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Articles by Pete Lyons
Once Upon a Time, Japan's Fuji Speedway Was Defined by This Now-Forgotten Banked Turn
Mount Fuji, Japan’s iconically conical mountain peak, looms in serene beauty over a motor-racing facility that bears the same name but has always struggled to match the stratovolcano’s symmetrical perfection. This story originally appeared in Volume 30 of Road & Track. Conceived in 1963 as a Daytona-style NASCAR tri-oval superspeedway (yes, really), Fuji Speedway opened in 1966 as a road circuit with only one high-banked turn.
THE CHAMP, THE SPY, BIG BILL, AND THE ONE-TURN TRI-OVAL
A. (Previous pages) After a one-year hiatus, the third running of the Japanese Grand Prix moved to Fuji in 1966, with prototype and sports cars running clockwise and dangerously downhill into the Daiichi banked turn. B. Charlie Moneypenny, pointing to the landscape. A bulldozer operator, Stirling Moss, and a bearded Don Nichols look on. C. Mount Fuji provides the most stunning backdrop in all of racing. Equally stunning is that the banked turn, seen here in 1969, was used until 1974.
Tested: 1985 Rapido Merkur XR4Ti Comes Alive
From the November 1985 Issue of Car and Driver. Some of us have a taste for fine imports. Wines, cheeses, leather wear, movies, shotguns, lovers—there's sometimes a certain saveur built into such things overseas that simply is not obtainable domestically. But bringing them into the United States can be tricky. The import taste can be Americanized away.
Motoring Book of the Year
The Royal Automobile Club Motoring Book of the Year Awards are now firmly established as the highest honours in automotive book publishing in the UK. The Royal Automobile Club has revealed the finalists for its 2026 Motoring Book of the Year Awards, widely regarded as the most prestigious accolades in motoring and motor racing literature.
Nuclear is the solution - and SMRs are the future of nuclear
Global energy infrastructure faces great challenges. As we work to reduce carbon emissions and respond to demands for new clean energy sources, research from the International Energy Agency shows nuclear power needs to be a significant contributor to our clean energy future. Our nation’s ability to implement new technologies remains unparalleled and gives me hope that this will be a positive transition — first in the U.S. and then, with our leadership, abroad.
How 'Mandel, L' rescued me (Pete Lyons) from premature maturity
Share Facebook Tweet Pinterest Email Leon Mandel’s heavy-duty voice pierced the noisy pit lane bustle, carrying clearly over the four big sports racing beasts crouchingbetween us.
Guest column: Investment in our nuclear energy future needed now more than ever
The U.S. government stands to benefit in the long term with continued nuclear energy innovation projects, write Pete Lyons and John Kotek. The budget blueprint for the federal government is understandably short on details, but the broad outlines revealed have energy innovators concerned about the potential loss of investment from the Department of Energy.
Rapido Merkur XR4Ti
Some of us have a taste for fine imports. Wines, cheeses, leather wear, movies, shotguns, lovers—there's sometimes a certain saveur built into such things overseas that simply is not obtainable domestically. But bringing them into the U.S. can be tricky. The import taste can be Americanized away.
America’s Last GP Winner
F1’s 3-liter formula that began in 1966 was hospitable to American constructors. All three U.S. domestic marques that achieved 1st place in a Grand Prix did so in that period. The winners were Dan Gurney’s Eagle at Spa in 1967, John Watson in a Penske in Austria, 1976, and Alan Jones at the same venue the following year, when the future World Champion drove a Shadow to his first GP victory. For this carmaker, as for the other two, it would be an only win. No Subscription?
Sixty Years of ’Murrican Muscle
Corvette didn’t show well at Le Mans this year, which is unusual, and I suppose in time we’ll find out where the speed went. But sometimes falling short can emphasize how often a competitor lands on top. For Chevrolet, the tally of success at the Sarthe still stands at seven class victories since 2001, or ten counting back to 1960. No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started
Getting it Right
THIS IS OLD news to you, but as I write, we mountain folk are still buzzing about February’s Great Manhunt and Shootout. That burning cabin you saw on TV was about half an hour by road from us in Big Bear—fewer than six miles in a direct line over the ridge where the ski slopes are. The nut-job former cop who murdered four people (to clear his name of telling lies, he said) spent days in hiding precisely 4.7 driving miles from our home.
Before Their Time
Howden Ganley stopped by our vendor booth at the recent Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion, where one of the old photos we showed him started a discussion so interesting that I’m keen to share it with you. The picture was made by Art Evans at Palm Springs in November, 1956. It shows Carroll Shelby in a John Edgar Ferrari, and it’s a fine and satisfying image in itself, but look at the very front of the car, down below the radiator intake. No Subscription?
The Age of the Specials
Any idea what we’re looking at here? Don’t wait for me to tell you, I only have the faintest of notions. These are scans of 4×5 negatives that I’ve just found in my father’s archive while prowling for something else. He left these images unlabeled as to place, date and subject, passing down a pretty mystery, and I immediately wanted to bring you in on it. No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started
Jim Hall at the RRDC
Telling about cannibalizing a pickup truck engine for his racecar, he said, “Any of you would have really enjoyed” that caper. And a grinning Jim Hall went on to explain that early in his career, when “I was already into the hot-rodding of race cars,” he built a Lister-Chevy with “all the hot stuff, Edelbrock manifold and Iskenderian cam and I ground out the heads and I thought, boy, this is gonna go.
Carroll Shelby: 1923-2012
Auto legend Carroll Shelby died Thursday night at Baylor Hospital in Dallas at the age of 89. Carroll Shelby's shadow stretched out Texas tall across nearly the whole of the world's automotive landscape. A natural as a race driver, he won three U.S. sports-car championships in Ferraris and Maseratis, and for Aston Martin he won the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans with British co-driver Roy Salvadori.
Can-Am Goes Conventional
The year was 1970. The year the ground turned over under America’s greatest sports racing car series. It began in tragedy, and improved little. Bruce McLaren, the sunny New Zealander who had stamped the Canadian-American Challenge Cup Series as his own, and who would have reigned as series champion for the second time, lost his life in a testing crash just days before the first race of the season. No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started
Tom Wheatcroft’s Legacy
When I were but a lad, my notion of a perfect Saturday was to walk down to the train station in our suburban village and ride the half hour into New York City, where I would spend hours upon hours wandering the marvel-strewn halls of the American Museum of Natural History. Often I’d finish up a glorious day by taking in a performance at the adjoining Hayden Planetarium. At the time, I remember thinking it would be fascinating to become a museum curator.
Courses: Character Counts
New race courses keep blinking onto our radar screens, which seems like a good thing until they turn up on our TV screens. Or at least on mine. For me, the new breed of supercircuits mostly invokes disappointment and, worse, boredom. There are exceptions. Even on TV, which tends to flatten and emasculate a racetrack, the one in Turkey looks fast and swooping and vivid. That four-apex, 160-mph Turn 8 must be a stunner in person. I would like to go see a race there. No Subscription?
Getting MAD
Grand Prix racing comes with a new look in 2009. Among other significant technical changes—wider cars, grooveless slicks, and Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (think “electric power-to-pass”)—there are new aero rules intended to improve a car’s ability to overtake another. Included is this fascinating detail: Front wings will be driver-adjustable for angle of attack. That’s right—F1 is getting Movable Aerodynamic Devices. No Subscription?
Remembering a Champion
There was the time I went to the Targa Florio and was strolling by a restaurant in the night-dark streets of Palermo just as the reigning world champion popped out. My companion, brasher than me, blurted, “Hey, Phil, can we talk to you?” “Ya,” replied the reigning world champion, and he stopped in his headlong rush and stood there with us, talking.
Our Oscar
Oscar Koveleski called the other day, and when our talk was done I felt like I always do—as if I’d just been inside a dyno cell with a red-hot race engine at fever pitch. The man must be a decade richer in experiences than I, yet I’m left panting by his everlasting enthusiasm, energy, and endurance. Had I ever been a Can-Am driver, as Oscar was, I imagine I’d have felt like that every time Denny Hulme blew by. No Subscription?
Slaying Giants-Again
David’s repeated defeats of Goliath this summer—American Le Mans Series victories by Porsche’s RS Spyder over Audi’s much bigger and stronger R10—takes us right back to the early days of Porsche, when it made its name as an upstart giant-killer. It’s a natural human trait to root for underdogs anyway (presumably, because most of us identify with them) and in racing we learn to admire small, light, tidy cars (and drivers) that cleverly employ efficiency to vanquish the muscle-pumped brutes.
Stacks ‘n’ Pipes
Performance perv that I am, I’m turned on by naked racecars. Even partially undressed ones. Lift an engine cover, unveil a shapely suspension arm, merely de-Dzus an access panel and I’m there, slavering. I simply groove on racing’s luscious secret places.
Blacksmith Revolution
Interview most any racecar designer and you’ll likely hear a beautifully turned tale of insight, and enlightenment, and clever science artfully applied. Then, there were the Coopers. Neither father Charles, nor son John, were science-minded. In fact, they had no more than basic formal education. What they did bring to the workbench was imagination and good sense. No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started
Strange Specials
Forgive me, please, but I can’t tell you much about any of these oddities. I present them here and now for the same reason that made me and, I presume, my dad take their pictures—astonishment. “Hey, isn’t this a weird one?” Some were quite good-looking, but others…well, maybe we shot them to put them out of their misery. Then both we, and history, moved on, and neither of us ever saw these strange specimens again.
Maserati Rinascita
Mr. Cozza lifted the right side of the center-hinged bonnet and bent over the long, bristling racing engine. His colleague, Mr. Torbelli, flipped switches in the stark open cockpit. There was a complexity of mechanical grunting noises, then a sudden, staccato burst of machine gunfire—16 cylinders raucously voicing their gioia di vita. Through oil smoke rising from the headers I saw Cozza’s leathered face break into a radiant grin.
Ferrari’s Grandest Failure
In a Millennium when Ferrari seems all-conquering in F1, it’s hard to remember the bad old days of the late 1960s, when there wasn’t much prance in the cavallino—and not only in formula racing. One of the biggest disappointments to sports car fans was the firm’s off-and-off-again approach to the Can-Am, where Enzo Ferrari promised much but, frankly, fell on his face. The Canadian-American Challenge Cup, launched in 1966, ought to have been right up the Commendatore’s viale.
Vintage Raceway
The first time I went to VIR-ginia International Raceway was in 1960, and road courses like this pastoral gem were normal. You expected to see fast curves through a natural, naked landscape. For me, anyway, there was a tingly sense of drama and magnitude arising from both the simple purity of the set- ting and the obvious raw risk. I saw how much our sport has changed when I revisited VIR in 2003—because the track doesn’t seem to have changed at all. No Subscription?
Insights from Vendor Alley
Some of you model makers, I know, and probably you historic artists too, have been wondering why Jo Siffert’s 1971 Can-Am Porsche, which normally was painted all Day-Glo red, had blue trim on its nose for a couple of races mid-season. At long last I can tell you why. That’s because my wife, Lorna, and I undertook to spend the Monterey Historic weekend selling our photos and books from Vintage Racecar Journal’s booth in Vendor Alley. No Subscription?
Mark’s Moment
Watching it happen, it was hard to appreciate the magnitude of the achievement. The big blue roadster hardly made any noise, and it was being driven with such poise, such command, that its motion around the track didn’t really rivet the eye either. Yet, as Mark Donohue cruised his turbocharged Porsche Panzer around the final lap of his last Can-Am race at Riverside in 1973, he was climbing a summit of personal fulfillment.
The Barcelona Boycott
One sunny spring day in Spain, twenty-three Grand Prix drivers shut themselves into a van in a race paddock, refusing to come out and drive their F1 cars. The event promoters threatened to seize the cars and all other team assets. Feelings escalated almost to the point of guns. Tragically, the dispute became seared into history when the weekend closed with an unrelated fatal accident.
My Favorite Lotus
Among the array of anniversaries we’ve been celebrating recently, one is a particular standout for me. It’s now 50 years since Colin Chapman founded Lotus Engineering. What exciting cars that man made! No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started
What is Golden?
While indulging one of my secret vices the other day – watching motorcycle racing on TV – I started thinking about something a commentator mentioned. This is the last year of 2-stroke engines in the Grand Prix bikes. Next season they start using 4-strokes. Not that anyone asked me, but it’s a move I applaud.
Uncle Ken
We’ve just lost Ken Tyrrell, and I share the sorrow that extends across racing. Not only was Tyrrell a legendary figure in F1, the team owner who spotted the talent in a young Jackie Stewart and mentored him to three World Championships; “Uncle Ken,” as some of us called him (among ourselves), also was one of the most genuinely kind, considerate people I’ve known. To see that sweet side, you had to get past an appearance that could seem forbidding.
Prototype...? Of What?
A sudden snarl under my elbow, the mighty baritone of a big, twin-cam six with open pipes. Then a flash of pale green: four bold, beautifully teardrop-shaped fenders. It’s an Aston! No – the Aston! The very Aston Martin DBR1 that won Le Mans in 1959! Knifing through traffic here in the City of Le Mans in 2001! No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started
Le Mans Legends
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Missing Ascari at Indy
Because I came to automobile appreciation late in life – not until 17, when my New York State learner’s permit finally awakened me to the magic of driving – I fear I missed out on an adventure that might have created a different me. Don’t you think a born car nut would have pestered his dad into taking him along to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1952 to see Alberto Ascari drive a Ferrari? No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started
Pedro and the 917
Sometime in the rainy wee hours of the recent Rolex 24 at Daytona, a race I find myself covering again after a lapse of, gosh, decades, one of my younger colleagues turned and asked, “So what do you think?” My response wasn’t prepared, but it was instant. “Well, it’s not Pedro and the 917.” No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started
Stop Me Before I Click Again!
Let me mention up front, I may have to cut this short. Something’s coming up on Speedvision that I just have to watch. I presume so, anyway. There nearly always is. Here, let me show you… Wow! Look at this! (Pause.) No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started
The Magic of Monaco
The rain came down cold, heavy, unrelenting, and my lightweight sweater was instantly drenched through. By half distance I was shivering. Yet that Monaco Grand Prix of 1972 was one of the best days I’ve ever spent watching a race. It was a real race, and it was in the storied streets of Monte Carlo. No Subscription? You’re missing out Get immediate ad-free access to all our premium content. Get Started
Time Capsule
Hello, Posterity. This is the past calling. Writers and readers being separated by the editor’s deadlines, it’s still 1999 for me, but you’re already way off there in January 2000. So I thought it would be fun to toss a little time capsule over the Great Millennial Divide. Do you remember the 20th Century? Ah, weren’t those the good old days? Things seemed simpler and clearer then, didn’t they. And comfortably delineated, somehow.
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