A legend retires

Better than Nuvolari? Only in your dreams.

Hey, what about Fangio (:-)

Schumacher could only wish to carry the driving shoes for Juan Fangio and Tazio Nuvolari. Michael could never have endured the machinery and roads that they literally blazed before him.

What about Sir Jack Brabham, the only man to design, build and drive his cars to 3 World Championships???

All drivers mentioned were/are great - it would be interesting if they could all be here now to race today's cars, though I'm sure they'd all do well.

Avantilover

Sick, ugly, little Tazio was the best of all, all things considered.

(To brighten things up, I would want Gerhard Berger around, though. That's important!) Karl

John Clements wrote:

More recently, I enjoyed watching the Senna/Prost battles. I was always rooting for Senna, because he was young and insane and just fun to watch. I think Niki Lauda was the first F1 driver that I ever really paid attention to (now we're going back to grade school, for me...) now that guy was tough...

nate

John Clements wrote:

Tougher than Earnhardt???

Lee

I dunno, did Earnhardt race six weeks after being trapped in a burning car and being given last rites? (and finish second in points for the season even after missing two races while recovering?)

nate

Lee Aanderud wrote:

He raced the next weekend in 1996 after breaking his collarbone, shoulder blade and sternum if that counts. You miss two races in Winston Cup and you're season is over.

Lee

You will note I did say 'probably' and 'since'. Thinking about, probably Senna was the greatest since Nuvolari.

It is hard to compare though, Nuvolari only had about 3 dozen wins (20 or so were GP wins), but in many cases they were wins with inferior cars. Sometimes terribly inferior if you look at the '35 German GP.

-- wf.

snipped-for-privacy@cox.net wrote:

I really like Sterling Moss, but he needs to quit tearing up the vintage racers. (shades of his last professional race)

OK, so there you have it... I don't know much about NASCAR at all except the cars aren't anything resembling "stock" and they turn left a lot :) but I'd venture to say that Lauda was right up there in the "guys that love racing so much they just can't stay away even when they're all kinds of banged up (and have skills too)" department.

BTW, was it Sterling Moss who ran a few NASCAR races back in the 60's? I remember reading his account of the experience in Road and Track... basically he had the crew set the car up to handle like a sports car, and then gave up and had them put it all back the way it was when he found that he was just smoking the rear tires off through the turns... I thought that was pretty amusing (although the crew probably didn't)

so let's start another tangent... what kinds of racing does everybody watch? Personally, the only races that i ever find myself (rarely) watching are WRC or the various touring car classes... I don't watch drag racing just because I don't find it that exciting on TV, although I could see myself participating someday. Sadly, I live 5 min. from a dragstrip now but it looks like I'll be moving to an area that doesn't have a convenient strip... closest one would be the 1/8 mile strip in Manassas...

nate

Lee Aanderud wrote:

Moss was probably running the road course at Riverside when he ran NASCAR.

If a race is on pavement, going left and right, up and down, wet or dry, day or night, I probably watch it.

I have seen NASCAR West run the adult road course at Sears Point, not the kiddy course that the rich NASCAR runs now. Hershel McGriff NASCAR West champ in the 1980s also won his class in the Pan American (Mexican Road Race) back in the early 1950s!

N8N wrote:

Moss' first name is STIRLING, even if Sterling Marlin is named after him. He never ran NASCAR; the 1980's Road & Track effort was by a somewhat lesser English driver, now a race-caller, whose main commentary was on how NASCAR teams could make sure you didn't qualify just as snootily as the Club d'Ouest crowd could keep you out of LeMans. Jaguar's real involvement in NASCAR was in the early 50's, and they won one (Al Keller, also a USAC driver). NASCAR used to run on dirt and on roads, before the current crop of mammon-worshippers signed on. As a child, I saw Richard Petty's father beat Dale Earnhardt's father on the gravel mile at historic Fort Miami. They called them "jalopy races." If you did well, you'd get a shot at the midgets.

Nuvolari was not ugly.

Funny that no NASCAR cultists mention the American drivers AJ Foyt or Mario Andretti, both hard to salaam to but they run em all and won em all, LeMans, Indy, Daytona 24 & 500, F1 (and one of them kissed Granatelli), but of course that was before 24/7 network.

I also thought Phil Hill and Dan Gurney might have been at least remembered, but it didn't happen on Speed Channel last week, so it didn't happen.

One thought for you panty waists: Murphy. Duesenberg. France. 1921. Google it.

I invite readers to Google him and make there own call - Karl

Granatelli kissed Mario, but I have never heard mention of the reverse until now. Karl

....and the Long Island races earlier..... Karl

I like NHRA drags, ALMS (not Grand Am), SCCA, & vintage road racing, Champ Cars (not IndyCars), dirt modifieds & sprinters, Bonneville salt racers, figure 8 racing, and monster trucks. I catch Formula 1 races just to hear the engines scream (the racing sucks), and AMA bikers on road racers are fun to watch. I lost interest in NASCAR about the time Petty retired and Waltrip carried the Tide colors.

The races I actually attend are NHRA drags (local & national), vintage drags (flatheads & inliners), local gymkhanas & regional SCCA road races, dirt track gokarts, cage carts (mini-outlaws), late model dirt stockers, and Bonneville when I can get there.

I did.... Tazio Nuvolari is not ugly. Probably a 2.5 on a scale of 10, judging by what Google supplied. Add on another 1 or 2 as most photos were post-race, and even Paul Newman doesn't look too great under those conditions Karl