Jim Hall went on to explain that early in his career, when “I was already into the hot-rodding of race cars,” he built a Lister-Chevy with “all the hot stuff, Edelbrock manifold and Iskenderian cam and I ground out the heads and I thought, boy, this is gonna go.

“We went over to a little track in Hondo, Texas … got it off the trailer and got going and it was pretty quick, I was gettin’ around there about as quick as anybody. And on about the tenth lap the engine just went ka-pow!”

The post Jim Hall at the RRDC appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Maybe I’ll change my mind by the end of the column, but as I tap out this opening sentence, I feel an itch to go back and be a Formula 1 reporter again.

This happens every spring. The off-season has dragged on too long, stimulation and intrigue have been lacking, the siren song has been silent. All I’ve been able to do is flit, restlessly, through print publications and around the Web, trying to work out what’s going on. But that’s futile. Anybody who knows isn’t telling; those who claim to, don’t. Or so it seems to me in my frustration.

The post Simulating My Past appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

We start the new season with two interesting notes on the subject of pulchritude.
Near the end of January, Lorna and I spent most of a weekend planted squarely before the Flat Screen, surprised by how much we were enjoying Speed’s marathon coverage of the Rolex 24 at Daytona.
Surprised, because neither of us have ever been fans of Grand Am’s Daytona Prototypes. We do watch parts of some of the races, and in truth the action is often terrific. But in their earlier generations, their burden of blunt restrictions made DP coupes so toad-ugly I found them impossible to love. In fact, seeing them mangled by their frequent collisions has never pained me at all.
I feel otherwise about DP Gen III. New this year, they have smaller greenhouses and certain other bodywork parameters that add up to much better looks. My eyes actually feasted on them, and when one suffered tail damage my heart felt sorrow.

Handsomest car of the race for me was “Red Dragon,” a Chevy-powered machine whose gorgeously scarlet body presented explicit Corvette styling cues. As a one-time owner of a Stingray (of the same color), I’m now daydreaming about a streetgoing version of the new Corvette DP.
Just about the same time Grand-Am was racing, European teams began showing the first of this year’s Formula 1 cars. What a shock! Nearly every one has a “stepped nose,” where the needle-slim nosecone seems to jut out from the face like a long-beaked echidna’s, that weird little bug-eater from New Guinea.
It’s all because of new rules restricting nosecone height, apparently because the higher that rides, the better the afterbody airflow. Can’t have that.
One more reason I find it ever harder to take F1 seriously.
As I write, the one car announced so far without the bug-eater schnoz is the new McLaren. How did this team avoid that?  According to one Internet explanation, it’s because McLaren has been designing the top line of its forward fuselage a couple of inches lower than other cars all along (I must admit I never noticed), so the 2012 nosecone blends in smoothly without the “step.”

The post Looking Good appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

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.

By coincidence, I suppose, that was the same year the French tore down the ruins of Rouen’s pits. At least a visitor whose soul vibrates to hallowed ground can still drive, as I once did, through the downhill swerves beyond, where Fangio used to hurl his Maserati into full-blooded powerslides.

The post Remnants appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Something is missing. Look around the race tracks, the city streets, the holiday hotspots … see what isn’t there? Elegant, vivid little cars that used to be all over?

Yup. No Alfa Romeos.

The post Wherefore Art Thou, Alfa? appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Nearly 10 years ago in this space (“Sleuths Wanted,” February  2002) I asked if anyone could ID a Can-Am car I didn’t know and had seen only once, at Road America in 1967. Ah, the power of Vintage Racecar! Immediately, reader Tor Caraway wrote in from Wisconsin with the answer.

My follow-up column about the mystery ran in the May issue and led California racer Dick Duncan to thank me for giving a name to an old sports racer he had just purchased in fragments.

The post Mystery Car Reborn appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

That’s a question I found occupying (the few) idle moments of my mind during October’s Porsche Rennsport Reunion IV at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca. That will happen if you spend four days cooped up in a 400-sq-ft tent lined with racing photos on display and notice that some seem to draw much more attention than others.

As at August’s RMMR historic event, my wife Lorna and I took a booth on vendor row to—warning, shameless plug coming—market the petelyons.com collection of photos, books, calendars and a DVD. Business was brisk enough, but there were quiet intervals perfect for people-watching and I began to wonder:

The post Making Great Motorsport Images appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Come with me to Italy, if you’ve got a minute, I want to show you something neat.

We’re standing along a sun-drenched country road, waiting for old race cars in the Mille Miglia Storica commemorative rally to appear. It’s a scene of joyous beauty, with flowers spangling the grasses and lovely old farms and villas dotting the Tuscan hills.

The post Timeless Appeal appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

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 hark straight back to the very first 901 (as it was initially called) in 1963.

Such longevity of production would be exceptional for an aircraft type, let alone an automobile. And for a car that remains competitive in racing?

The post Porsche’s Enduring 911 appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

Do you remember the moment when enthusiasm for motorsports exploded inside you? Or at least started to smolder?

Some of us may have been born burning, in terms of our passion for racing, but probably most needed the right mixture of circumstance and spark.

The post Ignition appeared first on Sports Car Digest.

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, and the “crumpled can” is a uniquely precious old Jaguar racing car.

The post Reflections on Restoration appeared first on Sports Car Digest.