Motorsports

Carroll Shelby: A Life Lived at Full Throttle

By Tom Anderson on Sun, 05/13/2012 - 10:42

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One of the best bellwethers of a person’s will to succeed is how he or she responds to adversity. The act of attaining fame and fortune when the odds are in your favor or, at the very least, 50:50, is well below most people’s noteworthiness thresholds. But achieving success when you’re dealt a bad hand separates the average from the above average.

When Carroll Hall Shelby, who died on Thursday aged 89 at Baylor Hospital in Dallas, Texas, was forced to end a very successful road racing career (in which he won three SCCA national championships and the 1959 24 Hours of Le Mans sharing a factory Aston Martin DBR1 with Englishman Roy Salvadori) in 1960 due to a chronic heart condition that actually left him bedridden for much of his childhood, he could have just resigned himself to taking some soul-sucking desk job, having nothing but memories of being in the thick of auto racing action. But as we all know, that’s not what he did.

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The Top 10 Pro Driver Endorsed Racing Games of All Time [w/ Videos]

By Ari Cox on Mon, 04/30/2012 - 04:00

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Top 10 Pro Driver Endorsed Games

One of the best ways to sell a racing video game (aside from taut controls, gorgeous graphics and a great selection of vehicles and tracks) is to get a professional racing driver to attach his or her name to the game’s title, if not be involved in the actual development process. In the late 1980s, this trend really started taking off, as some of the best and brightest from IndyCar, NASCAR, Formula 1 and elsewhere lent their monikers and likenesses to numerous arcade and console games.

Of course, some of you might be too young to remember some of these games, as well as the drivers behind them. Well, this is your lucky day, young ‘uns, because we’ve put together the following list of ten classic racing games with pro drivers’ stamps of approval. And as an added bonus, each one is accompanied by a gameplay clip, so you can see these titles in action.

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The Top 10 Biggest Racecar Flops

By Tom Anderson on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 09:52

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Theoretically, every racecar has the potential to be a championship contender when the team manager and drivers pull off the sheet and smile for the cameras. It isn't until preseason testing is completed and the first race meeting is underway that it becomes apparent if a competition car is a dominator or a dud.

Of course, when a car does turn out to be the latter, there's no shortage of finger-pointing and shouting. But the bottom line is some new racecars are just destined for failure. The following ten are the most infamous examples, cars that, for one or multiple reasons, never had a chance.

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Movie Review: Senna Superbly Conveys the Life and Times of a Complex Legend [w/ Video]

By Tom Anderson on Sat, 08/27/2011 - 19:25

Movies Car Movies Formula 1 Formula One Lotus McLaren Motorsports Movie Review

For the last 20 or so years, on the rarer-than-a-total-eclipse-of-a-blue-moon occasions that a motorsports-centric movie lands in theaters, viewing audiences have been subjected to at least a handful of the following tropes in any given flick: Laughably bad CGI. Laughably improbable crashes. Laughably obvious continuity goofs. Laughably appalling “acting.” Laughably clueless writing. And, most prolific of all, laughably formulaic and schmaltzy romance plots and subplots. In short, the Razzies selection committee is left with sore midriffs and a glut of nominees, while real racing fans are left searching for paper bags to place over their heads upon exiting the theater. Not good.

Thankfully, Senna – the documentary about three-time Formula 1 world champion Ayrton Senna – has none of these concerns, as it is a nonfiction film constructed entirely from archival footage and interviews from the proverbial “people who were there.” But this is hardly a “paint-by-numbers” documentary; there’s far more depth to it than that.

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Aston Martin V12 Zagato Is Dressed to Kill in an Italian Suit

By Tom Anderson on Sun, 05/22/2011 - 20:13

Auto News Aston Martin British Motorsports Sports/GT Zagato

British sportscar and GT builder Aston Martin and Italian design house/coachbuilder Zagato have collaborated multiple times over the past half-century, beginning with DB4 GT Zagato which made its public debut at the London Motor Show in October 1960. From 1986 to 1990, the duo produced the Aston Martin V8 Zagato, a very striking (and very ‘80s) re-body of the long-serving Aston Martin V8. The early 21st century saw limited production of the DB7 Zagato (a car that was, like the V8 Zagato, available in coupe and convertible guise) and the DB AR1 roadster.

For its next trick, the Anglo-Italian partnership is treating the wild child of the current Aston Martin family, the V12 Vantage, to one of Zagato’s extreme makeovers, the results of which were revealed this weekend at the Villa D’Este Concours at Lake Como, Italy. But this ride’s parents didn’t just take it to the tailor and call it a day; they also took it to the gym, since they plan on proving its mettle in the crucible of competition.

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