Phil Hill

Phil Hill driving the iconic Ferrari 156 Sharknose leading teammate Wolfgang von Trips during the 1961 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps - Simon Ward

Belgian Grand Prix

Jim Clark driving his Lotus 33 Climax on the way to winning the Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps

Jim Clark won the Belgian Grand Prix four years in a row: 1962, '63, '64 & '65.

Climax FWMV Mk.III Engine in a Lotus 24

Lotus 24 F1 car from 1962 fitted with a BRM P56 1498cc V8 engine

Beau Rivage - Beautiful Shore

Sir Stirling Moss Maserati 250F 1956 Grand Prix of Monte Carlo

Sunday, May 21, 1950, Circuit the Monaco, Montecarlo. With the leaders already out of sight Jose Froilan González and Luigi Villoresi head a group of cars up Beau Rivage at the start of the first world championship Monaco GP.

L'ascension de la côte de Monte-Carlo par Rudolf Caracciola (Grand Prix de Monaco 1937)

1933 – Beau Rivage

Inaugural 1929 Monaco Grand Prix

Lancia D50

Lancia D50 driven by Formula One World Champion Alberto Ascari during the 1955 Monaco Grand Prix

The Lancia D50 featured a revolutionary 2.5-litre V8 engine utilized as a stressed structural chassis member and distinctive pannier fuel tanks mounted between the wheels. Ascari famously wore a bright blue helmet and unfortunately crashed this car into the Monaco harbor during the race.  Four days later he died when he crashed while testing another race car at Monza.

Lancia D50

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’: A painting depicting the Pau Grand Prix of 1954, shows Jean Behra’s Gordini fending off a strong challenge from Maurice Trintingnant and his Ferrari 500 F2. The nose of Behra’s Gordini bears the evidence of his contact with Farina at the start. Amedee Gordini became known as ‘Le Sorcerer’ because of his uncanny ability to produce, on a shoe-string budget, the most amazing little racing cars. The Gordinis were very fast but also rather fragile and unreliable, probably the result of the team being hopelessly penurious. If success eluded Gordini in the major Grand Prix he would fare much better in the lesser events. These races, still supported by the major teams, were hotly contested and the painting shows Behra winning one of these non-championship contests. - VeloceToday

Pau Grand Prix 1954 - Amateur Film
ourafilmes.com

The engine was 2 Liter DOHC L6 delivering 175 horsepower at 7,000 RPM.

GORDINI T16 6 cylindres 1952

1952 Equipe Gordini T16(F1/F2), 2-Litre Straight 6-Cylinder Double Camshaft Engine

1952 2½ litre straight-6 Gordini Type 16 of Marc Valvekens

Gordini T16, French GP paddock, July 1953, 2 litre straight-six

1929 Packard Cable Special Indy Car

1929 Packard Cable Special #18 driven by Ralph Hepburn - Václav Zapadlík 

Twelve of the cars in the 1929 Indianapolis 500 were front wheel drive. Of the 33 cars in the starting field only half a dozen were not Miller cars.

1929 Packard Cable Special Race Car #18, driven by Ralph Hepburn

Miller 91 Packard Cable Special race car

The engine in this car was a supercharged straight eight with dual over head camshafts. It only displaced 1.5 liters which is the same as 91 cubic inches, hence the 91 label. Pistons were only two and a half inches in diameter. Simanaitis Says has more information about the engines and the superchargers.

Leon Duray in the Miller 91 Indy Special

1932 French Grand Prix

German racing driver Rudolf Caracciola attends to his Alfa Romeo Tipo B during the 1932 French Grand Prix held at the Reims-Gueux circuit on July 3, 1932.

The field was composed of 16 entries, all Alfa Romeos and Bugattis. Only 3 of the Alfas were Tipo B and they swept the first three places. Rudolf came in third.

MotoGP

Martin, right, challenges Aprilia Racing teammate Marco Bezzecchi for the lead on lap 25 of the French MotoGP race at Le Mans, May 10, 2026 [Loic Venance/AFP]

F1 - Apple Movie

F1® The Movie | Main Trailer
Warner Bros.

I never cared much for Formula 1 and this movie did nothing to make me care about it. Near as I can tell it is all about the adulation of the crowds, and I've never cared much for crowds.

The film stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, a race car driver, and Javier Bardem as Rubén Cervantes, the APXGP team owner. Javier is famous (to me) as the cold-blooded killer sent to recover the missing loot in No Country for Old Men. I don't know if I can list all the Brad Pitt films I have seen, but here's a couple.

Race cars, in my book, are made in some guy's garage and taken to the track on weekends. Formula 1 race cars are made by NASA-like bureaucracies, full of political scheming and arcane rules. I would like to see a race with fewer rules, something like run what you brung, no refueling and no tire changes. If you run out of gas or wear out your tires, that's your own damn fault.

The racing on screen as compared to real-life racing was like boxing in the movies compared to real-life boxing, i.e. very fake. I dunno, maybe that's what non-car people need to see. There were an awful lot crashes. I was curious if that was real, so I asked Google, but all Google can tell me is that there were dozen's of crashes last year. Much of the racing strategy revolved around taking advantage of these crashes. 

One of the best things about motor sports is hearing these high powered, high-revving engines scream as they go flying by. There wasn't any of that in this movie, or at least not enough for me to notice. Still, the film won an Oscar for sound. Weird.

One thing new-to-me is the sparks you see coming from under the cars.

The underside of each F1 car has a wooden skid block with titanium plates attached (Photo: F1.com)

There is a wooden plank along with some titanium blocks bolted to the bottom of F1 cars. The thickness of the plank is measured before and after the race and if the plank has lost more than one millimeter of thickness, the car is disqualified. The titanium blocks are there to insure that the plank does not get worn down. The sparks come from the titanium blocks hitting the track. Nuts, like just about everything else in Formula 1.

Crazy Racing Sidecar

RYDE Sidecar Racing Chassis

Guy in the UK has built his own custom sidecar chassis along with his own four cylinder, two stroke, inline race motor.

1938 FN Motocycle

FN racing motorcycle ridden by René Milhoux in 1938

1938 was the last year for FN before the war.

FN GP Works Machine 1938 500cc OHC

Above photo from Michel 67. He has several other photos of this machine, and a bunch of other motorcycles.

At the end of 1930, FN held 33 World Records.

Some motorcycle history sites:

• Motorcycle Timeline - 1938
• Classic Bike Hub - Reference: A to Z classic reference: FN – Fusi
• Cycle World - History of FN

Monster Truck in Cuba

TOYO TIRES | BJ Baldwin’s Recoil 4 in Cuba
Toyo Tire U.S.A. Corp

Real life crazy, as opposed to imaginary crazy. Of course, the story is just a fantasy put together like a movie. I wonder how much they had to pay el presidente.

24 Hours of LeMons

Arc Angel Christine Rotolo punished their inconsiderate driving by welding a pig to this team’s roof.

That is LeMons, the 24 hour race of $500 beaters, not Le Mans, the 24 hour race of zillion dollar cars held in France. view from the porch posts a link to the original Car & Driver report on the race.

It's a great story. I especially enjoyed this paragraph. 

FedEx ships cars? Yes they do:

Uh-oh. The race was little more than a week off, and having endured an exhausting battery of cognacs and terrines of fois gras in Northwest's business class on my return from Paris, I was in no mood to haul the Aurora across the country. Enter FedEx Custom Critical Passport Auto Transport, a branch of the big delivery company that ships cars coast to coast. Since fabulously expensive cars that compete at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Élégance have been shipped by FedEx, we felt comfortable handing over the keys to our Aurora. Plus, in return for this paltry plug, they ate the bill. After dripping oil in FedEx's pristine transporter for five days, the car arrived with two days to spare.

Previous post about LeMons.

Unlimited

2025 Apollo APBA Gold Cup Final Heat
H1 Unlimited

Nothing in the news was grabbing me this morning, my mind started wandering and Slo-Mo-Shun popped up, so I go looking for videos, and look what I found: an unlimited hydroplane race that happened last week just a stone's throw from where I live. (OK, it's 200 miles away, but compared to the world it's practically next door.)

I liked the original hydroplanes. They were wooden boats with massive V-12 engines and open cockpits. Times change and the cockpits are enclosed, the engines are gas turbines and the hulls are no doubt made of space-age plastic. But they are still faster than snot.

The race doesn't start until just after the six minute mark. There are videos of the old boats, but the ones I looked at were pretty grainy.

Turbinator Land Speed Record

The World's Fastest ACTUAL Car: The Story Of The Turbinator
SuperfastMatt

The Vesco family:

John Vesco (1910-1983) was a Bonneville pioneer, attending the first 1949 Speed Week together with wife Betty and sons Don and Rick.

Don Vesco (1939 – 2002) was an American businessman and motorcycle racer who held multiple motorcycle land-speed and wheel-driven land speed records. In his lifetime, he set 18 motorcycle and 6 automobile speed records.

His accomplishments recognized by the American Motorcyclist Association include winning the United States motorcycle Grand Prix 500 cc class in 1963, operating a California motorcycle dealership that sponsored up to 60 racers at a time, and setting a number of motorcycle and automobile land speed records.

Rick Vesco set his first land speed record at age 16 on the Bonneville Salt Flats. Rick designed and built the World's Fastest Wheel Driven car that set an F.I.A. record @ 458 MPH (2001) with Don driving. 

 

Formula Easter

Arrived to “Formula Easter” event…
The Auto Space

I had never heard of this. Wikipedia has a page.

Richard Hammond Crashes in Formula Easter Race | The Grand Tour: Eurocrash
The Grand Tour

Camaro at Le Mans

How NASCAR was FASTER than Ferrari at Le Mans
Driver61

This video is a year old. This year's race will be next month. I used to think Le Mans was the coolest race in the world and then Ford won it in a spectacular manner with the GT-40. No way you could top that, so I stopped paying attention. Now NASCAR is giving it a shot. I hope they have some success.

So the Camaro was run by Garage56. Huh, that sounds a whole lot like Garage 54, the YouTube channel from the crazed mechanics in Siberia.

Can-Am

McLaren’s amazing Can-Am cars reunite at Laguna
McLaren Automotive

Back around 1970, me and my car-addled friends went to Mid-Ohio to watch the Can-Am races a couple of times. I was in love with Can-Am cars. Simple cars with big American V-8 engines, not those over engineered and over-priced sewing machines from Europe.

Marathi Oxen Race

बकासुर आणि बलमा गट पास पलशी मैदान फाइनल bailgada sharyat #बकासुर #bailgadasharyat #recommended #live
Ghumakkad Sandeep Uk07

Feed the tags to Google Translate and it tells me the language is Marathi.

India State Maharashtra where the Marathi language is spoken

Maharashtra has a population of 112 million people , which is only one third of the population of the USA. How is it that they have ox racing but we don't?

Update May 2024 replaced missing video with another about Marathi Oxen racing.
Update November 2025 replaced missing video with one with the same title, just a different poster.

1927 Cummins Model P

This image got me started.

Cummins and his first diesel

Google found this on the Cummins website:

THE LEGACY OF THE CUMMINS NO. 8 RACE CAR by Michael Nagel

May 15, 2015

Of all the Cummins race cars, none is as well-traveled as the 1931 No. 8 Cummins Diesel. From the famous Indianapolis speedway to a tour round the world, the No. 8 car was the model for efficiency and reliability.

Cummins founder Clessie Cummins originally installed his 4-cylinder model U engine in a Duesenberg chassis and in February 1931, drove it to Daytona Beach and set a new diesel speed record averaging 100.755 miles per hour (mph).

In May of 1931 Clessie took the Cummins-Powered Duesenberg as the No. 8 Cummins Diesel to the Indy 500 and finished 13th with an average speed of just over 86 mph. It was the first car in racing history to complete all 500 miles without any pit stops.

The No. 8 car wasn’t retired after the race. Cummins founders W.G. Irwin and Clessie Cummins drove it on a European tour through France, Monaco, Italy, Germany and England to promote the efficiency and reliability of the diesels.

So now I'm looking for some information about this Model U engine. Wikipedia coughs up:

The Cummins Engine Company was founded in Columbus, Indiana, on February 3, 1919, by mechanic Clessie Cummins and banker William Glanton Irwin. The company focused on developing the diesel engine invented 20 years earlier. Despite several well-publicized endurance trials, it was not until 1933 that their Model H engine, used in small railroad switchers, proved successful.

So two years after the founders made their world tour, business came their way. So now I'm looking for this Model H engine, but I'm not getting anywhere. Probably because there's only three guys who have the info and they're so old they don't even know about the internet. So instead of anything useful, we get to watch this even older engine get run through it's paces.

Can you imagine trying to set up a factory to build an engine? Now-a-days to be competitive, you would probably need a billion dollars. There are a few specialty shops building engines, big and small. I wonder if any of those small shops are casting their own iron blocks? Casting iron is a big deal, not like casting aluminum. That crazy old coot who rode the The World's Fastest Indian was casting pistons in his backyard. Casting iron takes a lot of heat. How much, you ask? Let's see what we can find.

From THUNDER SAID ENERGY:

A good rule of thumb is 25 kWh of useful energy to heat each ton of material by each 100ºC. (1) Thermodynamics 101. Heating and melting materials requires energy, inducing particles to vibrate more (specific heat) and ultimately to break the bonds that hold them together as a solid or liquid (latent heat).

Density of iron is 7.874 grams / cc. Density of aluminum is like 2.7 grams / cc, so iron is three times as dense as aluminum so the same size object would weigh three times as much and require three times as much energy. Except iron has a much higher melting point than aluminum. Aluminum melts at 1200 degrees C, iron melts at 2800 degrees C, so, assuming we are heating the metal on a cold winter's day, iron is going to take:

(7.874/2.7) * (2800/1200) = 6.8 times as much energy to heat to the melting point as aluminum.