Post Type Archives: Events

This photo-finish of the two Matra 670’s at the 1972 Le Mans 24 Hours, could make you believe in a sprint finish (picture here-above), but no less than eleven laps separated the winners, Graham Hill and Henri Pescarolo and the second placed pair, François Cevert and Howden Ganley, who scored a resounding double for the […]

The 1953 French Grand Prix was held at Reims-Gueux. It was race 5 of 9 in the 1953 World Championship of Drivers, which was run to Formula 2 rules in 1952 and 1953, rather than the Formula One regulations normally used. It is popularly known as ‘The race of the Century’ because of the sixty […]

The Human Side of Racing is growing! We are now over 18000 enthusiasts, a nice community indeed. Thank you for following us every day. Do not hesitate to share the articles, and register on the website.   www.humansideofracing.com Picture above: Nigel Mansell, celebrates victory and his World Title at the 1992 Formula One Hungarian Grand Prix. He declared: […]

Jean-Pierre Beltoise (1937 – 2015) was a French racing driver who raced in Formula One for the Matra and BRM teams. He competed in 88 Grand Prix achieving a single victory at the 1972 Monaco Grand Prix in a BRM, and a total of eight podium finishes and four fastest laps. Picture above: Jean-Pierre Beltoise […]

René Arnoux was paired with Alain Prost at Renault for the 1981 and 1982 seasons. Two fast and ambitious French drivers in a French team, inevitably it would ignite sparkles. Their rivalry on track flared up off the track and relations between the two men deteriorated. Tensions in the team were exacerbated in the French […]

Belgian ace Willy Mairesse (picture above) qualified his Ferrari 156 in sixth for the 1962 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, while pole position went to Graham Hill in a BRM. During the event Mairesse and Trevor Taylor in a Lotus duelled for more than an hour, passing and re-passing a number of times each lap. […]

It has happened three times in the history of Formula 1: a beginner or rookie on pole position. The last one to do so was Jacques Villeneuve for his first Grand Prix with Williams, at Melbourne in 1996. Before him, Mario Andretti had achieved this performance at home, in 1968, when he took pole for […]

Ferrari’s early turbo cars were all about their engines. Then came engineer Harvey Postlethwaite in 1982 who designed a chassis, the 126C2 and C3, able to rein in 1000bhp. And it worked. Between them, Patrick Tambay and René Arnoux (seen here-above battling for the lead at the 1983 British Grand Prix) took nine of the […]

Yellow was the colour that distinguished the cars driven by Belgian drivers in automobile competitions in the beginning of the twentieth century, in the same way as red represented Italy, bleu for France, the British Racing Green and white (later metallic grey) for Germany. One Belgian driver only participated in the very first Grand Prix […]

Al Unser (1939 – 2021) was an American automobile racing driver (picture above in 1978). He was the second of four men (AJ Foyt, himself, Rick Mears, Hélio Castroneves) to have won the Indianapolis 500, four times (1970, 1971, 1978, 1987). Johnny Rutherford, one of his fierce competitors and a three-time Indy 500 winner, remembers: […]