Hershel McGriff remembers when it wasn’t that unusual to drive the car to the track, tape up the headlights, race 500 miles and if you didn’t wreck it or blow the engine, drive it home.
McGriff did that in 1950, when he drove cross-country from his home in Portland, Ore., to compete in the inaugural Southern 500 at Darlington, S.C. He finished ninth in the race, and photos from that day show McGriff’s car racing with Oregon license tags.
In today’s NASCAR, state-of-the-art tractor-trailer rigs transport  … More
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Formula 1 arrived in Monza on the weekend of Sept. 16, 2001, reeling from the horrors of the 9-11 terrorist attacks in New York and the Pentagon, and the shocking crash of Alex Zanardi in the Champ Car race at Euro Speedway Lausitz a few days later. For its “home” race, the Ferrari team ran with the nose wings of its cars draped in black, in a gesture of sympathy to the victims of the 9-11 attacks. It was an obvious damper on what would have been a celebration of a glorious season for the Scuderia, whose team leader Michael Schumacher had won eight of the 14 races held that season going into Monza. But in Italy, Ferrari would be upstaged by Williams-BMW and its new star, Juan-Pablo Montoya.
After scooping a CART Champ Car title in his rookie season of 1998Â Â …Â More
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They’re NASCAR’s two most high-profile imports since Tony Stewart left IndyCars in 1999 and Juan Montoya bailed on Formula 1 almost a decade later. One is a GoDaddy girl with international star power, the first woman to ever lead laps at the Indianapolis 500; the other a freestyle motocross and rally legend whose influence extends to an MTV series and 3D movie.
Despite their wildly different backgrounds, it’s inevitable that Danica Patrick and Travis Pastrana are going to draw some comparisons for their celebrity  … More
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