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“My Travels On Racer Road: Can-Am and Formula 1 in their golden age” by Pete Lyons
Foreword by Sir Jackie Stewart Publication date: March 2025 ISBN: 9781910505878 |
LONDON (March 18, 2025) – “My Travels On Racer Road: Can-Am and Formula 1 in their golden age,” by Pete Lyons, is now available in the U.S.
As Sir Jackie Stewart states in the book’s Foreword, “Pete Lyons was one of the best journalists in Formula 1 at the time I was racing.” Lyons himself writes that when he became obsessed with motor racing, “It felt like my true road.” He witnessed Chaparral, Lola, McLaren and Porsche create ever-more-monstrous Can-Am beasts to be tamed by the likes of Jim Hall, John Surtees, Bruce McLaren, Denny Hulme, Mario Andretti and Mark Donohue. His cameras, notebooks and typewriter also were there when Tyrrell, Lotus, McLaren and Ferrari were the dominant forces in Formula 1, with Jackie Stewart, Emerson Fittipaldi, Niki Lauda and James Hunt the World Champion drivers.
Immersed in this golden age of racing, Lyons brought a unique blend of evocative description and fastidious factual detail to his craft, putting his devoted readers at the heart of the action. This captivating memoir will transport the reader back to those times.
- Early travels, including criss-crossing the USA in his family’s pre-war Rolls-Royce and by Vincent motorcycle in the late 1950s, then discovering Europe’s racing scene as an impecunious wanderer in the early 1960s.
- Breaking into professional reporting from 1964 for the UK’s Autosport alongside his father Ozzie Lyons, with assignments embracing IndyCar, endurance sports cars, Formula 1 and more, and getting to know the great names in these worlds.
- Falling in love with the Can-Am upon its inception in 1966 and following this “big-banger” racing closely for seven seasons, during which “Riding with Revvie” — laps with 1971 series champion Peter Revson in a McLaren M8F — was among the highlights. Lyons’s travels “on racer road” took him all over North America by Volvo station wagon, Ford van and Honda CB750 motorcycle.
- Embarking in 1973 upon four seasons of global travels with the Formula 1 “circus” and all the diversions that came with that, including time spent with Emerson Fittipaldi at his home in Brazil and a British rallying odyssey as Denny Hulme’s navigator.
- Around Europe, Lyons’s means of travel included his Chevrolet Corvette Stingray, a VW camper van that doubled as mobile office and hotel, and rented private aircraft that he flew to races himself.
- In his post-nomadic life, Lyons has been plying his trade ever since as a writer, photographer and editor.
About the Author: Born in 1940 in New York State, Pete Lyons is an international motorsports reporter, photographer and award-winning book author in the fields of Formula 1, Can-Am, endurance sports cars, IndyCar, Trans-Am and many more forms of racing. In his decades-long, worldwide career, Lyons covered events on all six populated continents for numerous enthusiast publications, including Autosport, AutoWeek, Car and Driver, Racecar, Road & Track, Vintage Motorsport and many others. He is also the author of 20 published books including, for Evro Publishing, Shadow: The Magnificent Machines of a Man of Mystery, which won ‘Specialist Motoring Book of the Year’ at the 2020 Royal Automobile Club Motoring Book of the Year Awards (UK) and ‘Best Book’ at the 2021 Automotive Heritage Awards (USA).
Evro Publishing books are distributed in North America by Quarto Publishing Group USA. Books can be ordered from Quarto by email: sales@quarto.com; phone number: 800-328-0590; or website: www.quartoknows.com Please use the relevant ISBN number when ordering.
“My Travels On Racer Road: Can-Am and Formula 1 in their golden age” is available in the U.S. from specialist and online booksellers, as well as on evropublishing.com.
Pete Lyons’s new memoir is also available directly from the author, complete with his personalized signature, at his website: https://www.petelyons.com/my-books.
For more information about this book, or to request a review book and/or an interview, please contact Judy Stropus at jvstropus@gmail.com.
Published in 2022, a year marked by the centenary of the inauguration of Monza Autodrome and the rise of Fascism, Baxa’s monograph offers a unique and in-depth exploration of the complex relationship between the Fascist ideology and motorsport. Beyond being a captivating read, the book is a groundbreaking contribution to motorsport academic research as the first English-language monograph on this subject. Across the book’s seven chapters, Baxa argues the synergy between motorsport and Fascism, demonstrating how the former not only mirrored the modernity and technology celebrated by the regime but also served as a potent instrument for promoting Fascist mythology.
This argument is borne out in chapter 2, where the author explores how motor racing boosted Fascist ideology and resolved many of its contradictions. Particularly, Baxa spotlights how motorsport reconciled Marinetti’s Futurism and D’Annunzio’s Decadence. Although the former celebrated the future and the latter looked at the past as a balm against the decadence of his contemporaries, both shared a love for technology and cars: Marinetti was thrilled by the machine and its speed, while D’Annunzio celebrated the drivers. Eventually, both exalted race car drivers, who were seen as the New Fascist Man, depicted as both the Futurist modern technician and the Dannunzian hero.
The construction of Fascist mythology also hinged on the autodromes, soon considered mythical landscapes. This aspect is explored in chapters 3 and 4, where Baxa respectively focuses on the openings of Monza and Melhalla Autodromes and the attempt to transform Rome into a motorsport capital. Although the regime could not take credit for Monza’s project, soon the autodrome became the first Italian “landscape of speed” where Fascist rituals could be celebrated, and the death of many drivers ended up favoring the creation of modern Fascist heroes depicted as martyrs, disposed to sacrifice themselves on the altar of the fatherland. Meanwhile, the project in the colonial modernist style of Melhalla Autodrome in Tripoli (Libya) further emphasized Fascist fascination for modernity and the attempt to obtain international recognition through the grandeur of the Italian empire.
Unlike Monza and Melhalla, the circuits in Rome never had the same success. Yet, their story further reveals the profound nexus between Fascism and motorsport as they synthesized the cult of past and modernity and Mussolini’s effort to restore Rome’s grandeur. Furthermore, the different venues used for the race mirror the evolution of Fascist ideology. While the first venues embodied the vision of the Liberal upper classes, by the 1930s, the creation of the Tre Fontane circuit suggested the Fascist policy of “going toward the people,” promoting the ideal of the New Fascist Man instead of the aristocratic racer. Despite its failure, the Rome Grand Prix squarely represents that motorsport is more than a sport since it is used to remake the spirit of Rome.
Notably, Baxa dedicates chapters 5 and 6 to the Mille Miglia, a race that epitomized the convergence of Fascist ideology and motorsport. Organized by the Automobile Club of Brescia, the race immediately received the support of the Fascist Party, becoming a symbol of Fascist ideology. The race not only showcased the rise of Italian industry and the efficiency of Italy’s road network but also resolved the tension between the project of “going toward the masses” and celebrating a new elite of celebrities. The Mille Miglia affirmed the legendary rivalry between Nuvolari and Varzi, embodying the New Men who brought themselves to the masses. Throughout the chapters, though, it becomes evident that Mille Miglia’s most significant legacy is the creation of a new sense of place. The course layout highlighted landmarks that exalted Italy and the Fascist Revolution, transforming the landscape into a mythology that mirrored the regime’s ideology.
Baxa’s work clearly highlights the unique role of motorsports in shaping the Fascist national identity. While soccer and Giro d’Italia also contributed to the definition of national identity, motor races indeed expressed Fascist values on a grand scale. The inherent violence and danger of this sport were intricately woven into the Fascist ideology of the New Man. In this symbiotic relationship, motorsport and Fascism revitalized the sport and provided the regime with a unique platform to propagate its ideals. Eventually, Baxa has the merit to focus on a well-studied topic from a new, thrilling vantage point. As readers, we can hit our journey across the book and feel the adrenaline of the new Italian landscape of speed.
Giovene, Alessio (2024) “Book Review of Motorsport and Fascism. Living Dangerously. By Paul Baxa. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. 313 pages.,” Journal of Motorsport Culture & History: Vol. 4: Iss. 1, Article 4. Available at: https://scholars.unh.edu/jmotorsportculturehistory/vol4/iss1/4
This article is brought to you for free and open access by University of New Hampshire Scholars’ Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Motorsport Culture & History by an authorized editor of University of New Hampshire Scholars’ Repository. For more information, please contact Scholarly.Communication@unh.edu.
About the Journal of Motorsports Culture & History
The Journal of Motorsport Culture & History aims to provide quality motorsport based academic research based on cultural or historical inquiries. Issues will be released once per year in the fall, starting in October of 2019. Manuscripts will be subject to a desk review for fit, and a double-blind peer review for quality and rigor. Student authors are encouraged to submit their research. The scope of JMCH includes, but is not limited to, motorsport research or interpretive essays within: sociology, cultural studies, communication studies, and history (books & newspapers, films, movies, radio & television, museum exhibits, resource guides).
The cover description of this book is that it “. . . takes you on a revealing, roller-coaster ride down memory lane . . .”, and it successfully accomplishes this. Regarding “memory lane”, there are abundant reminiscences, anecdotes, period photos, race results, performance standings, etc. – along with extensive name-checking – to stimulate memories in afficionados of local motorsports in upstate New York. It even lists the eighteen individuals likely to spend weeknights in Louis Lazzaro’s North Utica garage, and there is a seven-page index of names for readers to conveniently check whether they, their friends, and/or their relatives are mentioned.
Lou Lazzaro certainly compiled an impressive racing record as a stock car driver on dirt and asphalt tracks in the Northeast, mainly in eastern New York State. Unfortunately, the density of detail is likely to deter any but the most dedicated fans from picking up the book and sticking with it long enough to discover what it does “reveal” beyond the minutia of Lazzaro’s life. Buried here and there in short sections and more often between the lines than in them, is a fascinating story not only of a life, but also of its times. It’s a story of an upstate New York when the prosperous industries of earlier times went out of business or left for greener – and warmer – pastures. It’s a story of families struggling to get by in a difficult economy, sometimes managing to stay together, sometimes drifting apart when children moved south or west, and sometimes with the remaining fragments coming together to form new families.
The main story, though, is about the community formed around motor racing, a community of builders, owners, drivers, sponsors, promoters, and of course fans. Like a family, there could be intense competition, both for attention and for a share of limited resources. But there was also a family-like sense that everyone was in it together. Small suppliers would often lend a hand to owner-drivers facing a dry spell when prize money wasn’t coming in. Unrelated local service businesses were willing to chip in a contribution from time to time, earning a namecheck painted on the cars. Fans stepped up to help teams or tracks, volunteering their time to be part of the ongoing show. And sometimes they pulled together to assist those whom the social services system was letting down. It was a long way from the money-driven big business of contemporary Formula One or NASCAR competition, although over the course of Louis Lazzaro’s career, it had begun to drift in that direction.
As Lazzaro: The Man and His Machines, the book is limited. Amidst the overwhelmingly abundant statistics there is very little about the machines, and it takes for granted that the reader knows what the racing classes were, why the vehicles looked the way they did, and how they evolved. But beneath the surface as Lazzaro: His Life and His Times, the book is a rewarding read about a time and a place and a man who with patience, perseverance, and character made a meaningful life in motorsports that changed the lives of others.
McGoun, Elton G. (2024) “Book Review of LAZZARO: A Man and His Machines. By Ron Moshier. Newburyport, MA: Coastal 101, 2023. 180 pages.,” Journal of Motorsport Culture & History: Vol. 4: Iss. 1, Article 3. Available at: https://scholars.unh.edu/jmotorsportculturehistory/vol4/iss1/3
This article is brought to you for free and open access by University of New Hampshire Scholars’ Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Motorsport Culture & History by an authorized editor of University of New Hampshire Scholars’ Repository. For more information, please contact Scholarly.Communication@unh.edu.
About the Journal of Motorsports Culture & History
The Journal of Motorsport Culture & History aims to provide quality motorsport based academic research based on cultural or historical inquiries. Issues will be released once per year in the fall, starting in October of 2019. Manuscripts will be subject to a desk review for fit, and a double-blind peer review for quality and rigor. Student authors are encouraged to submit their research. The scope of JMCH includes, but is not limited to, motorsport research or interpretive essays within: sociology, cultural studies, communication studies, and history (books & newspapers, films, movies, radio & television, museum exhibits, resource guides).
Brian Ingrassia has made an important contribution to the history of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) and its impact on the city of Indianapolis. Using the sophisticated tools of the cultural historian, Ingrassia provides a “thick description” of the development of the Speedway in the first half of the twentieth century as a site for speed and progress, a process that mirrored the development of the city itself. “Motor sport reflected transformations in spatial and temporal relations,” writes Ingrassia, “a primary site for this activity was Indianapolis, a city that seemed to be every place or no place.” (page 3) Throughout the book, Ingrassia weaves multiple narratives that demonstrate the growth of the city, the rise of the Indy 500, and the story of the Brickyard’s most influential founding father, Carl Fisher. The result is a magnificent tapestry that demonstrates how the Speedway evolved from a site to test modern technology, to a place of nostalgia and consumerism. In fact, the commodification of spectacle was a constant in the ever evolving Speedway with the “obliteration of space” serving as the site’s raison d’être.
Ingrassia’s book reveals how the IMS stands at the intersection of urban planning, technological progress, spectacle, and entertainment. The Speedway’s ability to navigate these various functions has accounted for why it has long outlasted the plethora of speedways constructed in the early twentieth century, and why it is the world’s largest single day sporting event. In the beginning, the IMS was conceived as part of a larger project to promote industrial progress and automobility in Indianapolis, the “crossroads of America.” As Indianapolis grew, so did its place in the world of “spatial annihilation” with leading figures like Fisher pushing for a move away from “City Beautiful” to “City Practical.” More “Barnum than Ford,” according to Ingrassia, Fisher was a man who always had his eye on the spectacle and entertainment value of motor sport, more than its value for advancing automotive progress. A key figure in the Good Roads Movement, Fisher planned his speedway as a corollary to his other schemes of building the Lincoln and Dixie Highways. Like IMS, these roads offered practical and technological advances, but they also led to vacation destinations like Miami Beach.
The success of the Indianapolis 500 in the 1910s mirrored the advances in urban planning in Indianapolis. It was in this decade that the city truly became modern with new transportation networks that helped grow the city and the IMS along with it. After the First World War, Indianapolis began losing its status as a center of automobile manufacturing to Detroit, and after a failed attempt to make the IMS an airport, the Indy 500 began its transformation into a site of spectacle of entertainment living off past glory. Ingrassia demonstrates effectively how the IMS began to “invent traditions” under its new owner, Eddie Rickenbacker, former race driver and aviator. Everything from the “Junk Formula,”, to the introduction of the Borg-Warner Trophy and its immortalizing of past winners, to the winner drinking milk, were all products of the 1930s. All of these played on nostalgia for past races and for the need to create traditions and rituals aimed at entertaining crowds during the Great Depression.
These traditions saved the IMS when it was left abandoned and in decrepit shape during the Second World War. They also helped to convince Tony Hulman, a local businessperson with no background in racing or the automotive industry to purchase the Speedway and launch it into the era of sport where selling nostalgia was just as important as selling the sporting event. As Hulman discovered, “nostalgia was good for business.” (page 198) It did not take him long to figure out the importance of “inventing traditions.” In the first Indy 500 held in the Hulman era, the song “(Back Home Again in) Indiana” was performed, making it a staple of the pre-race ceremonies to this day.
Ingrassia’s book is an excellent study of how a motorsport site played a role in shaping its local environment. It also effectively demonstrates how the IMS mirrored the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial region while maintaining its place as an American icon.
Throughout the book, Ingrassia expertly weaves the account of this shift with short summaries of the races, not always an easy accomplishment in sports books where competition histories often overshadow broader contextual factors. My only critique is the decision to end the story with the 1950s. It would be interesting to see how the commodification of nostalgia has carried on into the twenty-first century, and how it was used to navigate the political vicissitudes of American Indy Car Racing since the 1970s. The decision to bring NASCAR and Formula One to the IMS in the 1990s and early 2000s no doubt challenged the hallowed image of the Speedway as sacred ground for one event. Hopefully, Ingrassia will write a second volume that explores these issues.
Baxa, Paul (2024) “A Book Review of Speed Capital: Indianapolis Auto Racing and the Making of Modern America. By Brian M Ingrassia. Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2024.,” Journal of Motorsport Culture & History: Vol. 4: Iss. 1, Article 2. Available at: https://scholars.unh.edu/jmotorsportculturehistory/vol4/iss1/2
This article is brought to you for free and open access by University of New Hampshire Scholars’ Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Motorsport Culture & History by an authorized editor of University of New Hampshire Scholars’ Repository. For more information, please contact Scholarly.Communication@unh.edu.
About the Journal of Motorsports Culture & History
The Journal of Motorsport Culture & History aims to provide quality motorsport based academic research based on cultural or historical inquiries. Issues will be released once per year in the fall, starting in October of 2019. Manuscripts will be subject to a desk review for fit, and a double-blind peer review for quality and rigor. Student authors are encouraged to submit their research. The scope of JMCH includes, but is not limited to, motorsport research or interpretive essays within: sociology, cultural studies, communication studies, and history (books & newspapers, films, movies, radio & television, museum exhibits, resource guides).
BELLEVUE, Wash. (July 5, 2024) – “On the Prowl: The Definitive History of the Walkinshaw Jaguar Sports Car Team,” by Neil Smith, is now available from David Bull Publishing, and may be purchased at Bull Publishing.
“On the Prowl” tells the rich and fascinating story of TWR’s Jaguar sports car programs with the help of those who were there.
When Jaguar won the storied 24 Hours of Le Mans five times in the 1950s, it transformed a company known for smooth and luxurious cars into a true sporting icon, creating fast and beautiful models such as the C-type, D-type and the beloved symbol of the Swinging Sixties, the E-type.
First-time author Smith tells the tale of how the stage was set for a bright future for the marque, but a tumultuous decision to merge with BMC, known for the Mini, in 1966 eventually landed Jaguar inside Britain’s worst car company, British Leyland, and threatened the very future of the prestigious marque.
As a new management team sought to right the ship in the early 1980s, they turned to motorsports as a tool for rebuilding Jaguar’s reputation, with a series of racing programs in the United States run by Bob Tullius’ Group 44 and a parallel touring car effort in Europe led by the fiercely competitive and determined Scotsman Tom Walkinshaw.
Under Walkinshaw’s no-nonsense leadership, his TWR team took few prisoners on the race track, garnering prestigious wins and championships before laying claim to the right to take on Jaguar’s ultimate goal: a return to victory at Le Mans.
Bolstered by more than 650 images and period documents, many never before published, the development of the mighty XJR sports-prototype racers is described in detail, along with the fascinating stories of creating success on track.
With the help of interviews with some of Jaguar’s most successful drivers, including Derek Warwick, David Brabham, Eddie Cheever and Andy Wallace, as well as key technical team members such as designer Tony Southgate and team managers Alastair Macqueen and Tony Dowe, the book goes far beyond the race results of the TWR team, uncovering how and why it achieved such enormous success.
Alongside the TWR story is the equally important background of the meteoric rise and sudden fall of Jaguar itself during the 1980s, mirrored by the fortunes of sports car racing at the same time, all of which is covered in great depth by the author, in an engaging and highly-readable style that races along.
About the Author:
Irish-born, British-raised and California-domiciled, Neil Smith’s love of motorsports came from his father, himself a former grasstrack motorcycle racer. He attended his first Group C race, the 1985 Brands Hatch 1000 km, at the age of 9 and from that point on became a scholar of sports car racing and its history. In 1994 he moved to the United States, but not before making the first of many trips to the Le Mans 24 Hours, traveling alone on a charter flight with a small backpack containing nothing more than a few clothes and a hat. After kicking off a career in the technology industry, he began writing a motorsports-focused blog called The Fastest Lap, which led to work covering IMSA and Grand-Am for the predecessor of Sportscar365, one of the top sports car racing news websites. A continued fascination with Group C and IMSA GTP was the catalyst for the research that led to “On the Prowl: The Definitive History of the Walkinshaw Jaguar Sports Car Team,” Smith’s debut book.
He has participated in numerous racing and track activities, including as a co-driver in the U.S. national rally championship, a team owner and driver in the 24 Hours of Lemons and at numerous track days behind the wheel of cars such as a Porsche 944, Subaru STI and various Alfa Romeos. Smith lives in Northern California’s Sonoma region with his wife Kristin, teenage daughter Poppy, an introverted terrier and some aloof chickens. When not following motorsports, he can often be found playing guitar in a ’90s tribute band.
About the Publisher:
David Bull Publishing is dedicated to the goal of producing the best books in motorsports. Founded in 1995, the company has consistently won praise from readers and the media for the editorial quality and presentation of its titles.
The company’s first book, “Sebring: The Official History of America’s Great Sports Car Race,” was named Book of the Year by the American Auto Writing and Broadcasters Association. Every year since then David Bull Publishing has consistently received excellent reviews and won awards, including the prestigious Dean Batchelor Award, the Motor Press Guild’s Best Book Award, as well as several gold and silver medals from the Independent Book Publishers Association.
In 2018, Bull’s groundbreaking biography “Enzo Ferrari: Power, Politics, and the Making of an Automotive Empire” was featured in the New York Times and other major media outlets. In 2015 Sam Posey’s “Where The Writer Meets The Road” was named the Motor Press Guild’s Best Book.
Founder David Bull passed away from a long illness in 2021, and the DBP team has picked up the mantle. Titles for 2024 include: “Ferrari in America: Luigi Chinetti and the North American Racing Team,” by Michael Lynch with János L. Wimpffen; “On The Prowl: The Definitive History of the Walkinshaw Jaguar Sports Car Team,” by Neil Smith; Volumes IV (1980-1989) and V (1990-1999) of “Twice Around the Clock, The Yanks at Le Mans,” by Tim Considine; and Randy Leffingwell’s “Against All the Others: Porsche’s Racing History Volume 1, 1968.” https://www.bullpublishing.com/.
In autumn of 2018, the Haas Formula 1 team announced its new title sponsor, a little known British energy-drink company called Rich Energy. Haas would replace the red, white and black colors of its owner’s firm, the Haas machine tool company, with the black and gold corporate livery of Rich Energy. The arrangement was said to be a multi-year deal, bringing needed resources and additional legitimacy to an underdog team. However, midway through the 2019 season, Haas’s Rich Energy sponsorship came to an abrupt end.
Elizabeth Blackstock and Alanis King first reported on this strange event in April, 2019 for the automotive website Jalopnik. Their lengthy investigation asked, “What the hell is Rich Energy, anyway?” – and answered, “an enigma,” one with an allusive product, little money, a cast of shady characters, a tortured back story and public relations that bordered on magical thinking. Even so, to anyone who uses social media regularly or follows modern politics, the fraudulent Rich Energy escapade might seem uncomfortably familiar. Which raises the essential question, so what? Just what is the significance of Haas’s several month dalliance with Rich Energy? The authors only suggest an answer with their article’s cursory concluding comment that, “Formula One is no stranger to unconventional sponsors.”
There is a long tradition of journalists turning a compelling news story into a book. There are names for this sort of transformation. Literary journalism, creative non-fiction, narrative and
https://jalopnik.com/what-you-find-when-you-look-into-rich-energy-the-myste-1833303620. long-form journalism are some. The attraction is obvious: more time, information and effort will make a good thing even better. There is also the appeal of being able to use literary devices that might be unavailable to a journalist writing straight news accounts organized like an inverted pyramid on deadline. But the would-be author must consider whether the story merits book length treatment. Sometimes the original report says most of what is worth saying. And there is the danger that a book’s elaboration and context building can actually smother the essential point with a cascade of more or less related facts, losing both the analytical line and readers’ attention.
Unfortunately, Blackstock and King’s book pads a brief, freakish moment in F1 sponsorship economics with endless details about Rich Energy’s charlatan CEO, William Storey, before and after his affiliation with Haas, without making clear why the episode matters to a larger understanding of F1 culture or history.
The book opens by showing that online forums had initial doubts about Rich Energy’s credibility, while Haas defended its due diligence. It was, a journalist tells Blackstock and King, “the only story that anyone cared about.” While this media fascination was transient, the book inflates it by discussing other problematic motorsports sponsors and team owners (the Onyx team, Leyton House, Zloop, etc.); F1 scandals – “tax evasion and blatant racism, sexism and anti-Semitism” – that include McLaren’s Spygate and Renault’s Crashgate; a passing reference to names “connected with Formula One” that appeared in Jeffrey Epstein’s Little Black Book; and F1’s alleged history of “covering up” problems that are “mostly buried.” F1 is, the book claims, a sport with a “shiny veneer of extravagance” where the “tendrils of corruption might have lingered just beneath the surface.” Its nature is bound to attract “unsavory people and brands.” And yet only near its end does the book report in a single paragraph that the Haas team owner,
Gene Haas, was convicted in 2007 of avoiding $34 million in US federal taxes, resulting in a total $75 million fine plus back taxes and interest and a two-year jail sentence. Most of all,
Blackstock and King have a book because they are willing to go into the tall grass in search of William Storey, someone with a self-serving explanation for every one of his many dubious enterprises. But arguably someone with only a glancing relevance to F1.
What, then, is the book’s response to the critical question about giving 284 pages to Rich Energy, so what? That F1 is a slick but sleezy motorsport? That team sponsors and owners wield sometimes destructive economic power? That modern day pirates like Storey make trouble wherever they go?
This is a book by reporters who have doggedly amassed a considerable amount of often obscure information about Storey and Rich Energy. While this might not hold a reader’s attention from beginning to end, it may someday be historically valuable in ways not now obvious. After all, the small amount of motorsport history produced by professional historians relies upon – to paraphrase the historian John Heitmann – the accounts of journalists and enthusiasts for its most informed work. That might include Racing with Rich Energy.
Miller, James (2023) “Book Review- Racing with Rich Energy: How a Rogue Sponsor Took Formula One for a Ride.,” Journal of Motorsport Culture & History: Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 3.
Available at: https://scholars.unh.edu/jmotorsportculturehistory/vol3/iss1/3
This article is brought to you for free and open access by University of New Hampshire Scholars’ Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Journal of Motorsport Culture & History by an authorized editor of University of New Hampshire Scholars’ Repository. For more information, please contact Scholarly.Communication@unh.edu.
About the Journal of Motorsports Culture & History
The Journal of Motorsport Culture & History aims to provide quality motorsport based academic research based on cultural or historical inquiries. Issues will be released once per year in the fall, starting in October of 2019. Manuscripts will be subject to a desk review for fit, and a double-blind peer review for quality and rigor. Student authors are encouraged to submit their research. The scope of JMCH includes, but is not limited to, motorsport research or interpretive essays within: sociology, cultural studies, communication studies, and history (books & newspapers, films, movies, radio & television, museum exhibits, resource guides).
Throughout this collection of brief essays, well-respected racecar owner, builder, and mechanic Will Cronkrite takes the reader back to the 1970s and early 80s, when one generation
of NASCAR Hall of Famers, such as Junior Johnson, Donnie Allison, Ralph Moody, and Bud Moore were the sport’s established superstars. During this same period, Mark Martin, Ricky Rudd, and Dale Earnhardt were beginning their illustrious careers, and Cronkrite worked with all three of them.
Cronkrite never portrays himself as someone to be pitied, having lost his young family several days before Christmas due to an auto accident. Yet his career is one of perseverance in
the face of adversity. Having competed in NASCAR, IHRA, USAC, and even semi-truck racing, Cronkrite is content—thankful for his opportunities to work with many talented drivers
and mechanics. Later in life, working at his shop in Rock Hill, South Carolina, he pursued restoration projects and metal working, and Cronkrite’s second career required the same stamina and attention to detail that served him well throughout his decades in motorsports. His metal work is recognized throughout the world.
Throughout I Was a NASCAR Redneck, Cronkrite reflects on his long days at the track and in the garage. He describes some of his adventurous, exhausting, (and sometimes comical)
cross-country hauls. Cronkrite also details his successes, trials, and tribulations in motorsports. Cronkrite believes in the value of hard-earned money as opposed to having everything just given to you. Through anecdotes, he passes on small lessons he learned on and off the racetrack. For instance, Cronkrite mentions how a single finger point from Donnie Allison conveyed the difference between the “book” approach and the practical approach of setting up a racecar.
Cronkrite, in one of his Earnhardt reflections, explains how the future “Intimidator” had his racing seat positioned in a manner that gave him an edge. Cronkrite’s ability to recount obscure details of how much “bite” he added or how many links he adjusted the suspension during races is reminiscent of older generations of racers, who kept handwritten notebooks and never used computers, lasers, or wind tunnels.
The spirit, grit, and engineering prowess from Cronkrite’s era lives on at the highest levels of NASCAR and trickles down to family-owned late model teams competing at the local
short track every week. Cronkrite reminds the reader that these tales are a recollection of his journeys with “salt-of-the-earth” men and women, some of which still compete in grassroots racing series today and can be found in small race shops with boarded up windows and surrounded by overgrown grass. And, today, at the lowest levels of motorsport, weekend warriors still fabricate their own jigs, tools, and measuring equipment, just as Cronkrite did in the 1970s. He constantly reminds us how today’s NASCAR Cup Series barely resembles the NASCAR Winston Cup Series of the 1970s—at the track, in the garage, and on the road.
Perhaps most importantly, Cronkrite, because he took the time to self-publish his stories, has contributed a deep dive to our understanding of what NASCAR was like through the
experiences of someone who had a cutting-edge mechanical mind and an understanding of how to go fast—despite never receiving the mainstream recognition he deserved
Beekwilder, Quinn and Dean, Daniel (2023) “Book Review: I Was A NASCAR Redneck: Recollections of the Transformation of a Yankee Farm Boy to a Southern Redneck in the Golden Era of NASCAR and Beyond.,” Journal of Motorsport Culture & History: Vol. 3: Iss. 1, Article 1. Available at: https://scholars.unh.edu/jmotorsportculturehistory/vol3/iss1/1
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About the Journal of Motorsports Culture & History
The Journal of Motorsport Culture & History aims to provide quality motorsport based academic research based on cultural or historical inquiries. Issues will be released once per year in the fall, starting in October of 2019. Manuscripts will be subject to a desk review for fit, and a double-blind peer review for quality and rigor. Student authors are encouraged to submit their research. The scope of JMCH includes, but is not limited to, motorsport research or interpretive essays within: sociology, cultural studies, communication studies, and history (books & newspapers, films, movies, radio & television, museum exhibits, resource guides).