Auto Racing Commentary

 Author Carlos de Paula, known for his historical auto racing books, has launched a new book, the "24 Hours of Le Mans Curiosities", which is available in most Amazon shops worldwide.  The 279-page book contains year-by-year milestones of the great race, including details on drivers, constructors, regulations, track changes, basic statistics, nationalities represented, debuting marques, plus curious details that may be overlooked even by the most knowledgeable racing enthusiast. It is meant to be a fun book, offered at a lower cost than most 24 Hours of Le Mans books.                           Carlos de Paula has authored several auto racing books since 2018. The book is selling well in several markets besides the United States, such as UK, Germany, France, Canada, Spain, Australia. Because the book is sold in non-English speaking countries, it is written in simple English.  The Le Mans book follows the...

  Racing history enthusiasts will readily remember some of the darkest days of the sport, when multiple drivers and spectators died on a same race. Le Mans 1955, Monza 1933, Rouen 1970, Indy 1973, Imola 1994, are just some of those sad days that remind us how thousands of people lost their lives   at race tracks or places where races were held since the late 19 th century, in spite of today’s false sense of security.   The earliest races took place on open roads, generally from one city to another. With increasing number of vehicles and the inconvenience of closing roads for racing events, soon closed circuits emerged, while the “stradale” Targa Florio insisted in remaining open for business until the 70s. Now such racing is restricted to rallies and hill climbs.   It is not surprising that it was in Italy, in spite of the veteran Monza circuit, that there was some resistance to building of purpose made tracks with a semblances of safety. Very dangerous race...

I know some people who would certainly kick the butt of the inventor of one make championships, truly believing they destroyed car racing.  I dare not say what was the first international one make race or tournament ever held. For sure, there were races in the 20s or 30s, in which only Bugattis competed, albeit unintentionally.   However, the race discussed in this post was probably one of the first intentional attempts to hold a one make championship and race in the world.   The location and timing could not be more exquisite. Nowadays we are used to racing events in Indonesia, Malaysia, China, even Saudi Arabia. However, in the aftermath of World War II,  international races in places other that Western Europe or the USA could rate as madness. How about Africa? There was racing in the continent in the Pre-War period, I know. One of the most famous GP of the 30s was the Tripoli event, in Lybia, and even South Africa was visited by the Auto Union team in th...

There are certain peculiar scenes in old time racing that were never properly recorded or documented. Some were funny, others tragic and sad.  Others happened so long ago that you wonder whether they were the product of a hyperactive creative mind It is said that Jules Goux, winner of the 1913 Indy 500 stopped in the pits to gobble up some champagne in the middle of that very race. In Brazil there was a very slow driver who used to refuel his Simca in long distance races at a gas station outside Interlagos. There are many other funny stories in Brazil, one of the Opalas that raced in the first Stockcar event in Cascavel was so standard it actually had A/C, while a DKW driver from Brasilia used to smoke a cigarette while racing.  Everything is so professional and organized today...however, not so long ago Taki Inoue was run over more than once during his short Formula 1 career. And rabbits, dogs and other animals visit tracks even during GPs. Even the Singaporegate of a few yea...

Many international championships were added to the International calendar during the 70s, which spike interest on the sport globally. These, plus the existing championships were: Formula 1 – World Championship, South Africa (also included F5000 and F2), Aurora Championship + British Group 8 (which also included Formula 5000, Formula 2, even Atlantic early on) Formula 2 – European and Japanese Championships Formula 3 – British, European, German, French, Italian, Swedish championships Formula 5000 – American, European, Australian, New Zealand Sports cars: World Championship of Makes, World Sports Car Championship, DRM (also ran Touring Cars), European GT Championship, European 2 Liter Championship, IMSA, Trans-Am, Can Am, Interserie, PROCAR, Le Mans Touring cars: NASCAR, European Touring Car championship, Avenir Cup, USAC Stockcars Formula Atlantic: Canada, South Africa, Britain Formula Indy: USAC Championship Trail   + CART Formula S...

It was almost like a pilgrimage. One of the first things I would do in my trips to Paris was go to Champs Elysees and visit the Renault, Peugeot, Citroen, Mercedes and Toyota showrooms. There I would buy miniatures, books, t-shirts, key holders, trinkets of all types (I love trinkets), articles of clothing and take pictures of concept cars as well as racing cars. I saw very up close a number of Red Bull, Renault and Mercedes Formula 1 cars, Peugeot and Toyota prototypes, Citroen rally and touring cars. Took a number of pictures. Happy days. First to go was the Mercedes showroom. Granted that everything was so bloody expensive there that it seemed they really did not want to sell anything. There was never a thought of displaying the DTM cars, but at least I saw the Mercedes F1 up close. A show car, I know, fake as fake news. Then, Toyota pulled the plug, curiously, just before finally winning Le Mans after so many decades trying. In its place, a toy store. 2017 claimed...

As my book Motor Racing in the 70 `s indicates, 1979 was a very important year for the Williams team. In Silverstone, Clay Regazzoni managed to win a race for the British team for the first time. This was followed by 4 other wins by Alan Jones in the second half of the year. After trying to make the big leagues since 1969, Williams had finally arrived, with a bang. The beginning was auspicious. Fielding a Brabham-Ford for Piers Courage in 1969, Williams actually got two second places in its debut season. Then came the De Tomaso chassis of 1970, Piers` death, and a number of years fielded Marches and proprietary chassis. Williams was often the laughing stock of the field, although a number of talented drivers drove for it during the period, including Pescarolo, Redman, Schenken, Merzario, Pace, Ickx, Laffite. The team was often underfunded, failing to collect from sponsors, then failing to pay drivers, and leased many a seat to Formula 1 hopefuls. The trough came in 1976, when a t...

One can argue that the 70’s were the Porsche decade. The company’s cars won Le Mans for the first time (and then four additional times), won hundreds (if you consider class wins, thousands) of races in all corners of the world, by that meaning every continent, dozens of championships, including world championships. A number of types represented the company in such wins: several versions of the 917, 908, 911, Carrera, 934, 914, 935, 936 won major races, even the old 910 and 907 could be called upon to win an occasional minor race. Porsches dominated at times not only the World Makes Championship, but also Can Am, Interserie, European GT Championship, DRM, IMSA, Trans Am. Porsches won domestic championships in the USA, Germany, Netherlands, Benelux, Italy, Brazil, Spain, Mexico, Sweden and other countries. A Porsche Carrera was also the first turbo car to win a World Championship race, which also happened to be the last Targa Florio valid for the world championship. Porsches also won i...

Cigarette manufacturers spent billions of dollars in automobile racing, starting in 1968 . Back in the 1800’s, cigarettes were sold as healthy items – believe it or not, good for the lungs! By the way, that was the approach used to introduce cigarettes to the Chinese market in the latter part of the century. Soon the medical profession caught on with tobacco’s twisted rationale, but as the multi-billion dollar industry has always involved money and power all over the world, cigarettes are still sold freely all over, but advertising it has become impossible. It was not entirely so back in 1968, although there were some prohibitions in certain medias and certain countries. That was the very reason why cigarette manufacturers embraced racing with gusto, specially because direct tobacco advertising was prohibited in TV almost universally. As racing became more of a TV product, it became a very useful advertising medium for cigarette advertisers, almost the only way their brands could app...

They say timing is everything. Sometimes timing is totally out of our control, so opportunities are lost, sublime talents wasted forever. When timing is perfect, “stars align”, things work out, talents reach fruition. The meritocracy idea that talented people always reach the top is bogus.   History is a sum of intercalated past events, in different times and places that conspire to change the present and the future. So what we see and experience today had multiple roots in the past. Thus, the fact that Ayrton Senna , a Brazilian driver, eventually made it to Europe and conquered Formula 1, inspiring future generations of drivers all over the world, took root in the timing of certain events in Brazil (and the world), back in the 70’s. The timing of such events was perfect, preceding the 1973 oil crisis and matching the height of the Brazilian “economic miracle”. The fact is, had the Brazilian racing scene remained sleepy, disorganized and stagnant until 1974, and attemp...

Most car of the world's motor racing literature is written in English. I would not dare pegging a percentage, but an educated guess is much more than 80%. Back in the 70's the percentage was  even higher, as publishing technology and markets were very restricted. As a result, much of what you read about racing in the period covers the USA (plus Canada), Western Europe, South Africa and Australia/New  Zealand. That was pretty much what the British and American specialized media was covering these days in magazines, newspapers, books and annuals. This gives a very wrong impression that racing was not taking place elsewhere in the world, especially in places where English was not spoken. When I got the idea for my book Motor Racing in the 70s - Pivoting from Romantic to Organized, I would be doing what 99% of motoring writers had done when covering the period: focusing entirely on the major racing taking place in the SA (plus Canada), Western Europe, South Africa and Austr...

Nowadays information about driver’s retainers, race earnings, the huge amounts some Formula 1 teams are paid, sponsorship deals seems public domain; $$$ are often featured in racing news stories. There are multiple reasons for that: public disclosure is required of public companies, a great part of the allure of motor racing these days seems pegged to the possibility of making large mounds of dollars, euros and pounds. Additionally, let us face it, we live in a very narcissistic world. Celebrities love to flaunt dough, and the sport has always been aligned with the idea of vast amounts of cash flying about. Buying a Ferrari to go racing in the 50s definitely cost more than buying soccer balls or swimming in lakes or buying cricket gear, after all. I have conducted extensive research on car racing in the 70s, and to be honest, locating trustworthy and plentiful data has been challenging at best. People simply did not talk much about it, for reasons you may found out later. And so...

My book Motor Racing in the 70s - Pivoting from Romantic to Organized is finally out. At present time, it can be bought through Amazon.com, but I am looking into ways to get wider distribution. Not that there are that many physical bookstores around, at least not in the USA. I am pleased with the result. It ended up with 384 pages, and a much different product than what I first envisaged. I wanted to write a much simpler year-by-year account, a shorter book. It developed into something larger, more analytical, although there are tons of statistics and interesting facts pertaining only to the 70s. In other words, you are not going to find the final results of Formula 1 races or even points tables. These can be found in lots of other places, including wikipedia The only Formula 1 statistics I have placed in the book relate specifically to the 70s, such as laps in the lead (cars and drivers), total starts during the decade, and things of the sort. There is plentiful other Formula 1 in...

Wikipedia and I have a very tense relationship. Let me explain. As a racing history researcher, I find wikipedia to be wanting. For those that do not know the English expression, it means lacking, insufficient. I began writing about racing history back in 2003, when even blogs were not yet the rage. I used to include texts on a site I had, called brazilyellowpages.com, which no longer exists as a standalone site (long story). There was no such a thing as wikipedia. And google was still a young company, looking for "partners" in the way of content builders. So, when I began building my blogs in earnest, I had the ambition of building the largest depository of race results in the internet, or at least winners. I soon found several sites that had very good information, but I found copying all laboriously compiled information a bit sneaky simply. So I understood that I could present winners and let others do what they do well. Unfortunately, Wikipedia has other thoughts...

It is an indisputable fact that winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans overall is one of the most highly sought after prizes in all of racing. Notwithstanding, it is very easy to concentrate on Fernando Alonso’s and Toyota’s maiden victories at the Sarthe, and Alonso’s trek to the Triple Crown of racing, and fail to see some interesting patterns. Every since the driver trio became the norm at Le Mans, in 1985, a few winning crews were formed exclusively of drivers that had at one point raced (or were active in F1) such as Alonso, Nakajima and Buemi. In fact, this happened only four other times. In 2009, David Brabham, Marc Gene and Alexander Wurz had some F1 experience behind them, none of them wildly successful. Wurz had a couple of podiums and a fastest lap to his credit, and Gene scored points. Ten years before, victors Pierluigi Martini, Yannick Dalmas and Joachim Winkelhock also had F1 experience. Martini had led a GP, started one race from the first row, but Joachim Winkelhock ne...

Formula 2 was conceived in the 40s as a steppingstone category to Grand Prix, replacing the 30’s voiturettes. In the 60’s, after some seasons in which only Formula 1 and Formula Junior existed as single seaters category in European racing, F2 came back in 1966 and an European Championship was created in 1967. This championship ran non-stop until 1984, when it was replaced by Formula 3000. Current Formula 2 only shares the name with the old 2.0 liter cars (the engine size from 1972 to 1984, before that, 1.6 liter), and have much larger engine capacities and power. Additionally, while a large number of Formula 2 participants, championship winners and point scorers, and even some non-point scorers, made it to Formula 1 in the above mentioned period, the same cannot be said of GP2 (which was recently renamed Formula 2) drivers. Making to Formula 2 at present is not really a guarantee you will ever drive a F-1 car in the world championship. In fact, generally two, tops three Formula 2 gr...

They say that the two things that interest people the most is sex and money, in general, but as well as on the internet. I can attest to that. I have literally thousands of posts published in dozens of websites, in several languages, and the one racing post that got the most attention was one about the wealthiest formula 1 driver in the world!   As for sex, I ran an experiment in a blog. I published a post saying “Nude pictures of [a certain young Hollywood actress girl-next-door looking who shall remain unnamed]”. There was no picture of the young actress on the blog, undressed or dressed, just a black box. The reader was instructed to Pass the mouse on top of the picture, and right hand click three times , because the pictures were so ”hot”. You cannot imagine how many people clicked on the thing! In fact, in less than a month, there were over 100,000 hits on the post, over 10,000 in one day! Eventually people caught on that it was a joke, and the number of visitors drop...

As far as Formula 1 broadcasters go, Brazil’s RGT is among the longest-running in the game - probably number 1 - for it has been showing Formula 1 races year year since 1972. It played a key role bringing international motor racing back to Brazil in 1970, providing promotional support to several tournaments held in the country until Brazil was firmly placed in the official GP calendar. It was a good bet for RGT, for Emerson Fittipaldi not only became a 2-time World Champion, something it could only dream back in early 1970, but the country has also produced two other world champions, including a driver widely reckoned the best ever, Ayrton Senna. Notwithstanding this enviable track record, RGT's race announcer, Galvao Bueno, is widely criticized by many in Brazil, accused of a style that mixes annoying and overly enthusiastic cheerleading (for Brazilian drivers, often seeing marvelous performances where there are none), soccer game coverage techniques, poor focus on what is ...

I suppose it is a bit hard to be a 2-time world champion’s brother, specially if you are a race car driver yourself. In addition to being a champion, Emerson was also a pioneer, but in that respect, Wilson pulls a lot of weight himself – he was the first Brazilian to race in quite a few categories.   It is easy to dismiss Wilson’s achievements in motor sport, specially not paying attention to a lot he did in Brazil. So this article will not stress so much Wilson’s short official formula 1 career, but rather, his achievements elsewhere. If even the excellent book Grand Prix Driver’s Who’s Who, by Steve Small, makes several blunders concerning Wilson’s career, what can be expected of other lesser sources? Emerson’s older brother began racing in 1962, and was quickly hired by the Willys works team. Willys produced Renault cars under license in Brazil, which included the Dauphine (called Gordini there) and the Interlagos, which was a version of the French Alpine sports car. Wil...