By Louis Galanos | Photos by Louis Galanos and as noted

Well over a year ago the Daytona International Speedway (DIS) embarked on a task that even the great Hercules might have shied away from. That is to search the world over for every car that ever won, what we now call the Rolex 24 at Daytona, and transport them to Daytona Beach, Florida for a 50th anniversary reunion and heritage display.

Tim Pendergast of Jacksonville, Florida was hired by the Speedway to track down these historic automobiles and get permission from the current owners to showcase them in the temporary building the Speedway was constructing on the grounds in front of the Speedway.

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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.

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By Louis Galanos | Photos as credited

The 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 Championship (WSC) trophy solidly in Ford hands many were predicting that the ten-year dominance of Ferrari cars in endurance racing had come to an end. Many believed the much talked about and much written about three-year-long Ford – Ferrari War was being won by Henry Ford II and his mega buck program would bring Ferrari to its knees.

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Daytona 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 1966. It was shortened to six hours in 1972, and cancelled completely in 1974 due to an oil embargo and the resulting fuel shortage. Consequently, this year marks the 44th time the circuit has hosted a 24 Hours race, and I believe I’ve photographed at least half of them.

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January 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 with stock car racing and to this day is well known for America’s premier stock car racing event known as the Daytona 500 or “The Great American Race.”

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By Art Evans

The 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 part of the spectacle.

The Vanderbilt Cup was the first contest of any real international stature held in the United States. Until then, major events took place in Europe and were dominated by cars made in Europe and driven mostly by Europeans. Because racing improves the breed, as they say, European cars were, with some exceptions, superior to those made in the United States.

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In 1923, no fewer than 33 cars entered the First Grand Prix d’Endurance des 24 Heures, a challenge set out by the Automobile Club de l’Ouest

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The 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 Grand Prix.

The very first Grand Prix took place on June 26 and 27, 1906. The venue was public roads in the vicinity of Le Mans, France near the Sarthe River, so it became known as the Sarthe Circuit.

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As 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 original purpose of these events was to demonstrate the viability of motorcars as a means of transportation. The first in the U.S. was the 1895 Chicago-Waukegan-Chicago. By 1907, the longest race to that date was from Peking to Paris.

The ultimate of the genre, however, was the New York-to-Paris in 1908. Wait a minute! How could there be such an automobile race when there’s the Atlantic Ocean between the two cities? Well, it depends on which way you go. To the West, there’s only the 53-mile Bering Strait separating the United States from Russia. The rest is land.

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Bonneville Speed Week consists of six days of racing, weather and conditions permitting, with entrants from all parts of the globe all seeking the maximum speed out of their vehicle. All vehicles are allowed to run every day, i.e no special days for motorcycles or cars. The Bonneville Speedway salt flats are located 88 miles west of Salt Lake City, Utah. The spectacular scenery and racing conditions at Bonneville make it one of the most popular areas in the world for speed.

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When 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 participated including Barney Oldfield, Ralph De Palma, Ransom Olds, Henry Ford and the Stanley Brothers.

In 1970, I was sent on a photo shoot to Florida; the assignment included going to the Daytona 500. Because I had not obtained credentials in advance, I was ushered into the office of Bill France, Sr. Since I had previously raced sports cars, we had a short and interesting chat. I found him most affable and I was given a pass to go almost anywhere. Bill told me that oval races at Daytona Beach were as old as record attempts and that the Speedweek predated the Indy 500.

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The 1985 Benz is credited with being the first purpose-built automobile. (photo credit: Deutsches Museum)

Sports 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 is not transportation, so they don’t qualify.

Although there are reservations among some historians, it is generally held that Karl Benz designed and built the first workable car propelled by an internal combustion engine in 1885. But in 1873, Frenchman Amédée Bollée, made a number of experimental steam-powered carriages. His son (of the same name) made a large steam mail coach as well as a smaller steam-driven car in 1885. These were essentially motorization of existing horse-drawn vehicles.

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Some 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 twin of the car in which he won the 1962 Grand Prix of Monaco! You get the idea. Another event that weekend we called the Fabulous Fifties Reunion featured more than 50 drivers who raced during the fifties, most in the same or similar cars. Afterwards, Carroll Shelby said, “I don’t know how this came about, but it’s not likely to happen again.” Road & Track’s article stated that “It may turn out to be the most successful vintage car race ever held on this continent.”

Actually, it was my idea and I ended up as the promoter. Here’s how it developed: For quite a few years, Johnny Von Neumann, Vasek Polak and I had second homes in Palm Springs. All three of us were on the same street within walking distance of one another. So it was natural that we would get together now and then.

During the 1984 Thanksgiving holiday, we were gathered at Vasek’s celebrating with wine and tall stories, some about races we used to have in Palm Springs during the fifties.

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A crowd of close to 250,000 people watched this year’s running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans from the Circuit de La Sarthe.

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(See History of the Indianapolis 500 – Part One)

By Leigh Dorrington

The 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 defined a nation growing into its potential.

“The Speedway’, as it simply came to be known, was built on farmland near Crawfordsville Road five miles northwest of downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. The property the Speedway was constructed on was connected to the city by a rail line that ran directly to Union Station in the center of Indianapolis. Reports of the first 500-mile race declared that 80,000 spectators attended, and estimated that 75,000 of those arrived by rail—this in a time when many people never travelled farther than ten miles from their homes in a lifetime.

The Midwestern state of Indiana was already a leader in automobile production and Indianapolis was its hub. With the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the success of the first ‘500’, the city found its pride.

The story of the Speedway and of the Indianapolis 500 is also the story of the individuals who made their mark—coming from backgrounds as varied as the nation itself to create the history.

The results of the races have been well documented. This is the story.

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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 the Mille Miglia – traditionally dominated by Italian drivers – had been won by a foreigner in a foreign car and the first time that a driver’s average speed exceeded 100 km/h.

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The story of the Indianapolis 500 is the story of America in a pivotal century—the beginning of the American Century. A rural nation rushing to embrace industrialization. Farm boys, fairgrounds and big city promoters. Seat of the pants courage and genuine genius. Foreign invasions—so to speak—and homeland traditions.

In 1910, the city of Indianapolis was home to 233,650 people and the 22nd largest city in America. The U.S. Center of Population in 1910 was in Bloomington, Indiana, just 52 miles southwest of Indianapolis.

Indiana was already one of the early centers of American automobile production.

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Left to right: Pete Thelander, Carl Moore, John Goodman. William Edgar (2) & Graham Blake Photos

Story by William Edgar, Photography by William Edgar and Graham Blake as noted

To begin, I was driving through the Sonoma Valley early Friday morning on April Fools’ Day—I’m not kidding—to spend the next three mornings and afternoons doing what so many of us love to do, which is to attend a vintage racing weekend at one of America’s best road course raceways. The surrounding hills were green from recent downpours, hawks were high on the wing, and vineyards were coming back to leaf once again. What really could be better? Well, maybe the sight of cars on track and the song they make, up through the gears, around the corners, flying along the straights in chase of something that defies description.

As a companion story to Dennis Gray’s event report, I picked three owner/drivers with dissimilar cars and stuck with them all through the California Sports Racing Group (CSRG) season opener, April 1-2-3, at Infineon Raceway, the 2.52-mile, 12-turn challengingly technical road course in northern California’s Sonoma County where the local Zin, Cab and Pinot wines are inspiring, and racing equally so. My idea was to see what these three gentlemen do in getting themselves and their cars ready and into another year full of vintage racing. Here’s how it went.

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The Canadian/American team, North American Eagle, once they have secured sponsorship funding could attempt the record this year. The UK team, Bloodhound SSC, appears ready to attempt the record in 2013. And the Australian, Aussie Invader 5R, which will be ready in 2013-14.

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The 12 Hours of Sebring 2011 was held Saturday, March 19th at Sebring International Raceway in Florida. The 59th annual 12 Hours of Sebring endurance race, the first event on the 2011 Intercontinental Le Mans Cup (ILMC) calendar, offered exciting racing and ended with an unexpected winner.

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