A VINTAGE RACING CHRONICLE
by Guy Motil
It’s the opinion of many experts that the first auto race must surely have occurred shortly after the production of the second motor vehicle and that there were fans in attendance routing for each of the cars, such is the passion of both drivers and spectators at races worldwide. Actually history shows it took more than a handful of years for automakers to start competing, and most of those early races rewarded durability over outright speed.
But, jump forward over a hundred years. As we move further into the 21st century, motor-sports’ position as one of the world’s two most popular spectator sports becomes more and more assured. For almost 100 years now, the Indy 500 has enjoyed the largest paid spectator attendance of any event in the United States and Formula 1 now has the largest world-wide TV audience of any regularly scheduled sports broadcast. With qualifying times often decided by tenths or even hundredths of a second and races lasting hours sometimes determined by less than a car length, the pressure on drivers and teams is intense. At the highest levels of the sport, race teams and their sponsors have been known to spend budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars annually and not win a race. Motorsports is a fascinating world of speed, technology, engineering, luck and danger. I am intrigued by virtually every aspect of auto-racing and in recent years have trekked from dirt tracks to super speedways shooting photos, meeting drivers and teams and talking shop with race fans of all persuasion.
In a sport where mere excellence is the excepted norm, auto-racing in all it’s varied forms, continues to captivate and entertain us by asking the simple question – Who is the fastest? Who is the best?
My passion for the automobile and especially auto-racing has compelled me to explore the history of the automobile. After decades of reading, watching TV, attending races and a ton of research, I’ve compiled a timeline/history of the sport that we here at RVC hope you, our readers, will find entertaining and challenging.
While this history appears quite extensive, we are not done. There is much, much more to enjoy. I’ll be adding to it on a monthly basis so please check back to see more of the rich and awesome saga of auto-racing that has enthralled us all.
© Guy Motil, 2019
