Go Like Hell
Page 34
Vandervell, Tony, 182
Vanwall Formula One, 182
Vincent motorcycles, 81
Von Brauchitsch, Manfred, 27
Von Trips, Wolfgang (“Count Von Crash”)
death of, at Italian Grand Prix, 57–59, 160
Formula One competitions, 56–57
funeral, 60–61
participation on Il Squadra Primavera, 30
Walker, Rob, 173
Watson Offenhauser, 34
Weber carburetors
Bologna plant, 21
failure of, during 1965 Le Mans, 108
West Coast racing circuit, 50–51
Whitmore, John, 228
wind tunnel
at Maranello Ferrari factory, 65
testing of Ford GT40, 89
testing of Ford Mk II, 189–90
Winton, Alexander, 15
World Sports Car Championships, 85
Wright, Wilbur, 73
Wyer, John (“Pappy,” “Death Ray”)
and development of Ford Le Mans cars, 87, 93
firing of, by Beebe, 124
hiring of Hill, 93
hiring of McLaren, 88
at 1964 Le Mans, 101–2
at 1965 Le Mans, 159
at 1966 Italian Grand Prix, 205
preparation for 1964 Nassau
Speed Week, 124
responses to 1964 racing season,
120, 122–23
team approach to racing, 104
wins at Le Mans, 252
Yates, Brock, 169
Yorke, John, 82
Young, Eoin, 246–47
Yunick, Smokey, 32
About the Author
A. J. BAIME is an executive editor at Playboy, where he oversees the automotive and various feature sections. He has written for numerous publications, including the New York Times Magazine, Popular Science, Maxim, and the Village Voice.
Footnotes
* Historians have debated the nature of Dino Ferrari’s disease, arguing everything from leukemia to syphilis passed on by his mother at birth. Most agree he was afflicted with muscular dystrophy.
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* Italians used the word pilota, or pilot, to denote a racing driver. The word “driver” meant chauffeur.
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* According to Ferrari’s friend and informal biographer Gino Rancati, who attended this meeting, the original seven were the Marquis de Portago (Spain), Count Wolfgang Von Trips (West Germany), Eugenio Castellotti (Italy), Luigi Musso (Italy), Cesare Perdisa (Italy), Peter Collins (Great Britain), and Mike Hawthorn (Great Britain).
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* The Monza Autodrome had a steep American-style banked turn. The 1961 Italian Grand Prix was the last time it was used, as it was deemed too dangerous. It still exists at the track, covered in weeds and hidden in the woods. Looking at it today, it’s hard to fathom that men actually raced cars on it.
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* McQueen’s 1963 Ferrari 250 GT Berlinetta Lusso sold at auction in 2007 for $2.3 million.
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* The only American car like it ever built was a one-off research project Roy Lunn created in 1961 called Mustang I (which technically, aside from its logo, had little relation to the Ford Mustang). This midengined car sits today in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn.
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* This Cobra was entered not by Shelby but by A. C. Cars of England.
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* The lap record during the race was kept separate from the lap record during qualifying. Qualifying laps could be taken in flat-out sprints with less worry of overtaxing the engine or brakes. Thus Hill’s race record of 3:49.2 was slower than Surtees’s qualifying record of 3:42.
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* Readers may think the word “revolution” is over the top, but that word was used at the time, not just in terms of the emphasis on speed, but the way car companies were using market research for the first time to identify what car buyers wanted. See “The Detroit Revolution” in Esquire, July 1966.
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* In 2006, the author piloted an Aston Martin DB9 into a banked turn at 140 mph on this same Romeo oval when a coyote ran onto the track. A near miss.
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* Jochen Rindt was killed at Monza five years later while practicing for the Italian Grand Prix. He became the first and only man ever crowned Formula One World Champion posthumously.
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* Andretti’s third son, Marco, today a top Indy-car competitor, was not yet born.
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* A third and less high-profile European Ford team was also assigned to the Le Mans project, headed by Briton Alan Mann.
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* Maranello Concessionaires was a British-based professional Ferrari racing team.
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† Ecurie Francorchamps was a Belgian-based professional Ferrari racing team.
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‡ Scuderia Filipinetti was a Swiss-based professional Ferrari racing team.
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