Sports Car Digest - The Sports, Racing and Vintage Car Journal
Sports Car Digest focuses on Classic Car Auctions, Concours d’Elegance, Vintage Car Racing, Road Rallies and other historic automotive events.
Profiles of races from the past, including Sebring, Le Mans, Targa Florio and others
The Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona 2012 was held January 28-29 on the 12-turn, 3.56-mile Daytona International Speedway, a combined track made up of portions of the NASCAR tri-oval and an infield road course.With the minutes ticking down on the Rolex clock in Pit Row, there was an epic battle for the 2012 Rolex 24 at Daytona title taking place on Daytona International Speedway’s road course. … [Read more...]
1967 24 Hours of Daytona - The Revenge of “Il Commendatore”By Louis Galanos | Photos as creditedThe year 1966 was not a good year for Enzo Ferrari. Ford beat Ferrari with a humiliating 1-2-3 finish at both Daytona and Sebring and for the first time in six years they lost, again to Ford, at the Holy Grail of endurance racing the 24 Hours of Le Mans.With the 1966 World Sportscar … [Read more...]
By Bob HarmeyerDaytona International Speedway in 2012 is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the track's first road race, a three hour event won by Dan Gurney when he coasted across the finish line with a blown engine.The first two road races were three hour events, the third and fourth were expanded to 2000 kilometer contests, and the now-traditional 24-hour race distance was first run in … [Read more...]
By Louis Galanos | Photos as creditedJanuary 2012 marks the Golden Anniversary (50th) of sports car endurance racing at the Daytona International Speedway (DIS) in Daytona Beach, Florida.DIS was opened in 1959 by NASCAR founder, Bill France, Sr., after years of driving in and promoting stock car racing on the beaches of the Daytona area. From the beginning the new speedway was associated … [Read more...]
The Vanderbilt Cup, America’s First International SeriesBy Art EvansThe first Vanderbilt Cup Race, held in 1904, amounted to pandemonium according to press reports. Newspaper and poster promotion drew a huge crowd. Estimated to be as numerous as 50,000 spectators were lined dangerously close to the entire course, some actually straying onto it. There were so many people that they became … [Read more...]
All three of the major endurance races will celebrate notable anniversaries in 2012. The most famous race of them all, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, will celebrate its 80th running in 2012, while in America both the Rolex 24 Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring race will celebrate key anniversaries as well.In 1923, no fewer than 33 cars entered the First Grand Prix d’Endurance des 24 Heures, a … [Read more...]
By Art EvansThe series we now know as Formula One traces its roots back to 1906. Before the term, Formula One, was coined in 1950, essentially the same sequence of events were called the Grand Prix Series. But those words became bandied about so much that different ones were needed to describe the contest for the World Driving Championship. Nevertheless, each country’s race is still called a … [Read more...]
By Art EvansAs I described in my July column, the first motorized-vehicle race on land is acknowledged by historians to be the 1893 Paris to Rouen. Other place-to-place races followed in Europe before the turn of the century. Many of them involved Paris as a location of origination or destination. Paris-Bordeaux-Paris followed Rouen in 1895, Paris-Marseille-Paris in 1896 and so on. The … [Read more...]
Bonneville Speed Week 2011 was held August 13-19 at the famed Bonneville Speedway salt flats in Utah. Every August, the Southern California Timing Association and Bonneville Nationals Inc. organize Speed Week, which attracts several hundred drivers to compete to set highest speed in a range of categories.Bonneville Speed Week consists of six days of racing, weather and conditions permitting, … [Read more...]
By Art EvansWhen younger motor racing enthusiasts think of Daytona, images of stock cars on the International Speedway come to mind. But older folks remember that Daytona Beach was a site for setting early land-speed records.The history of racing at the beach extends almost to the turn of the last century when cars themselves were in their infancy. Famous automobile personalities of yore … [Read more...]
By Art EvansSports Car Digest Editor Jamie Doyle has assigned me to write a column about the history of sports cars. For the first one, I thought it would be interesting to look at the first events that established motorsports.It’s rather obvious that the first was the invention of the automobile itself. The first motorized vehicles were steam-driven tractors. But the purpose of tractors … [Read more...]
Story and photos by Art EvansSome 25 years ago, there was a vintage event like none other. It was the 1985 Palm Springs Vintage Grand Prix. Why was it so different? Would you believe 19 Formula One and Indy veterans on the same grid, all in competitive open-wheel cars? How about Dan Gurney in his Spa-winning Eagle! Or Bobby Unser in the 1975 Indy-winning Eagle! Stirling Moss in a Lotus, the … [Read more...]
The 24 Hours of Le Mans 2011 was held 11-12 June at the 8.469 mile Circuit de la Sarthe in France. The Audi team defended their 2010 Le Mans 24 Hours win by beating the best Peugeot by a mere 13 seconds after 24 hours of intense racing. When the Rolex clock at the finish line showed 15:00 the expected battle between Audi and Peugeot came to an end with the remaining Audi barely staying ahead of no … [Read more...]
History of the Indianapolis 500 – Part Two (See History of the Indianapolis 500 - Part One)By Leigh DorringtonThe first Indianapolis 500 in 1911, won by Ray Harroun on the Indianapolis-built Marmon ‘Wasp’, began one of the longest sporting traditions in the world. And soon the whole world was watching. The history of the race reflects a century—The American Century—that … [Read more...]
In April 1931, Rudolf Caracciola became the first non-Italian to win the Mille Miglia road race. Alongside his co-driver Wilhelm Sebastian, the Mercedes-Benz works team driver won the 1,635km race, which took place from 12 to 13 April 1931, in a Mercedes-Benz SSKL racing car.Caracciola achieved an average speed of 101.1 km/h in the race from Brescia to Rome and back. It was the first time that … [Read more...]
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