News

May 7, 2026

Before this Ferrari Club of America (FCA) Southwest event was called “Ferraris on Colorado” or some such, but since it was in Pasadena some thought it must be in Colorado so they changed the name. It’s still on Colorado Street, venue of the famed Rose Parade. It was a great event despite rain for the second year in a row.

And Ferrari ‘s US distributor stepped up again and had a display of current cars, and, a blessing to me, free coffee, mocha, lattes, etc. which would have cost you $5 or more at the nearest Starbucks. I think this offering of free refreshments “democratizes” Ferrari a little more, I mean before you would be a bit trepidatious to walk their red carpet full of $400,000-$1 million -plus cars, but now all are welcome. Even if they are a little short in their Ferrari finance bank account.

Most outstanding was a SR1 roadster, the single-seater (the two-seater with windscreen is the SR2), and to say it was awesome is an understatement. Now I only saw it drive from its transport to the red carpet so I can’t say what the driver uses for protection out on the road in a windshield-less car. But to see it on the road among the crowd was like seeing someone riding a white charging horse. With all the myriad of US regulations it is unbelievable that a modern automaker can make such a car that captures the spirit of the Fifties.

As far as old cars owned by FCA members an outstanding one of a 330GTC with a special Dino like wraparound rear roof style, Turns out the first was built for Princess de Rethy and three more followed from Pininfarina with a design that looks lightweight but stylish. One brave 250GT owner parked his car, top down, in the rain but finally put the top up to show, yes, indeed classic Ferraris do come equipped for the weather.

There was one old GTE, and an outfit that maintains Ferrari collections for customers displayed a squeaky clean black short wheelbase Berlinetta. I was unaware there were such firms in SoCal but now understand their need. If you have several cars, you need someone to “get one ready” for an appearance, especially if you are out of town a lot.

There was one Dino 246GT but Dinos were rare at the event as were Daytonas. A 275GTB was present, without a rear bumper, though it was not a Competitzione, which has a lower profile body and more air vents.

There was a presentation for several owners whose cars were judged winners rain and all. This writer was thrilled to see his old amigo, 95-year old Manhattan Beach resident Cpt. Earl Waggoner honored. He has been in Ferrari club activities in Los Angeles for well over half a century and, though now forbidden from driving due to eye problems, always finds someone to help him get one of his two Lussos to an event.

This venue is a good one, for spectators because it’s free-free-free. Even the parking is free on adjacent city streets. There are plenty of coffee shops available in a short walk (though $5 for a cuppa java is a bit Beverly Hills-ish).

I didn’t count them but I would say there were 100 Ferraris parked side by side. Enough to bring a crowd of sightseers with dogs, baby carriages, and all (and fortunately no kids on skateboards!).

Photo courtesy Wallace Wyss; Details on how you can acquire this painting are available at the bottom of this post.
Photo courtesy Wallace Wyss; Details on how you can acquire this painting are available at the bottom of this post.

From my booth selling fine art, I especially enjoyed talking design with students from the nearby campuses of Art Center College of Design, a school which has trained a notable Ferrari designer (such as Ken Okuyama who graduated in 1986 and later returned to teach there before starting his own car company). I told the students I hope they graduate while there are still internal combustion cars.

Let’s hope next year’s event will be rain free…

EDITOR’S NOTE: Wallace Wyss welcomes news of galleries who would consider consigning Ferrari art. He can be reached at photojournalistpro2@gmail.com

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Init Esports Named Official Sim Racing Partner of the CECC for 2026–2027

INIT eSports

May 6, 2026

Partnership unveiled at 2026 May Madness and will have male and female categories to compete in online races and qualifiers nationwide with the championships held in May 2027

WACO, Texas — May 6, 2026 — Init Esports today officially announced a partnership with Collegiate Sports Management Group (CSMG) to bring sim racing to the Collegiate Esports Commissioners Cup (CECC), the nation’s largest collegiate esports championship event. The partnership was was unveiled live on May 2 during the CECC May Madness, which is produced by CSMG, in Waco, Texas, marking a defining moment for the future of collegiate motorsports gaming.

Beginning in the 2026–2027 academic year, Init Esports and the CECC will roll out a structured collegiate sim racing program designed to give student-athletes a competitive, high-performance platform to race, develop, and earn recognition. The program will feature both male and female categories, reinforcing a shared commitment to expanding access and visibility for women in motorsports.

Additional details regarding online races, qualifiers, and the full season format will be released in the coming weeks. Colleges interested in participating are encouraged to begin assembling their sim racing teams now, so they are ready to enter the qualifying process as soon as registration opens.

“Sim racing belongs in the collegiate esports landscape. Partnering with Init Esports gives the CECC a world-class operator who understands competition, athlete development, and the culture of motorsports. This is a milestone for our member institutions and for every student who has been waiting for a real path to compete in sim racing at the college level.” — Angela Bernhard Thomas, Chief Esports Officer, CECC / CSMG and EsportsU

“Bringing sim racing to U.S. colleges has been a mission of ours from day one. The CECC is the right home for this program because they share our standards: real competition, real opportunity, and real pathways for both men and women. Starting in the 2026–2027 school year, every college in America can build a sim racing team and have somewhere meaningful to race. This is just the beginning.” — Stefy Bau, Founder & CEO, Init Esports

The collegiate sim racing program will operate under the CECC competitive framework with Init Esports leading race operations, athlete experience, and the technical platform. Schedules, eligibility guidelines, and registration information will be communicated through CECC and Init Esports channels in the weeks ahead.

About the CECC

Collegiate Sports Management Group (CSMG) is an integrated sports, entertainment, and media company committed to advancing traditional sports and esports. The company has expertise in Media Rights, Analytics, Licensing, Sponsorship Sales, Brand Building, Original Content, and Event Production. We empower sports properties, brands, and video game publishers to succeed at the crossroads of tech, sports, entertainment, and video games. Through innovation, efficiency and execution, CSMG has created transformative opportunities, driving growth in traditional sports while unifying and elevating the scholastic esports ecosystem. To learn more, visit us at https://collegiatesmg.com/.

About Init Esports

Init Esports focuses on sim racing events and digital tournaments. They bring eSports content to fans and sponsorship opportunities to brands, while maximizing audience reach across multiple sports, industries, and platforms. Init Esports is a woman-led company where Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility is in their DNA, and their platform aims to combat bullying and cheating to help make the eSports world as safe and fair as possible. To learn more, be sure to logon to www.initesports.gg today or follow them on social media @initesports, join their discord, check out their YouTube Channel, or follow their live content via Twitch.

At Init Esports, founder and CEO Stefy Bau doesn’t just settle for the ordinary. She creates extraordinary experiences by producing thrilling online competitions and real-life events that transcend the boundaries of the eSports universe. And she’s here with us on Break/Fix to share her story, and help you understand why you need to get more involved in the world of eSports.

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A Guided Tour of IMSA: Mark Raffauf’s Living History of American Sports Car Racing

History of Motorsports

IMRRC

May 5, 2026

A Guided Tour of IMSA: Mark Raffauf’s Living History of American Sports Car Racing

When The Logbook (our “History of Motorsports” series) turned its attention to IMSA, it did more than revisit a racing organization — it tapped into the memory of someone who lived its evolution from the inside. As the transcript opens, we’re reminded that few figures have shaped, documented, and safeguarded IMSA’s legacy quite like Mark Raffauf, a man who has spent over five decades inside the heartbeat of American sports car racing.

Photo courtesy Mark Raffauf, IMSA Archives

Raffauf’s keynote — delivered as the Jean S. Argetsinger Address — is part personal memoir, part technical chronicle, and part love letter to the people who built IMSA from a bold idea into a global motorsports force. His stories span eras, rule books, rivalries, and revolutions. What follows is a curated journey through that history, retold as a cohesive narrative for readers who want to understand how IMSA became what it is today.

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IMSA’s origin story begins not with a boardroom meeting, but with a conversation outside the Turn 4 tunnel at Daytona. As Raffauf recounts, it all started with a call from NASCAR’s Bill France to John Bishop — the man who would become IMSA’s founding architect. France’s pitch was simple: “We need to do a road racing program with a NASCAR business mindset behind it.”

That partnership, along with support from Cameron and Jean Argetsinger and the SCCA lineage Bishop brought with him, set the stage for a new era of American road racing.

Bio

Mark Raffauf’s career in motorsports embodies the ideal combination of a successful motorsports professional who has embraced the writing of history. Mark is both a fine historian and has been a key player in the success of the IMSA series from its inception to the current day. His early career coincided with the extraordinary accomplishments of John Bishop, founder of IMSA, former President of SCCA and one of the key founders of the IMRRC in Watkins Glen. Mark’s keynote address, laced with engaging anecdotal tales and an accurate, factual description of the series, covers his own colorful career in motorsports and the emergence and remarkable success story of IMSA racing over the course of more than forty years.

Mark Raffauf, currently IMSA’s Senior Director of Competition, has held IMSA positions through many iterations of IMSA and Grand-Am, including being the second president, in overall management, technical and car regulation development, as well as event, circuit, starting, and racing operations. He is the author, with Mitch Bishop, of IMSA 1969-1989: The Inside Story of How John Bishop Built the World’s Greatest Sports Car Racing Series and IMSA 1990-1999: The Turbulent Years of American Sports Car Racing.

Synopsis

In this episode of The Logbook, our History of Motorsports Series, Mark Raffauf traces IMSA’s nearly 60-year evolution from John Bishop and Bill France’s founding phone call to today’s hybrid era. Raffauf recounts IMSA’s early experiments with Formula Fords/Vees, the shift to closed-wheel GT racing, the creation of Camel GT, RS/“little car” series on street tires, and All American GT, plus innovations like road-racing stock cars, Group 5, and GTP prototypes developed with the ACO to keep cars available to private teams. He highlights major manufacturers and iconic cars (Porsche 935/962, BMW CSL, Greenwood Corvette, Mazda rotary, Audi 90 GTO, Jaguar, Nissan, Toyota, Ferrari 333 SP), the growth of street races and Firestone Firehawk, rising speeds and safety limits, ownership turmoil, the IMSA split into ALMS and Grand-Am, and the eventual merger leading to today’s booming IMSA with strong OEM support and advanced hybrid prototypes.

Follow along using the video version of the Slide Deck from this Presentation

Transcript

[00:00:00] Break Fix’s History of Motorsports Series is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce and the Arge Singer family.

On this episode of the Logbook, we opened with a figure whose career doesn’t just intersect with American sports car racing history. He’s documented it. Mark Raffauf has spent more than five decades inside the heartbeat of the International Motor Sports Association, better known to us as imsa. Shaping its rule book, guiding its evolution and preserving its stories with the clarity of someone who lived every chapter from the inside, from his earliest days.

Working alongside John Bishop, IMSA’s, founder and former SECA President and a driving force behind the I-M-R-R-C at Watkins Glen Mark witnessed the organization’s rise from a bold idea to one of the most influential forces in global motor sport. His path through technical leadership, car regulation, development, and event [00:01:00] operations, places him among the few who truly understand how the sport grew, fractured, reinvented itself and ultimately thrived.

In his Gene S Ainger keynote address, mark weaves together vivid anecdotes and precise historical detail tracing both his own colorful career and the remarkable 60 year arc of IMSA racing. It’s a story of innovation, resilience, and personalities told by someone who helped write the rule book and later wrote the history itself.

Mark is now IMSA’s senior director of competition and co-author with Mitch Bishop of two definitive volumes on the series. IMSA 1969 to 1989, the inside story of how John Bishop built the world’s greatest sports car racing series and imsa, 1990 to 99, the turbulent years of American sports car racing.

Together, they formed the written counterpart to the perspective he brings on the stage tonight. So without further ado, here is Mark Raffauf giving us a guided tour through 60 years of IMSA’s influence, evolution, and enduring legacy. [00:02:00] So please welcome Mark Raffauf. Thank you.

So I’m gonna try and give you 56 years of history in about 45 minutes. It’s all visual. You don’t have to read anything other than that logo. Which I was inspired last night at the theater watching the film about Cameron and Gene Ainger starting the racing here, and wanted to say that John and Peg Bishop, who are given the credit for founding IMSA with help from people like Cameron and Gene Bill France at nascar.

They’re from Cortland, jc, and Duke’s father was the one that convinced John Bishop to become the executive director of the SCCA in the sixties, which under his oversight created the Canam. TransAm and Formula 5,000. The schism that was brought up earlier or in that film about pro racing drivers versus amateur racing drivers, and the attitude of the SCCA at that time is what had John resign.

And shortly after that, he got a call from Bill France in Daytona. [00:03:00] Bill, John Cameron all knew each other from Sebring, 24 hours of Daytona, SCCA, sort of sanctioning other major events. And I wanted to start with that because kind of it all started right here along with a lot of other things. And what I’m gonna try and talk about is the people, not just the individuals, but they had groups of people they surrounded themselves with really smart people, really enthusiastic, and a passionate people for five decades through various ownerships and so on.

So I start with this. This is actually resides in the I-M-R-R-C. It is John Bishop’s original artwork of the logo of IMSA from day one. It has a little water spot on the eye up there, so he was a little sloppy with his watercolors. Anyway, it all started with a phone call between these two guys, both France on the right, John Bishop on the left.

They’re sitting outside the turn four tunnel at Daytona. Bill called him up and said, we need to do a road racing program with a NASCAR business mindset behind it. Away they went. So what was first Pocono International Raceway? This is actually the cover [00:04:00] of the program of the very first IMSA race at Pocono, which is on the little, I think it’s an eighth mile oval on the Tri Oval area.

And, uh, I don’t know that John designed it, but I bet he had something to do with it. So we started with Formula Fords. Initially there were small ovals that worked out pretty good. So Bill Fran said, well, let’s go to Talladega in Daytona with 50 formula Fords. That didn’t necessarily work as well because they ran around in big packs and had huge accidents.

So we said, okay, we’re not doing that anymore. The same time they started a Formula V program. So IMSA’s legacy and throughout its careers of five decades always had open wheel elements. John and the little staff at the time tried that. It was great racing until they crashed into each other, which all you needed was one guy to sneeze in the middle of the pack, and you had a 20 car pile up.

So we decided that wasn’t a good idea. You could see how it sort of generates into pack racing with these guys. Great stuff, but kind of scary. So what was the next idea? We need closed wheel cars. John decided he would take his background in TransAm. We’ll take those Camaros Mustangs [00:05:00] Javelins. We’ll mix it up with F-I-A-G-T cars.

Porsche nine elevens in this case. That’s I think Peter, Greg being chased by Juan Montalvo and a two liter escort from Europe. These were little GT cars and we mixed ’em up with the big GT cars. And next thing you know, in 1972, there was the Camel gt, which RJ Reynolds Tobacco came in, recognized it as a good product and away that went.

The other thing we did was we created a series for what was then the new little cars. So in this you got a Fiat, a Gremlin, a Mazda, a Pinto, and I think that’s a Volvo in the back. But John was astute enough and IMSA was a student enough to realize all these manufacturers had no place to race their new product.

So we created this and that’s when little cars, but I think the first Honda to ever race in the United States was a civic and imsa. Most of these brands, BMW and others just grew from this into gt cars and bigger cars. The American manufacturers, we had the Pinto, the Gremlin, and other similar cars. And what was great about this, they were running on street tires.

They took BFGs [00:06:00] initially, good years, shaved them down to three 30 seconds so they wouldn’t fall apart. And you could run around Daytona as an example. Tom Wall, in about 1975, did a closed course record at Talladega at over 150 miles an hour. And an A MC Hornet on street tires. Street tires on race cars, not new, but running a whole series on ’em was a relatively new idea.

So this grew great. It also provided the cars that could fill the back of the GT fields as that grew in 72 and 73, raced in the daytime, raced at night, and then we got into the mid seventies. By that point, people like Porsche, BMW Ford with their Capris. Most of the European manufacturers would build a limited run of customer race cars, Porsche Carreras or whatever.

Back then, I think Porsche made about 5,009 elevens a year. I think GM made about 300,000 Camaros. So to equate a Camaro with a Porsche was a technical. Problem. So John, and this is his original artwork, decided to apply what the [00:07:00] FIA applied to the European cars, to American cars. And he created more or less by himself all American gt.

This happens to be a Vega, which was replaced rapidly by the Chevy Mazda. And that became the mainstay, along with John Greenwood’s, big Corvettes to compete against the European brands. And that’s really where IMSA’s growth started in production car racing, which was GT cars. So that was the first A A GT car, which of course is a Vega.

Looks a little bit like the drawing, but that didn’t last long. And as back to more RS cars, this is a typical RS race at Daytona. In this same timeframe, car and driver Pinto is up there. Nick crawl, president of the SECA in the BMW in second, George Alderman who drove in the first formula forward race at Pocono is in the lead in turn one in the wet.

Lebanza Al Holbert doing an engine change during the 24 hour race, a planned engine change, which wasn’t really the best way to go about a 24 hour race, but they did it anyway. We did Formula Atlantic. We co sanctioned the Formula [00:08:00] Atlantic Series in the era of Vinu and Ray Hall and Elliot Forbes Robinson.

The Canadians did the Canadian races. IMSA did the US races. 1976. This is I think, the ski rule car that’s Vinu in the back. So this is 1976 Road Atlanta. Those of you who know the track will be stunned at what the place looked like in 1976, but you see Camaros, Porsches, la Manza. This was the Manza that first all around A A GT victory, Al Holbert in the car.

There’s four or five of these little two minute clips of video. And this wasn’t video. This was film because video hadn’t been invented yet. And just to show you what the tracks were like, what the cars looked like, and not just still pictures, but this car was the first mass produced tube frame race car before nascar, before anybody else.

14 of those were built. By Decon and three or four other constructors built cars to the same rules, but they had six liter Chevys in the front of a Chevy Mazda in a tube frame [00:09:00] chassis. But the car captured the look of the road car just as the CSL and the Corvette, which was the intent. Marketing wise.

The cars had to look like what they were supposed to look like. But you can see here the front straightaway at Atlanta, there’s no pit lane on the right as there is now. There actually was a stream over there where people would be periodically pulled out of the water and there we have it on. Al Holbert winning the first All American GT overall victory at Road Atlanta in 1976.

Those were the two main antagonists. That’s Michael Kaiser on the right with Milt Minner a lot of times, and Al Holbert who used Doc Bundy, a whole bunch of other drivers, but I didn’t want to talk too much about that, but beautiful car people remember them today and still go, you know what? For something from the mid seventies, it’s still kind of a current looking piece of hardware.

That was the antagonist for everybody, which is the Porsche, RSR. This is Mike Kaiser before he got the Mazda. But this car was sold in 1974. Brand new three liter Porsche, RSR was $23,000. Of course there’s inflation, but it still was a pretty good deal. The other great car, the air was the [00:10:00] C-S-L-B-M-W. This came about.

In 1975, the factory decided IMSA in the US was the place to race. So they gave up their touring car program in Europe and brought the whole mess. Ronnie Peterson, Brian Redmond, Zi, Alan Moffitt, they brought the whole factory deal over here. They came to Daytona, didn’t do too well. Moved into Bobby Allison shops in Hueytown, Alabama, and converted the cars from European touring cars to NASCAR stock cars with triple door bars and stiffened them all up, and then became the cars to beat because of that.

That’s a typical, let’s turn one at at Laguna in that same era, but Monza, Monza, BMW, Carl Schaeffer’s, big Block. Camaro. Porsche. Porsche, Porsche, Porsche, Porsche, Charlie, Kemp’s, Mustang, at the very top on the right, which was also an All American GT car. And then we decided we’d go stock car racing. So we invented American Challenge.

This is Gene Felton in a Buick Skylark. We didn’t know what we were gonna do with them, but we basically created a class, and I want to emphasize all of this stuff you see here, John Bishop and the staff at the time, we’d sit around and say, what do we need? To have for our product. Our [00:11:00] product is entertainment.

We’re not here to set the world on fire. We’re here to entertain people. Go to places like Road Atlanta and Road America and have people come and watch. This is all before television as well. So we created this, we ran ’em with our GT cars for a couple years, and then Kelly came along and we ran 10 years of.

Of American stock cars, which NASCAR tried to do at the same time. Didn’t court work out as well as ours did, but road racing stock cars was a new idea. Again, sat around one day and decided what do we need to do? We need something like that. We need these kind of cars to be on the racetrack in some way.

Again, this is Riverside BMW’s, out front Ford Capri behind Gaggle of Porsche’s. Great shot of Bert’s car. Beautiful cars, beautifully turned out. And then we got into group five. So now you see the beginning of the big wings and things, and the extended front splitters car in the back is Chris Cord’s Mazda.

The car in the front is David Hobbes and the McLaren BMW three 20. I turbo. Also a factory deal, but run out of McLaren in, in Detroit. Group five came along, and again, it was the same situation. The OE in Europe made nine [00:12:00] 30 fives, a few of these BMWs, and then they became the dominant cars. John Bishop always wanted a product that the little guy private team could win the big races in.

So Daytona Sebring, there had to be something that you were not dependent on a car company to have to have a car because after a year or two, those guys quit making ’em. So every generational shift technically in IMSA GT racing has been due to coming up with something new that would take the place of OE Manufacture built purpose race cars, and have it available to anybody who wanted to buy it.

And that was an underlying theme for five decades. That’s the other big monsters, the big Greenwood Corvettes. This particular car at Daytona in 1974 did 212 miles an hour. It pit in at Daytona. It’s the size of a small house that has a 494 cubic inch cross ram Can-Am engine in it. It’s got tires on the back big enough for a semi, but it was fast.

How did that work against the Porsches? Technically everybody got 32 gallons of gas. So 250 miles [00:13:00] at Daytona. This car was two to three seconds, a lap faster than most of the other cars, but had to make two more pit stops to get the fuel and what happened In the end, they converged, and the racing was really quite excellent because of that.

Another great shot at BMW at Sebring in the old days where you could see between the car and the big airplanes, there’s nothing. But that’s the way it was. Gives you an idea. That’s the winning car from 1975. But yeah, these constellations, DC sixes, DC sevens lined up there, they’re basically cutting them up for scrap, but there’s a little vestige of a snow fence there in front of the windscreen.

But there’s nothing between parked airplanes and the race cars. There’s a shot from Daytona same year where. There’s actually trees there, which of course have been long chopped up by spectators for firewood or whatever, but there’s no more trees in Daytona. Another good shot of Chris k Manza, mid Ohio.

Again, beautiful cars. This is now 1978 and this is a pretty important year technically. Two front row cars are factory 9 35 Porsches. One’s a customer car, which is Kramer, and the other one [00:14:00] is the martini factory car. Behind them are the two in all Terra GTP cars. GTP came about through a collaboration with the A CO and the Lamar people to develop a prototype car that a number of private constructors could build and powered by engines that anybody could buy.

So those two cars are powered by Cosworth, three Liter Cosworth, kind of a dune Formula one engine. They actually did pretty well, but a lot of people don’t understand that that was a collaboration with the A CO. It then led to bigger political issues in a few years with the FIA. But we’ll get to that. So every time we came out with new cars, Daytona’s the first race, it’s the Super Bowl race.

At no time did any new car. Beat the old cars at Daytona when they first came out until the DPI cars in the mid 20 teens. The car that won is a little 43 Hurley Haywood up there in the upper right Porsche Carre, RSR. It’s been in the game since 1974. It’s been four years and it’s still a competitive, big race winning car.

All this other stuff broke or crashed. So that’s part of it. Again, another shot [00:15:00] showing you. The first prototype of the turbo car is the Zero zero Car, which Interscope had, which was driven by Dan and Guy is Factory car, Kramer car, one of the GTP. In Alters. We talked about consequential racetracks, a couple shots from Lime Rock.

This is before the Chica. When you have 850 horsepower going up a hill. Wish was, I hate to say, kind of normal. There’s even a more dramatic one. These cars were, uh. Absolutely terrible to drive. You had to really be on your game. Very difficult to drive huge amount of power based on a standard nine 11 shell, kind of a flexible flyer until they got here and everybody stiffened them up.

Huge rear tires, tiny, small front tires. Aerodynamically, eh, not that good either. In those days you could run a twin turbo set up, or a single turbo set up with two different specifications of weight because of lag. No electronics existed yet to control turbo lag. So two small turbos. Worked a little better, but the big one made more power.

So this is a rare photograph of Peter Greg’s two cars, that road Atlanta, trying to decide which one he would race. One’s a single, one’s [00:16:00] a double. Then they morphed into, this is JLP three. They began to get Kramer body work, body work design in California. And I would say by 19 79 80, we’d have 15,930 fives on the grid.

One BMW, one or two Ford Mustang Z speed cars. But of the 15,930 fives, no, two of ’em the same. Every team got the cars hot, rotted ’em, changed them. The rules then philosophically were, if it didn’t say you couldn’t, you could, they had dry ice in the inner coolers. They had fon sprays in the intercos for qualifying, and everybody said they were cheating and we’re going, well, no, it doesn’t say you can’t do that.

So they’re just being a little more innovative than you are. Try it, see if it works for you. So it generated a lot of diversity. Hot rods. This is, uh, lagoon Deka. It’s Ray Hall on the Nine and Fitzpatrick. Whittington Brothers Ford, Zach. Speed Mustang pretty evenly matched in speed. Down the back straightaway at Daytona.

Little lock up there. Yo. But you could see Porsche, Porsche, Porsche, Porsche, Porsche, Porsche, [00:17:00] Porsche, Porsche, Paul Newman, and a Nissan Ford. Somebody crashing the end all car. But again, we got to another point where if you didn’t have a Porsche 9 35, which you could no longer get, you had to build one out of a wreck street car or something like that.

And that’s what they did. But we got to the point where it was all the same car with one or two exceptions. So we needed this GTP concept to generate. Something new, and that was the Lola T 600. Also, the first customer, GTP car built about 15 of those. That’s J, that’s the ultimate form of the the 9 35, which by then in 82, 83 was running full ground effects.

Still a rear engine car, but the only thing left that was a nine 11 would be the front windshield cow, and side windows. The rest of it, as you can see, is heavily different from a nine 11. Again, all allowed. Shot from Daytona. These cars were great. They had mechanical waste gates. They made all kinds of weird noises.

Spectators love them. They burned a lot of excess fuel through the turbo, so every time you got off the [00:18:00] engine, you got a big flame out the back. So it was kind of spectacular to watch these cars and hear them. They were not just a visual thing, they were a great sensory overload in every regard. RS cars.

They’re still around, running around on street tires. Now you see Dotson’s Gremlins still Gremlins Mazda in the back, BMW 2002. This series created an entire industry of people that IMSA tried to establish early on who then made their entire lives their business in racing. Roger Mandeville with Mazda’s, Amos Johnson, a number of people built their entire life and business.

Starting with these cars, we always had a place or always wanted a place. And this series in particular, along later with the Firestone Fire Hawk series, provided a place for the average guy to go racing. You didn’t have to be elite, you didn’t have to have a lot of money, but you could go out, you could have a great time.

And I wanna say up till this point, one of the things IMSA did was we paid everybody something. You might have won 50 bucks back then. [00:19:00] 50 bucks was two nights in a hotel room, so you could go to registration on Sunday afternoon and get paid in cash to get home. But we did that for a decade. It was a completely novel thought process that you would actually get paid to do this even if you were last.

But that was the philosophy. We paid everybody and it was appreciated. You also got an apple at registration. When you went to get your credentials. You got Peggy Bishop would give you an apple. So that was kind of cool too. So this is a typical RS race at Daytona. Mob racing. The only thing that made it better than Formula Fours is they had fenders and the wheels didn’t come off.

So there was a lot, a lot of stuff about that, but there’s probably 10 different kinds of cars in that picture. But that was what it was all about. You know, little guys racing who then became big guys later on, and that was really important to us to make that possible. Road America First Race. Road America 500 took us a while to crack the Cliff Tufty wall as well.

But finally they realized that if they wanted to do this, they had to have a bigger race than what they had at the time. But this is the Road America 501st year. See the crowd’s [00:20:00] great. The little BMW won that race 500 miles. It’s the longest it ever ran and its entire career, which is pretty good. The pit lane, no speed limit.

A lot of brave people in my opinion, but that’s what it looks like. That’s Fitzpatrick, leaving him from a fuel stop. But that’s the old pagoda, which when, uh, Lee Hall, who was the president at the time, said they were gonna take it down, I volunteered to fly to Wisconsin so that I could light the fire on one end that would burn it to the ground, which was the easiest way to get rid of it.

Mazdas were huge technical innovations with rotary engines. They provided a 330 horsepower car for virtually nothing in money compared to piston engines, and we had lots of ’em that’s cant racing. Uh, Lee Mueller, Kathy Rud, another weird great car, the R five Turbo by Patrick, Chuck Mart. Unfortunately, he.

Was killed in it at Midio testing, but this was one of the other interesting cars that Im SA fostered sometimes writing special rules for special manufacturers to enable them to be there. The Zak speed Mustangs, again, blowing a lot of [00:21:00] unused gas out the exhaust pipe. Klaus Ludwig, Ray Hall, Kevin Cogan, great Cars, two liter turbos.

It’s gotten kind of complicated at this point. Some of the other fun things that happened. This is testing Fitzpatrick’s nine 30 5K three the week before Lama on the highway in German. So the crews would go over and build up these cars at Kramer and then take ’em right to Lama, but you had to run ’em a little bit.

So took it out on the Audubon, gave it a little stroll down the highway, right? With a Volkswagen next to it. So if you read the sign, let’s see, Doman, yeah, calm, they were, weren’t calm, basically. A lot of that stuff went on all the time. Sometimes here, but in Europe it was routine to get a cake plate, which is a Kramer plate.

It was a dealer plate, but they just stuck it on the race car and took it out on the highway. So at this point, 82, we have three series. We have Camel GT Champion, spark Plug was the RS Cars. We had a 15 year relationship with that company. 12 years with Kelly Kelly Services with the Kelly American Challenge.

And at this point we started working with Skip Barber on this Barber Sob series Open Wheel Cars, which generated people like Diego [00:22:00] Montoya, Juan Montoya, Brian hurt a lot of IndyCar people. Paul Tracy ran in Skip Barber’s beginning Pro series, but that was just starting and we were just contemplating another shot of Road America.

Crowds were starting to get quite large at this time. Late eighties, early nineties. The 9 35 kept morphing into more bizarre high speed. This is a Moby Dick version actually. It’s the end dial car done in Preston Hens colors at Road America, which you could see it’s quite a long way from a nine 11. It’s flatter, wider.

And then came this piece. This is the Lola T 600, which was the first production series built GTP car. Eric broadly told Brian Redmond, I need two orders. These cars cost $75,000 in 1981. Get me two orders and we’ll build them. And they ended up building about 15 of them. This was run by Garson Enterprises who had run Porsches and basically Brian Redmond won the first race as a true ground effects car with tunnels, which was fairly new concept at that time.

How differently the [00:23:00] car could use the racetrack over a conventional car. The downforce and aerodynamic development, two biggest changes in this kind of racing in 40 years are tire development and aero development. The engines made 800 horsepower 45 years ago that no big deal. Cheaper to make that power these days.

But arrow and tires is what move these kind of cars. And in some cases you’ll see outside the boundaries of what the race tracks could handle. John and Bill France always had a theory that the car needed to be bigger than the track, and that worked until something. Bad happened and then you had to kinda rethink that philosophy.

So by the late eighties, these kind of cars had morphed into going to every racetrack We went, for instance here before the bus stop, the end of the back strait away was about 210 Laguna Seca before they made the inner loop turned two up the hill at the bridge, 205. Mid Ohio, two 10. Every track we went to the cars were faster than Indy cars, and at the tracks we shared, like at Road America and Portland Cars actually did faster lap times in an [00:24:00] Indy car.

We were pushing that envelope by the late eighties. But again, some views very simple. This is kind of, those are familiar with Lola’s. It’s kind of like a Lola T 70 from the sixties tub with a six liter Chevy V eight. This is a Franz Lease Chaparral engine car. 75 grand. The engines were like 35, 40 grand.

So Porsche 9 35 when you could last buy one was well over $200,000 from Porsche. And this was a much more cost effective. Most of the teams that got these were not OE manufacturer related, but they were race teams. And when the business of racing and we were trying to create an environment where they could be successful as teams with sponsors and everything else.

So we kept morphing to new cars and everybody says, well, how did you think of this? Pretty simple. We needed a car that was half the price that could perform as good or better than what already existed. And then we figured out moving backwards from that end point of how to get there techniques. And what was frightening is none of us were engineers, but there were simple pieces of this, which were, the engine had [00:25:00] to be made available to anybody who wanted to buy it.

Car had to have two distinct things. It had to carry 32 gallons of gas. The driver’s feet had to be behind the center line of the front axles when the pedals were depressed. This was the era where India and F1 guys all had broken feet and legs ’cause they stuck out and they were the first thing to hit the fence.

And when they went into it. But you can watch this video from Laguna of how this car could just kind of drive around people. That’s Danny and guys in a Porsche. He just drove by him like he was tied to a tree. That’s John Paul. Same thing. He’s taking an outside line and turn 10 that you don’t normally do.

You’re in the inside and he just drove by and it’s all because of the ground. There’s another good shot of watch how it’s squares off these corners compared to the Porsche. It just was an amazing revelation because people didn’t realize what the impact of that technology would be until they saw it and went, oh.

We need to get one of these. So that was sort of the end of the 9 35. This is the first race that the car raced in and it won. It started fifth. Brian Redmond worked his way through the field, not by going any faster, but the speed the car could run. You [00:26:00] could run the whole race at, well, the nine 30 fives, the Fords, all those other cars had tire degradation.

They had too much power on two back wheels. These cars have the right amount of power, the right weight and the arrow package just made ’em really good. Another limerock shot. This is, uh, one of the coolest cars we ever developed with Audi, which also became the biggest pain in the butt for us. But this is, uh, the Audi 90 GTO car, full tube frame, five cylinder inline turbo hunch Stook, Hurley Haywood, and occasionally Walter Royal, the rally driver, who even people like hunch Stook said when he showed up.

I raced for second. The man was amazing. So this is Lime Rock again, doing wheelies up the hill. The intriguing thing was constant all-wheel drive car, which meant it applied the drive you wanted on each wheel based on the grip level that the car was sensing that it needed. It wasn’t 20% front, 80% back, it was applying that drive to the wheels as it saw it needed.

So the hard part of it was we started it out. Goodyear made ’em special tires. 14 inches wide. We realized after a couple [00:27:00] races, they didn’t go to Daytona and Sebring because they didn’t think they could finish. So. They started on 14th. We summed down two, three races, changed that to 12 and then changed it to 10, a couple races later, and the end result was, it made no difference.

The 10 inch wide tires work just as good as the 14 inch tire. Part of the reasons and the learning experience for us was technically what’s going on with a car like this is the tire degradation is way better. The load of slowing down is spread over all four wheels. The braking was much better. And the acceleration was phenomenal.

And there’s some video of people like Ook would just pass people in the dirt or the grass because the car could do that. So the rest of the guys are like, what’s he doing? He just drove me around me on the dirt. So it was an amazing car. It is probably, in my opinion, one of the coolest, most technically advanced things that IMSA created.

We did some other stuff, but this one was sort of a challenge for them and us to do this. They won the TransAm the year before with a car, an Audi 100. Made out of a real production shell. [00:28:00] This has nothing to do with that other than the greenhouse silhouette and so on, so forth. But spectacular Car two remain.

One is here in USA and one is in Germany. And the significance to Audi is when they just showed their first concept Formula One car, the car that’s behind the Formula one car in their display is that car, not the R eight prototype. That’s off to the side, but that car is right there. That embodies Audi’s performance thing, and it’s 1989.

Pretty amazing what they were able to do and how they did it. So more pictures. Here’s the L is now taken the front all the time. And then Bob Tulia showed up with Jaguars with Big V 12 engines. One of the only teams in history whose people were always dressed in white and never got dirty. Not sure how they did that, but I think they had enough uniforms in the truck that if you did, you had to go change right away.

But yeah. How many people have white crew guys, you know, beautiful car. Lee Drester design actually originated by Mike Dale, who was the head of uh, Jaguar, USA, had nothing to do with England. They didn’t want anything to do with it, so they did it here themselves [00:29:00] again. One of IMSA’s goals was to provide the industry designers constructors, the opportunity to make a living and a business in this kind of race.

So another example of that beautiful car. This is the hairpin at Miami. In the first treat races, which is the next sort of episode where we talked about racing on roads. Well, it came back with a vengeance in the eighties. At one point we had five downtown street races. Different concept, which was we’re gonna bring this show to people.

In their face, which is gonna mess up their town for at least a month so they’ll know it’s happening. Okay? The buses didn’t run. It was, we messed everything up. But when all said and done, we turned on a lot of people to the game that would not have otherwise ever seen it, and it was spectacular to watch another innovation.

The first plastic engine, it was tour on two liter. Most of the internal components are carbon or plastic, sponsored by Amaco. It actually got two podium finishes in Camel Lights. This is also early eighties. So we had a lot of innovative stuff going on and welcomed it. You know, we looked at what [00:30:00] we did as a place for people to try new things.

Some of ’em worked, some of ’em didn’t. But I threw this in here only because a lot of people don’t know about it, but. It actually scored two third places in a pretty competitive category in an engine made outta plastic. This is interesting. This is John Bishop’s original drawing, which he drew in the meeting when we started arguing with Porsche between the 9 5 6 group C car and our desire for a different kind of car.

So what’s different? We put out our GTP rules with the A CO in 1980. It required that engine to be available, no aluminum roll cages, which the FIA insisted was okay, which never was. Everyone we ever saw failed and the driver had to be behind the front axle. John actually sketched this in the boardroom at Porsche Stuttgart and showed it to him and says, here, you can lengthen it in the back or you can lengthen it in the front, but you gotta make it longer to get the driver moved.

And you can’t have aluminum roll cages, and you gotta have an engine that everybody can get. So the group C formula, for those who don’t know, was a fuel formula, more [00:31:00] endurance championship Lama took kind of the same thing, the 56 version, the group C car, which was shorter driver out front, the one that Stefan Beov was killed in its spa.

And it probably, I don’t wanna say it would be avoidable, but the way he was positioned in the car and what happened to the car was tragic. Should not have been that bad, but it did. They lasted about two years. And then finally after some bad accidents in Group C, they adopted IMSA’s GTP rules because it made sense.

And again, none of us are engineers, but we just looked at this thing and said. This can’t be right. There is a better way to do this, and we just did what we thought was correct. 9 56 is probably the least successful Porsche car in that regard. In the 62, I think they built 145 of them. So you think about that 145 race cars that started at about 300 grand and at the end a decade later were 700 grand, but they still built 145 of ’em and sold them.

So that’s what the fields kind of look like. You got a Porsche Buick, March Jaguars. We had a lot of diversity. We had nine OE manufacturers in [00:32:00] GTP in the eighties, as well as, I think five or six more in Camel Light, which was a lower division using normally aspirated engines, which is kind of where the gentleman guys went ’cause it was an easier car.

These things started getting really fast. Miami, this is what street racing was like in the early eighties. Biscayne Boulevard. On the right pit lanes to the left. You could see cars coming around. Turn one. It was amazing to do this. I remember the first race had Sterling Moss as the color commentator on tv, and he was just fascinated because street racing at that point was pretty much Monaco.

That was it. So we did this, then we did West Palm, then we did San Antonio, then we did Columbus, then we did New Orleans, and we just kept going. And the economic benefit was huge. The pushback from people whose businesses got messed up and couldn’t get on the bus and everything else was equally great.

Noise wasn’t that big of an issue because everybody knew it was gonna be noisy. Just to give you an example, race control, the high rise building on the left was a new building and we were like 20 stories up and had a commanding [00:33:00] view of the entire area. This is right along Biscayne Bay. The cruise ship port is to the left.

It was just spectacular. Great idea. Firestone Fire Hawk. All right, other great idea. We took street cars. Told everybody to take the carpets out, put a bolt-in, roll cage in it that you could take out. If we ask you to take out, in other words, it could not be firmly affixed to the car. It had to be bolted in steel fire bottle.

That was it. Belts and a seat. Go race it. So those were street cars, which everybody said there’s no fuel cells, there’s none of this, none of that. The standard of construction of these cars in that day was such that they were. Five layers of steel around the fuel tank already. It was past the Ford Pinto I explode experiences of a decade earlier.

They were pretty solid cars. We’d roll these things up and what was cool is you could wreck it on a test day, go down a dealership, buy another one, and build it overnight and go race the next day. How bad was that? But you could see there’s Dodge Chargers, BMWs, Camaros, Mustangs, just about everything you could.

Now, what happened over time? We had three or four categories. [00:34:00] Each category, we listed a group of cars, and out of that group, maybe three or four were really in that configuration, competitive with each other. Some of them were just hopeless. You didn’t wanna run eos, they were terrible, but people tried.

Picture of a Jaguar V 12, six and a half and seven liter engines based on the production Jaguar engine. Beautiful sound, very competitive. Another great picture from Sebring where you can see this Porsche is going down hangar straight at about 180. And there are people sitting in the grass to the left, and then there’s a chain link fence, and then there’s more people.

And somehow we didn’t manage to kill anybody, though. We certainly had all the parts to do that. No big accidents, but not what we do today. But this is about mid eighties. Bruce Levin’s car, Daytona at night. Just a cool shot. That’s a Nissan GTP car in the last one. And an interesting thing is the what shown this week.

Of course, with endurance racing, we got the moniker of Racing with a Difference. We race at night and we race in the rain, and sometimes we race at night in the rain, which makes it really nasty. What I’m [00:35:00] trying to illustrate here is just how people have adapted these cars to take on different race lengths, different kinds of racetrack, angling the lights out so that you could see where the wall was, was essential.

This is pre-live tv. During the races, so now it’s lit somewhat better. You can actually drive Daytona at night without headlights. People can’t see you coming, but you could see where you’re going. But back then you had to have lights and they had to work and they had to work this way. And places like Sebring, the old 5.2 mile track, part of which was that 86 Havelin car.

If you lost your headlights or your alternate or your battery went dead, there were times where guys just stopped and had to wait till the end of a session ’cause they couldn’t find their way back to the pits. That dark, certainly at speed, you wouldn’t even try to pretty, uh, heroic if you won there in those conditions.

As a driver, it was not just consequential, it was heroically consequential. Okay. Castrol Jag. These are the English cars from Walkinshaw. They replaced Jaguar finally adopted the GTP concept for Group C as well, so they were able to build new cars. Came in a variety of forms, V [00:36:00] twelves at seven liters, twin turbo v sixes.

The XJR 14, which comes up later was the Ross Bra Design Formula One designers version of a car powered by a Cosworth. But really super big program. Castrol, yours truly at the Ferrari Museum. I throw this in there for my own benefit, but I was the guy that had to go over there and homologate this car, Ferrari F 40, which is 1989 to run in GT racing, both in the US and Europe.

So whenever I go back there, they always remind me I did two cars with Ferrari. That one in the 3 3 3 SP prototype, which will come up in a bit. So this one sits in the Ferrari museum. Hurley Haywood actually drove it. People don’t realize that Hurley Haywood drove Audis. He drove Porsches, he drove Ferraris, he drove Jaguars.

He drove a lot of stuff, but he lives and breathes Porsches great guy. Daytona Castro, banking early in the morning. They won in 90 and in 88. Another beautiful piece. The ni Nissans hard to miss these cars. This is the second generation GTP car. Okay? This has got some nasty, uh, accident stuff in it. This is where I talk about how the cars exceeded the racetrack.[00:37:00]

What’s going on here is Road. Atlanta has not got a chicane. It is a flat out turn seven to turn, what is now 12, run 210. There’s a dip in the middle, the dip and the downforce. At this point, these cars were running 7,500 to 8,000 pounds rear springs. They needed springs like that to keep the car from grinding into the road.

That plus the weight of the car. You go down to a in a dip at 200 miles an hour, what’s gonna happen? The tires are gonna explode. It’s a little gruesome, but nobody got seriously hurt. Same race, both cars. There was a third one with the Toyota, which managed to get back to the pits ’cause it landed right side up.

These guys didn’t Pretty destructive. So this is when we started thinking about, okay, this stuff is simply going too fast. We don’t need to go that fast to put on a quality show. To put on good entertainment. We’re not in the business of wrecking this stuff this way. After that particular race, Goodyear refused to supply tires to these teams until they told them actually what the downforce potential would be.

’cause the cars just [00:38:00] exceeded what they could possibly do. So some other footage from this era, Holbert was the dominant car, the eighties followed by the Nissans in the late eighties. One of IMSA’s most iconic car, low and brow car. John Lamers put that one in the fence when he went out of the pits with cold tires and new brake pads.

Oops. Which is still happening today at Daytona Sebring. Again, that’s turn one. Before there was the change in the track, the original Nissan GTP car. So at this point we had five or six major factory teams. We, once again, were struggling with a private tier, could not get the hardware to be able to compete with these people.

Starting to think about what’s next when this goes. We also were made aware at the time that RJ Reynolds, because of federal law, would have to stop their sponsorship in 1993. So we had a number of things going on into the next decade. The bishops and the original stockholders, the Francis and two other groups of stockholders sold IMSA to a businessman in Tampa, who was also the promoter of the St.

Pete Grand Prix race. Mike Cohen and Jeff Parker. It wasn’t the best idea. Neither one of ’em were [00:39:00] racers. If you wanna read the gory details, I wrote a book about it with George Silverman, Mike Compatriot with this, they would do stuff like Mike was a construction guy, so he would take the purse for the 24 hours a Daytona, and he would use that to bond jobs for the state of Florida.

I could say this now because when he finally got caught up, he did 15 years state and 15 years federal, non concurrent. Just got outta jail about two years ago. It was strange days, but basically he lasted three years and then basically sold to another guy who actually was a great guy, Charlie Slater, but the guy who talked Charlie Slater into buying it.

It was the same guy that talked Mike Cone into buying it. He was the promoter at Tampa and St. Pete, both of which were temporary circuit events that failed mid nineties. In spite of all these underlying bad things going on, we exported our GT stuff first to Japan and we took, uh, anywhere from six to eight cars and helped the JAF develop what is now super gt super GT cars are essentially derivatives of the car on the right, which [00:40:00] is a 300 ZX Cunningham car built in California.

Just to show them this Nissan set this up at Fuji. There’s the road car, there’s the race car. The whole idea was to capture the spirit of the streetcar, but make it a real race car that makes it cheaper to run. We brought six or seven cars at their request. We ran two years at Fuji, one year at auto topless, I think.

So three races where they started running, uh, Nismo Skylines. A modified group A cars and started developing a tube frame structured car, which then grew into what they do now, which is very similar to this, even beyond that, without much help from us, other than bringing a variety of GTO and GTU cars and American iron and opening them up and letting all the, their mo OE manufacturers just come and look at the cars and ask questions, how they made, what do you use, and so on and so forth.

It too developed their own industry of parts and component manufacturers for their own cars, which is great. That was one of the big goals of IMSA was always to focus on that. Chevy Intrepid, Wayne Taylor, 1991. [00:41:00] 1991, was the most successful GTP year because every OE manufacturer won at least one race, which rarely happened.

The last nine 60 twos. This is Rob Dyson’s. Quite a bit different than the earlier Holbrook pictures, A lot more arrow stuff on it. Triple element wing on the back, which originally was one element. The car won races in 1984, and it won its final race in 1993. And the reason I bring that up is the original layout of A GTP car.

John Bishop drew on a piece of paper in his office in front of myself, Roger Bailey and Charlie Rainville, and that drawing remained in the IMSA Rule book for a decade. Unchanged. So when people talk about stability, people like Rob Dyson invested in these cars and he raced them for 10 years. Modified ’em, but it’s the American hot rod mentality.

You gotta fix it somehow. There’s the XJR 14 brilliant car. Look at the size of the arrow device. On the back of that. The spray gives you some idea what’s going on, but the air going under the car. This car, Davey Jones said many times, 73 to 7,500 pound rear springs on it. But it’s basically a Formula One car with a three and a half liter engine.[00:42:00]

Widen tub holding 32 gallons of gas. Great little car, super quick. Davey Jones was one of our really good drivers, but the best company I ever heard was Tony Dow, who managed the British cars, said uh, Davey Jones has wrecked every model of GTP and Group C car we’ve ever made at least once. So you know, you got guys that are really fast, but you gotta expect them to damage the hardware occasionally or total it as he did a few times.

Then came the Toyota’s. This is gurney’s effort. These cars were culmination of three generations of previous designs that became the dominant cars. What’s really unique about this car is if you notice, there’s no holes in it other than the hole in the front. All of the air going through the car created, added down force inside the car on a second floor, all the air for the radiators, intercos, and the only thing sticking out of those two little black things, which are brake ducts for the rear brake, but everything else went through the car.

The tall scoop on the side was an intake for the turbo, just because it needed the cleaner air, because at the time the air got from the front to the engine bay for the turbo was [00:43:00] pretty agitated. These cars also ran 7,500 pound springs. It was a 2.1 liter engine running 125 inches of boost and could make if they wanted a thousand horsepower out, a two liter.

They didn’t run that long that way, but it was there if you wanted it. Great cars having gurney in the series from GTU to GTO to GTP for close to a decade was a treat. Wonderful man. That was the year they won 24 hours, 93. We had carbon breaks by then, as you can see. So Japan, here’s the group of cars we took to our topless.

Seven of them, the whole group. That was a lot of fun. The Japanese were great hosts, but they also, you know, you see some of them, we had Exxon at that time instead of Camel. So because it was international, half the cars had so on it because they were still using Theso name overseas and not here, but Exxon was the US that’s pouring rain at Fuji Lightener, GTU car and the two Cunningham, GTO cars in the.

This is another weird car. This is the most successful Porsche car ever raced. This is the [00:44:00] Jaguar Bud Light car that you saw earlier. With the rain coming out the back, they cut the roof off of it. Well, first what they did was they sold that car to Mazda, who ran it in Group C with a Mazda badged Cosworth engine, same car, but they changed it from a Jag to a Mazda just by putting Mazda covers on the engine.

And they did that for about three, four months and decided that wasn’t worth it. So Val Perez, Indiana, they had two or three of these chassis and. Tony Dow Max Welty, who was the Porsche head of Motorsport at Allen Springer in California, go. We need to do something with these. What’d they do? They drop the 9 62 spec engine in the back of one of these things, which cut the roof off.

Reinforced the roll cage structures you could see with forward and rear braces. This is Mario Andrei testing it at Charlotte and it’s the most successful car because in 1995 with the beginning of world sports cars, which side story? We knew in 93 no more GTP cars. So we had a new sponsor, which was Exxon.

They had two requests, make the cars look different because we don’t want to be viewed as taking over someone else’s old stuff. And [00:45:00] two, we need more of ’em. So the whole idea, again, was another technical shift to develop a car that private teams could buy and run. And so the World Sports Car was born. I bring this one up because it’s so unique.

It only raced in our races once after the roar. The test at Daytona in the beginning of January. Kramer had a CK five, which was a similar car made out of a 9 62 chassis. He brought one. Porsche brought two of these and we changed the rules on ’em between then and the race because we recognized that we really didn’t set up world sports cars for turbos.

We were trying to extend an arm to Lamar to go, you need to get rid of what you were now running, which are GT one cars and McLaren F ones. Porsche GT one cars, which at the time cost about $1.5 million a piece unavailable to everybody. Factory made so many and that was it done. So you’re limiting your field.

You’re not looking forward about how you’re gonna sustain this. So we needed cars like this that customer cars could be made out of existing stuff. So it never raced at Daytona that [00:46:00] year. However, the Kramer CK five, the older version, won the race under the rules that Porsche didn’t like with the same engine.

I say it’s the most successful. It ran Lama twice, won both times. Finish second. A third time, and then no finish. Second at Petite Lamont. 19 98, 3 years later, we also extended a series to, um, central and South America, the NA Cam, Marlboro GT series. Again, IMSA Cars, IMSA Rules, IMSA teams, a place for them to sell their cars.

Another good view of the World Sports Car taking the roof off. That’s, uh, Andy Wallace, or might be Derek. And you could kind of see who was driving the car and what he was driving it with. So it was kind of a good view. James Weaver and Rob Dyson’s Spice with a Ferrari engine in it. Again, all that stuff was generally available.

Wayne Taylor won the first championship in a rotary powered car by not winning a race, but finishing in the top five, I think, 12 times. The car of the decade is clearly the 3, 3, 3 sp. This car again, I went to Ferrari with Jumpier. Met with Montezemolo and Pirro Ferrari and said, we need a customer car. So they committed to making this car solely [00:47:00] for customers.

Ferrari never ran one themselves. Pure customer car is exactly what we wanted. It wasn’t that expensive as Pirro Ferrari said. The little badge on the front end, that’s $25,000 just to get the little badge on it ’cause it’s a Ferrari badge. So there was a little inflation to that. But you bought a car, you got an engine.

Four corners, and a full body and a transmission. For about three quarters of a million dollars and that was most of the parts you needed to run a whole season, including the car. It’s a great deal. Rob Dyson. The other great car was the Riley. Many engine combinations in it. Great shot of the Ferrari. They spit flames out the back and made great noises with a V 12 turning 12,500 RPM.

It’s magic spectators loved them. GT cars still the mainstay. 99 Audi and BMW showed up at this point. The A CO and the FIA adopted IMSS W World Sports Car Rules, but then had to put their mark on it so they put bigger engines in it and put aerodynamic diffusers on ’em on cars that weren’t designed to have ’em, which immediately obsoleted all the Ferrari and made the Audi and the BM BMW cars.

That’s a six liter V 12, the car to [00:48:00] have. As you can see here, all the old cars are in the back. The two Panos is the two BMWs. The Lowell is a new car, but then you got the Ferrari’s and the Riley’s in the back, and they could no longer compete with the cars at the front. Grand Dam comes along 19 99, 19 97.

George Silverman and I left when Andy Evans acquired imsa, which was the fifth owner in seven years, and decided we didn’t like to work under his ethics. So IMSA got split in half. Half of the people, the management and. Director type level people ended up in NASCAR Daytona, the rank and file people, part-time.

People that ran the races as race staff ended up getting the contract to run the A LMS with Don Panos program. Again, new car. We had to get rid of the old world sports cars again. Grand Dam did Daytona prototypes. Interesting design Ford. Lexus. Lexus. Ford. That’s Adorn, which became a Dara Riley. So what happened there was the benefit Grand Am had was at the time International Speedway Corporation.

We had Daytona, we had Watkins Glen, we had [00:49:00] Phoenix, we had Fontana, we had racetracks that we owned that let us race there reasonably. The A LMS had Sebring in Atlanta, and we both would pick up mid Ohio or Three Rivers or some other events to build out a schedule. We used to go to the Glen twice. We used to go to Daytona twice, but basically for about six or seven years, these two things ran in parallel with opposite philosophies.

One was cost effective, lots of cars, all prototypes in that shot, there’s no GT cars. A LMS had OE Manufacturers spending a lot of marketing dollars. But they didn’t have very big fields or lots of cars. They had a connection with LAMA and eventually, by the early teens, I don’t wanna say one was better than the other, they were two different philosophies.

But Grand Am had pretty much caught up and passed TV viewership on the car count, and on the spectator attendance at events. And then the smarter people got involved and said, why don’t we combine these two things and make something better? And that’s where we are today. We also did some cool stuff. This is Mike Shank, breaking the World Close Course Speed [00:50:00] record at Daytona, which was held for 20 something years by the Mercedes C one 11 done at Nardo in Italy, which I think is a seven mile or nine mile oval.

He beat it with a three liter eco-boost turbo production engine. You could see the line. You could see the four decimal points, pretty high tech stuff when we would do stuff like that along the lines of Bonneville. Then DP version three. These are the Corvettes. The final version, there were three generations of DP cars and A LMS.

You have the Audi, the Corvettes. They were definitely the A LMS cars. Panos. This is a classic end of race. This is Yorg Burmeister, and I forget who’s driving the Corvette. It’s not very friendly at all, as you can about to see. Oh yeah. See that? That’s a wall that was to the flag. So the Porsche won the race.

The Corvette was second, but crossed the line backwards shedding parts, but luckily I didn’t have to have anything to do with that. Vipers another Corvette. Beautiful cars. Now we’re getting near the end. This is D-P-I-D-P-I [00:51:00] followed the merger between two years of running A LMS and Grand Am Cars together, and then creating a new car.

This is very similar to the car we have now without the hybrids. So at this point, IMSA is starting to really boom. When I say boom, record crowds great TV numbers, social media is, is exploding and it just grew from this point to where we are today. This was last lap at Petite Lamar. Diehard passed, but he’s going so slow.

The car he is trying to pass past them going down the hill and he still finished second. We don’t push for that, but it’s so competitive and so close. People talk about BOP and all the rule stuff. We’re working margins of 0.03%. Where some of the teams, the two drivers cannot drive the same car on the same day within that number, and yet the manufacturers want us to fix that.

It’s like, no, some ending ones. We do this now every year at Daytona. That’s the field for the Rolex 24, probably two years ago. Turn one SE bring just GT cars this time. Huge. We have 18 OEM [00:52:00] partnership agreements with car manufacturers. Most of anyone in the world right now, Penske’s, Porsches, Roger Penske, said when they first tested this car in Barcelona, these are the most technically advanced race cars on the planet, including Formula One, IndyCar.

Anything else? They are made with stuff that was not off the shelf. Everything in these cars, hybrid wise, battery wise, MGU Wise was developed specifically for this. Again, in order to have a life until now, 2030. So we’ll be using this componentry and it has scalability for another five years. Easy. Cars are really cool.

They do really great things. They leave the pits on the electric, they have no alternator, and they just hit the ignition button and the car starts itself from the electric. It’s got an 800 volt battery in it. The 800 volt battery can give it 150 more horsepower, not on demand, but over a period of time.

It regenerates itself when you’re on the brakes and when you disengage the clutch, the input shaft, that’s where the MGU works is the input shaft BMWs. They just debuted [00:53:00] their second generation of the car at Daytona last weekend. Here you have Aston Martin, and again, off we go. So Daytona tells us the Rolex 24 now is the second most profitable event at the racetrack after the Daytona 500.

So road racing and sporty car stuff has come a long way, but you can see how quick these things are at Daytona. Now they’re slightly over 200. I threw this in just to give some idea of IMSA and the Corvette from the third car from the top. It is all IMSA, A LMS, grand Am. Corvettes first two? No, the third one is a Greenwood, so that’s where it starts, but it’s kind of a neat photo to show how GM is used.

Motorsports and Corvette, final picture, that’s the Bishop France trophy. Every champion of every class. In the overall division, G-T-O-G-T-U-G-T-X-G-T-P, on the front straightaway in front of the new tower building at Road Atlanta with the Michelin man on it. And uh, I’m done. Thank you.[00:54:00]

Where all the pictures came from. I am sure there’s some questions, mark. That was absolutely fabulous and I don’t know if we wanna open it up for questions. How old were you when you started, uh, with John Bishop? I was, had just turned 16 in the spring of 1974 and I did my 50th 24 hour race this year of only two years.

One year I was actually kind of helping John Cooper at the Speedway after Andy Evans took over. George and I went over there at their request and then by 99 I was over there regularly beginning to make Grand Am for. Bill Junior and Jim Franz been a great run. I think the most important thing, which I could talk to, you know, the cars are cool and the events are cool and I took a lot of notes, but the people.

Do you have the opportunity to work with your parents, John and Peg Bishop? Priceless. You know, I’ve been given great guidance, great teachings was told. Day one, you can make every mistake you want. Once, second time we’re gonna start thinking you’re stupid. And I said, okay, I don’t wanna be stupid. That was direct quote.[00:55:00]

This episode is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center. Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history of motor sports spanning continents, eras, and race series. The Center’s collection embodies the speed, drama and camaraderie of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.

The Center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike to share stories of race drivers race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls, and brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events. To learn more about the center, visit www.racing archives.org.

This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians. They encourage research into any [00:56:00] aspect of automotive history. The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard, as well as to broaden and deepen the understanding of motorized wheeled land transportation.

Through the modern age and into the future. For more information about the SAH, visit www.auto history.org. We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought to you by Grand Tour Motorsports. If you’d like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure to follow us on all social media platforms at Grand Touring Motorsports.

And if you’d like to learn more about the content of this episode, be sure to check out the follow on article@gtmotorsports.org. We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through our sponsors, but also through the generous [00:57:00] support of our fans, families, and friends through Patreon. For as little as $2 and 50 cents a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional pit stop, minisodes and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team of creators.

Fed on their strict diet of fig Newton’s, Gumby bears, and monster. So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports. And remember, without you, none of this would be possible.

Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 Meet Mark Raffauf
02:14 IMSA Origins Bishop & Bill France
03:55 First Races Open Wheel
04:53 Closed Wheel Camel GT, Small Cars w/ Street Tires
06:32 All American GT Era
10:42 American Challenge Stock Cars
11:39 Group 5 Turbo Monsters
13:48 GTP Arrives Daytona 1978
15:20 935 Evolution And Innovation
18:11 Privateers Payout Philosophy and the Road America Breakthrough
22:29 Lola T600 Ground Effects
26:14 Audi 90 GTO Quattro
28:28 Jaguars Take Over
29:11 Street Races: Miami and the Downtown street racing boom!
29:42 Wild tech experiments
30:13 GTP rules vs Group C
33:06 Firehawk showroom racers
34:47 Night racing survival
36:54 When speed got dangerous
38:46 Ownership turmoil and exports
40:57 GTP peak and aero wars
44:49 World Sports Car era
46:46 Ferrari 333SP dominance
48:11 Split into Grand Am and ALMS
50:57 Merger to modern IMSA
51:49 Hybrids and today’s grid
53:53 Closing remarks and sponsors

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IMSA’s first races were held at Pocono, where Formula Fords circled a small oval. The concept worked — until it didn’t. Pack racing led to massive accidents, and the organization quickly pivoted.

From there, IMSA began experimenting with:

Formula Vee
Closed‑wheel GT racing
Mixed‑class fields featuring Camaros, Mustangs, Javelins, and Porsche 911s
Small‑bore “RS” cars like Pintos, Gremlins, Fiats, and early Honda Civics

This willingness to adapt became a defining IMSA trait. As Raffauf puts it, the goal was always to create “a product that the little guy private team could win the big races in.”

The Rise of GT Racing and the All‑American GT Concept

By the mid‑1970s, European manufacturers were producing limited‑run customer race cars — Porsche Carreras, BMW CSLs, Ford Capris. American cars, built in vastly larger numbers, couldn’t compete under the same rules.

So Bishop drew a new path forward.

Literally.

Raffauf shows Bishop’s original hand‑drawn artwork for the All‑American GT (AAGT) concept — a rulebook designed to let American iron compete fairly with European machinery. The Chevy Monza, Greenwood Corvettes, and other tube‑frame monsters became IMSA icons.

The Era of Wings, Turbos, and Ground Effects

As the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, IMSA entered its wildest period:

Group 5 “wings and things”
Porsche 935 dominance
BMW’s factory CSL and 320i Turbo programs
The birth of GTP prototypes

Raffauf describes the 935 era vividly — cars with huge power, tiny front tires, and “flexible flyer” chassis that demanded absolute precision. Teams innovated aggressively because the rules allowed it: “If it didn’t say you couldn’t, you could.”

But the arrival of the Lola T600 changed everything. With true ground‑effects tunnels, it could simply drive around the old GT cars. It was the first customer‑built GTP car, and it set the template for the next decade.

Street Racing, Stock Cars, and the Expanding IMSA Universe

IMSA wasn’t afraid to take risks — literally. The organization brought racing into downtown Miami, West Palm Beach, San Antonio, Columbus, and New Orleans. Raffauf recalls how the series “messed up the town for a month,” but also brought motorsports to people who’d never seen it before.

Meanwhile, IMSA also experimented with:

American Challenge stock cars
Firestone Firehawk street‑car racing
Skip Barber open‑wheel development series

These programs created opportunities for grassroots racers and future stars alike.

The Audi 90 GTO: A Technical Marvel

One of the most fascinating chapters in Raffauf’s talk centers on the Audi 90 GTO, a full tube‑frame, all‑wheel‑drive monster that defied expectations. Despite IMSA narrowing its tires from 14 inches to 10, the car remained dominant thanks to its ability to distribute power dynamically across all four wheels. Raffauf calls it “one of the coolest, most technically advanced things that IMSA created.”

The GTP Arms Race and Its Consequences

By the late 1980s, GTP cars were exceeding the limits of the tracks themselves. Raffauf recounts violent tire failures at Road Atlanta caused by extreme downforce and 200+ mph speeds over dips the circuits were never designed for. This era produced legendary machines — Nissans, Jaguars, Toyotas, Porsches — but also forced IMSA to rethink safety and sustainability.

Ownership Turbulence and Reinvention

The 1990s brought financial and organizational upheaval. Raffauf describes owners who mismanaged funds, temporary circuits that failed, and the eventual split that led to:

Grand-Am (under NASCAR/ISC)
The American Le Mans Series (under Don Panoz)

Despite the chaos, IMSA continued innovating, exporting its GT concepts to Japan and South America, and helping shape what would become Super GT.

World Sports Cars, Ferrari 333 SP, and the Road to Modern IMSA

With GTP ending, IMSA introduced the World Sports Car formula — open‑cockpit prototypes designed for private teams. The standout was the Ferrari 333 SP, a pure customer car that became one of the most beloved prototypes of the era.

This period also saw:

Daytona Prototypes (DP); and the Birth of DPi
The eventual ALMS/Grand-Am merger
The rise of hybrid racing machinery

By the 2020s, IMSA had become a global powerhouse with 18 OEM partners and some of the most advanced race cars on the planet.

A Legacy Written in People

Mark Raffauf’s keynote isn’t just a recounting of motorsports history — it’s a firsthand account from someone who shaped the rulebook, lived through the politics, and helped guide IMSA through five decades of reinvention. His stories remind us that racing is as much about people and ideas as it is about machines.

Raffauf reflects on working with John and Peg Bishop, the France family, and the countless passionate people who built IMSA’s culture. One line from his keynote captures his philosophy perfectly: “You can make every mistake you want — once. Second time we’re going to start thinking you’re stupid.” – It’s blunt, funny, and deeply human, much like IMSA’s history itself.

Available as a bundle from Octane Press!

This episode is sponsored in part by: The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), The Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argetsinger Family – and was recorded in front of a live studio audience.

Other episodes you might enjoy

Michael R. Argetsinger Symposium on International Motor Racing History

The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), partnering with the Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), presents the annual Michael R. Argetsinger Symposium on International Motor Racing History. The Symposium established itself as a unique and respected scholarly forum and has gained a growing audience of students and enthusiasts. It provides an opportunity for scholars, researchers and writers to present their work related to the history of automotive competition and the cultural impact of motor racing. Papers are presented by faculty members, graduate students and independent researchers.The history of international automotive competition falls within several realms, all of which are welcomed as topics for presentations, including, but not limited to: sports history, cultural studies, public history, political history, the history of technology, sports geography and gender studies, as well as archival studies.

The symposium is named in honor of Michael R. Argetsinger (1944-2015), an award-winning motorsports author and longtime member of the Center's Governing Council. Michael's work on motorsports includes:

Walt Hansgen: His Life and the History of Post-war American Road Racing (2006)
Mark Donohue: Technical Excellence at Speed (2009)
Formula One at Watkins Glen: 20 Years of the United States Grand Prix, 1961-1980 (2011)
An American Racer: Bobby Marshman and the Indianapolis 500 (2019)

This content has been brought to you in-part by support through...

A Bigger, Bolder Concours: Copshaholm Launches a Full Weekend Festival

Two Days. One Unforgettable Experience!

New for 2026, the Concours weekend transforms into a multi-day automotive festival, offering something for every kind of enthusiast!

Photo courtesy Studebaker National Museum

NEW on Friday!

Concours d’Lemons South Bend — A crowd-favorite, this tongue-in-cheek event celebrates the weird, the flawed, and the un-best of the automotive world.
Automotive History Live: A Lecture Forum — Lectures from world-renowned automotive historians and speakers will delight automotive hobbyists and collectors alike.
Collectors Celebration Dinner — An elegant evening event bringing together collectors, exhibitors, and special guests for fine dining and conversation.

Photo by Matt Cashore; courtesy Studebaker National Museum

Concours d’Elegance at Copshaholm — The main event, this Concours showcases world-class automobiles in the historic gardens of the Copshaholm mansion. Throughout the day, guests will enjoy a lively atmosphere with local food trucks, a specialty ice cream vendor, and plenty of opportunities to relax, explore, and connect. The Concours will open to the public Saturday at 10:00 a.m. and conclude at 4:00 p.m., with the highly anticipated Pass-In-Review and Awards Ceremony beginning at 2:30 p.m.

A Centennial Celebration of Pontiac and Automotive Icons

The 2026 event will spotlight the 100th anniversary of Pontiac, featuring a dedicated class spanning the brand’s full legacy. Joining the celebration are the legendary Indiana makes of Auburn, Cord, and Duesenberg—names synonymous with innovation and style.

From the sculpted elegance of Coachbuilt Classics to the muscle and mystique of the Pontiac GTO, and the jet-age flair of Fabulous Fins, this year’s show field promises a visually stunning journey through automotive history. Additional classes include:

Motorcars of the Lincoln Highway (1913–1926)
European Economy
New Deal Motoring (1933–1942)
Vintage Motorcycles
Hail to the Chief: Studebaker Presidents

The Concours’ Chief Judge will be noted automotive historian Matt Short, with judging conducted in the French Traditional style. The Awards Ceremony will be narrated by renowned automotive author and expert, Bill Rothermel.

Awards will be presented across all classes, culminating in the prestigious Best of Show.

Tickets & Packages

A variety of ticketing options are available. Make sure to buy your tickets in advance to take advantage of special early bird discounts.

Concours Weekend Pass – All Friday and Saturday Events.
Concours d’Elegance at Copshaholm Only – Just the Saturday Event.

1965: When Engines Roared and Rockets Soared

History of Motorsports

IMRRC

April 14, 2026

1965: When Engines Roared and Rockets Soared

In the grand tapestry of history, few years shine as brightly as 1965 – a year when the roar of engines on the racetrack echoed the thunder of rockets piercing the skies. It was a time when motorsports and space exploration, seemingly worlds apart, converged in spirit, ambition, and innovation.

Guiding us through this pivotal moment is Dr. Mark D. Howell, motorsports scholar and cultural historian, who reminds us that 1965 was more than a calendar of milestones. It was a cultural touchstone, a year when technology, competition, and national purpose intertwined to redefine what humanity could achieve.

Tune in everywhere you stream, download or listen!

Bio

Dr. Mark D. Howell has been involved with motorsports his entire life (thus far). He earned a BA in English in 1987 and an MA in American Studies in 1990 from Penn State, then earned a Ph.D. in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University in 1995. His dissertation evolved into From Moonshine to Madison Avenue: A Cultural History of the NASCAR Winston Cup Series, published in 1997. In 2014, Howell co-edited (with Dr. John Miller of Longwood University) Motorsports and American Culture: From Demolition Derbies to NASCAR.

Howell’s full-time job since August of 1997 has been as a Professor of Communications at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City. He spent two years before NMC as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of American Thought and Language at Michigan State University. Mark has also taught advanced courses for Tiffin University, Oakland University, Ferris State University, and Davenport University. Dr. Howell is on the Board of Directors of the Society of Automotive Historians, and is editor of the SAH’s Automotive History Review.

Synopsis

This episode of the Logbook, our History of Motorsports Series, discusses the intertwining advancements in motorsports and space exploration in 1965. Dr. Mark D. Howell, a cultural historian, explores the parallels between pioneering figures in motorsports, like Richard Petty and Jim Clark, and space exploration heroes, such as Frank Borman and Jim Lovell. Dr. Howell draws connections between technological innovations and national ambitions that shaped historical milestones in both fields. The narrative highlights Formula One’s 75th anniversary, NASA’s Project Gemini, and competitive advancements in NASCAR, Indy 500, and land speed records at Bonneville Salt Flats. Additionally, the influence of societal and cultural memory in shaping historical understanding is examined. The episode underscores how the accomplishments of 1965 have continued to impact racing, space exploration, and collective cultural identity.

Follow along using the video version of the Slide Deck from this Presentation

Transcript

On this episode of the Logbook, we stepped back into 1965 a year when engines roared rocket soared, and history was written across two frontiers, motorsports, and space exploration. It was the time of bold technologies, ambitious plans, and unforgettable achievements on the racetrack. Legends like Richard Petty, Jim Clark and Dan Gurney redefined competition in orbit and beyond.

Pioneers, such as Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Ed White carried humanities aspirations to the stars. Together, their innovation set benchmarks that continue to shape both racing and exploration six decades later. Guiding us through this pivotal year is Dr. Mark D. Howell, a lifelong motorsports scholar and cultural historian with a PhD in American Culture Studies and a career spanning decades [00:01:00] of teaching, writing, and leadership in the Society of Automotive Historians.

Dr. Howell brings unmatched insight into how 1965 became a turning point in both speed and space. His work connects the roar of engines to the silence of space, showing how one extraordinary year continues to influence the way we race, explore, and dream. Join us as we uncover the sociocultural significance of 1965 a year that proved innovation, knows no boundaries, whether on the track or among the stars.

Thank you. It’s good to be here. I’m working on a book manuscript right now that is juxtaposing, as Kip was saying, kind of the connection between motor sports and space exploration because there is a connection and as a kid who grew up wanting to both be a race car driver and an astronaut, and couldn’t quite determine which of the two was going to win.

To my surprise, I noticed as I got older and became a cultural historian and started in academia that there was a connection between the two. So today this is an ongoing part of that research, [00:02:00] and the reason I selected 1965 in part is because this year is significant. I mean, if you think about it, this is the 75th anniversary of what we know as Formula One.

It’s the 75th anniversary of the Wood Brothers getting into racing. So you’ve got these different kinds of anniversaries that kind of pop up around this year and 60 years ago, it seemed like there was a lot going on both in space exploration and motor sports, things that were going on that ended up setting the course for the future of both occupations and both endeavors.

So that’s where this comes from. The year 1965 stands out as a turning point in American technological and cultural history in both space exploration and in motor sports. Two fields that are often seen as unrelated, but they are connected. You had engineers, astronauts, drivers, and institutions that were simultaneously.

Pushing the boundaries of speed, endurance, and human capability. It was a moment when advances in [00:03:00] materials design and engineering converged with national ambition. It was also the year I was born and I haven’t changed much. I still lean forward and I’m still kind of round in the face. So that’s me.

While these events meant nothing to me at the time, they have become meaningful through what was recorded, remembered, and retold. Looking back across six decades, I propose we understand 1965, not merely as a collection of milestones, but as a year whose significance is shaped by collective memory using the frameworks of societal logics and cultural identity.

I submit that the narrative constructed around 1965 stories of innovation. Competition and national purpose continue to shape how we understand the relationship between technology and culture when examined through this lens, 1965 becomes more than a year of achievements. It becomes a cultural [00:04:00] touchstone that reveals how societies make meaning from historic, competitive, and technological triumphs.

As 1965 began, the United States was in the midst of the space race running second to the Soviet Union in placing satellites and animals in low Earth orbit. America was also chasing the technological and ideological target set by President John F. Kennedy in 1961. Of landing a man on the moon. By the end of the decade, NASA was caught off guard.

When on April 12th, 1961, Yuri Guerin made a 108 minute flight aboard his VO stock won spacecraft scoring. Two monumental firsts for the Soviet Union. The first human in space and the first human to orbit the earth. In 1963, Russia’s Valentina Ter Cova made 48 orbits over three days to become the first woman in space.

And as a point of comparison, the [00:05:00] first American woman in space was Sally Ride. 20 years later, in June of 1983, in 1965, project Gemini tightened the space race by demonstrating the versatility and technology needed to reach the moon, not that Gemini got off to a rousing start. An article in the Bulletin of the Atomic scientists highlighted a rift between the US military and nasa.

Because the agency, according to some people, was more interested in landing on the moon than developing America’s military capability in space. Some believed, and this was precisely the case, this is what the Soviet Union was doing with their vehicles. So the rift was actually pretty well meaning. We weren’t spying like the Soviet Union was using their technology to do.

Now, that said, astronauts had been photographing the earth since. John Glenn took a store-bought Minolta point and shoot camera into orbit on [00:06:00] Friendship seven In 1962, while American Space flight was seen as more scientific than spying, there were some in the federal government who thought manned missions were missed opportunities to observe America’s enemies.

From afar, the United States Air Force was in fact working with McDonald Aircraft, adapting Gemini hardware to develop a manned orbital laboratory that would conduct essential research as long as that essential research meant spying on other countries. The project stalled in 1966 as satellite technology was improving and funds were needed to fund the war in Vietnam.

All the while the Soviet Union fully believed it was capable of beating NASA to the cratered lunar finish line. The Soviets upped the lunar ante in March with Alexi Land’s Surprise 13 minute extra vehicular activity. A move that forced NASA to fast track an [00:07:00] American response. The first American EVA was scheduled for Gemini five later in the year, but Russia’s awkward, yet successful, and I say awkward because when Leon F got out in the vacuum of space, his pressure suit inflated, and for a while they weren’t sure how to deflate it enough to get ’em back through the hatch.

Period of time when they thought they would just have to cut him loose because he was essentially the Michelin man in space and they had to figure out a way to get him back. They did. But anyway, his early spacewalk led the agency to assign America’s first EVA to Gemini for only the second man flight of the program.

Astronaut Edward White was assigned to conduct the spacewalk in early June. On the second orbit of Gemini Four’s 66 orbit flight Commander James McDivitt assisted white in opening his hatch, allowing white to float free of his spacecraft, tethered by a 15 foot umbilical cord that provided communications and [00:08:00] life support.

White spent 23 minutes in space taking photographs and creating optics that unlike Leonardo’s, EVA would promote Gemini Four’s accomplishment throughout the world. More than a technical demonstration, ed White’s EVA quickly became a cultural moment. The image of an American astronaut floating freely against the blackness of space, tethered only by a lifeline offered the nation a powerful symbol.

At a moment when Cold War anxieties were high, this is the first mission where astronauts wore the American flag on their spacesuits, and that was actually at the bequest of McDivitt and white. They kind of knew that this was going to be a big moment for the United States, and so they went ahead and said, Hey, can you put the American flag on our space suits?

NASA didn’t stay with that, but if you look at the majority of space suits from this point on, you see an American flag, Gemini five flown in August by Gordon Cooper and Charles Pete Conrad, who were, by the way. [00:09:00] Recognized outside the space program as both being competitive. Racers in their own right Cooper raced sports cars and hydroplane boats.

Pete Conrad raced sports cars with the SCCA and he actually raced at Watkins Glen at least one time back in the early seventies. But their mission, Gemini five was to be the first spacecraft to use fuel cells instead of batteries as a source of internal power. Cooper and Conrad described their mission as eight days in a garbage can.

Since their sole purpose was to live in Earth orbit and demonstrate that fuel cells could generate enough energy for a minimum duration lunar mission, they also had the EVA. Taken away from them. So they were kind of frustrated at that. They would also test a new radar technology that enabled vehicles to rendezvous in orbit with great precision, which was another critical aspect of going to the Moon.

Cooper and Conrad being racers in their own right, [00:10:00] commented on how loud and fast the Titan two launch vehicle was. Which was understandable given that Gemini crews went into space atop and ICBM designed to carry nuclear weapons Astronauts compared the Titan two to a sports car, maybe a Corvette Stingray.

That’s what they were driving. Given its quick and steady acceleration, which interestingly enough led to a sharp change in trajectory at a particular altitude that aimed the vehicle toward Russia. So what the astronauts had to learn to do was to counter that change in trajectory because that wasn’t their intent.

At least in the Gemini program. Gemini five ultimately earned the United States a new flight duration record of 7.96 days in orbit exceeding cosmina. Valerie Bukowski’s record by 72 hours. The flight duration record of Gemini five was shattered four months later in December by Jim Lovell and Frank Borman on Gemini seven when they spent [00:11:00] 13.77 days in orbit.

This mission was the most ambitious of 1965 and probably of the entire Gemini. Program. It included a pretty big to-do list. The astronauts were gonna spend two weeks in space. They were gonna try new extra lightweight space suits, which you can see here. Their helmets are like, almost like big bags.

They’re wearing over their heads and executing a controlled reentry near their recovery location. Borman and Lovell were also tasked, and this is a direct quote from NASA three Scientific. Four technical, four spacecraft, and eight medical experiments. The medical experiments involved Frank Borman going into space with electrodes stuck in his skull under his helmet to get physiological data on their condition.

Gemini seven became part of an unplanned exercise when Gemini six, an unmanned rendezvous target vehicle. Was lost after liftoff, which delayed the launch of Gemini six A, which was going [00:12:00] to meet up with the target vehicle, Gemini six A, which was going to carry astronauts Tom Stafford and Wally Shirah.

NASA planners suggested that Gemini seven liftoff before Gemini six A, so the two vehicles could attempt a manned rendezvous, which would be necessary for a lunar mission. In December, 1965, NASA achieved the incredible two Gemini spacecraft, one piloted by indie team car owner Wally Shara. He was a silent partner with AJ Foyt actually in 1967.

Their car finished second at Indianapolis with Joe Leonard behind the wheel. But Wally Shara got the spacecraft together. They did kind of a side drafting sort of a thing. They got to within three feet to actually, at one point they got to within one foot of each other. At 17,500 miles an hour for five and a half hours at an altitude of 160 nautical miles, the astronauts could see each other.

They could read [00:13:00] signs held up to windows, and they were able to visually inspect the condition of both spacecraft. It was a technological achievement that gave 1965, added historical significance just as NASA rushed to match Soviet achievements through technical improvisation. Motorsports organizations in 1965 faced parallel pressures, organizational, cultural, and technological that shaped their own collective narratives.

Take nascar for example. By 1965, American automakers were focused on engine development and horsepower. Nascar, on the other hand, stuck to its 1949 notion of showroom stock, stock cars, and the slogan, win on Sunday, sell on Monday. Another factor was the sanctioning body’s homologation rules requiring manufacturers to produce a specific number of high powered creations for commercial sale.

Many of these specialty engines like the 4 26 Hemi, which you see here, Ford’s 4 [00:14:00] 27 camera and GM’s 4 27 mark two. Were simply not available in showrooms. In October of 1964, NASCAR founder Bill France announced that in 1965, all engines used in competition had to meet strict guidelines limiting their displacement.

Among other restrictive measures meant to govern on track performance. While manufacturers wanted to park their big engines in Victory Lane, big Bill France wanted stock cars to carry stock motors available to consumers. During the 1964 NASCAR season, Chrysler and Ford repeatedly criticized each other’s creative engineering efforts while addressing NASCAR rule changes meant to level the high banked playing field.

It was Chrysler’s 4 26 Hemi that received the most public attention. Hemispherical combustion chambers were nothing new in 1964 and 1965. They were actually developed by Chrysler [00:15:00] for the P 47 Thunderbolt. In World War ii, but World War II ended before the design could be put into production. This technology led to the development of the 4 26 Hemi, which big Bill France banned from competition in late 1964.

Chrysler’s Hemi allowed Richard Petty to dominate the Grand National Division earlier in 1964, winning his first Daytona 500 and his first grand National title with nine victories and 43 top tens. For 61 starts in a Plymouth Belvedere, powered by the Now Outlawed in 1965 by NASCAR 4 26 Hemi Engine. As such, the Chrysler Corporation took extreme measures after Chrysler announced it would boycott the 1965 NASCAR season.

Richard Petty went racing with the National Hot Rod Association driving a petty enterprises prepared Hemi powered Plymouth Barracuda, given Petty’s national fame and competitive [00:16:00] dominance. In 1964, he was usually matched against a full-time drag racer. He ran against such NHRA regulars as. Don Nicholson and Ronnie Sox, and they were pretty much more like celebrity shootouts than elimination heats that you would see in competition.

Petty’s 1965 drag racing sabbatical was marred tragically in late February. When a component in the left front of his Plymouth failed during a race at Southeastern International Dragway near Dallas, Georgia, the car careened through a chain link fence. Went into the crowd, injured seven spectators, and took the life of 6-year-old Wayne Edward die Petty enterprises.

Then built a second Hemi powered Barracuda, which carried Richard to an NHRA Spring Nationals win at Bristol Motor Speedway in 1965. Chrysler’s Boycott of the 1965 NASCAR grand national season worked to the Ford [00:17:00] Motor Company’s advantage. Illinois native Fred Lorenzen led 25 of 133 laps to win the rain, shortened Daytona 500 in a top 11 sweep by Ford products.

Lorenzen also won both grand National races at Charlotte in 1965, the day of my birth. By the way, was well timed and conveniently sandwiched between Fred Lorenzen win at Martinsville on 4 25, April 25th. That’s the day before I was born, and then Tiny Lund drove a Ford to victory at Columbia. South Carolina on April 28th, and in the middle was me.

Chrysler’s. NASCAR boycott ended in late July of 1965 when the company met those homologation guidelines. Chrysler’s first 1965 Grand National win came when Richard Petty won at Nashville in a 1965 Plymouth. The damage, however, had already been done. [00:18:00] Ned Jarrett won the 1965 Grand National Championship with 13 wins in 54 starts in a Ford while Fred Lorenzen ended the year 13th in points with four wins in only 17 starts.

Ford easily won the 1965 manufacturers championship with 50 victories in 55 races. One of the 50 wins, interestingly enough, was by Curtis Turner, who returned from his four year NASCAR induced suspension. He was suspended by Bill France for trying to bring organized labor, bring the Teamsters into organized nascar, NASCAR drivers at least.

And so he returned from his sabbatical, shall we say. To win the very first grand national race held at Rockingham Speedway, and that was, uh, on October 31st in 1965. No discussion about the Ford Motor Company and 1965 would be complete without mention of that year’s [00:19:00] Indianapolis 500. The 1965 Indy 500 was a perfect storm as Scotsman Jim Clark dominated the race in his Lotus 38, a streamlined, lightweight Monaco chassis.

Designed by Colin Chapman, who was an aviation engineer at one point and Len Terry. The car was engineered with an offset suspension and powered by a mid mounted 4.2 liter double overhead cam Ford V eight. The Lotus 38 was based on the Lotus 29 that finished second at Indy with Jim Clark in 1963 and the Lotus 34 that finished 17th at Indy with Dan Gurney in 1964, Jim Clark and his Lotus 38 averaged 150.686 miles an hour to win at the Brickyard.

Breaking the 150 mile an hour barrier, as well as a J FO’s 1964 record of 1 47 0.35 in the final Indy [00:20:00] 500 won by a front engine car. By the way, 64 was the last front engine win. Only six front engine cars were on the grid in 1965, making it the first Indianapolis 500 to feature mostly rear engine.

Entrance teams at Indianapolis in 1965 face new rules in response to the tragic events of 1964. If you remember, that’s when Dave McDonald and Eddie Sacks died in that fiery wreck right near the start of the race. These new rules included a new minimum weight restriction and new guidelines for fuel management guidelines that required cars to have a 75 gallon onboard capacity fuel tanks with rubber bladders.

And no crossover tubes located in front of the driver teams at India in 1965 were encouraged to run methanol, which made more horsepower even though gasoline provided better mileage. That said, teams were now required by the roll to pit at least [00:21:00] twice and to connect to their newly required. Another new rule, gravity fed fueling rigs, which eliminated any advantage to be had by running gasoline.

The 1965 Indy 500 featured one of the largest and most impressive rookie classes in the events history. A roster that included Mario Andretti, Gordon Johncock, Joe Leonard, and Al Unser. The front row was comprised of a J Foyt who qualified with a new track record. Jim Clark was second and Dan Gurney on the outside of row one.

Andretti was the fastest rookie starting fourth on the grid. When it comes to the 1965 Indy 500 and the influence of collective memory, the story of the Wood Brothers comes to mind. Popular meaning comes from our memories of the famous NASCAR pit crew servicing Jim Clark’s Lotus and Route to Victory at the Brickyard.

Despite such memories. Fact over fiction suggests the wood [00:22:00] brothers were more of a Ford public relations stunt than a competitive necessity. Teams at Indy knew the wood brothers and their reputation in nascar, yet the crew was new to USAC competition. So any advantage they brought. To Team Lotus was unproven.

Both time and history have suggested that the Wood brothers were not as much of a secret weapon, quote unquote. As our recollection of the 1965 Indy 500 leads us to believe the Wood Brothers turned 41.9 total seconds on Pit Road into team Lotus’s dominating win. But the truth is. The Lotus 30 eights potent blend of aerodynamics, chassis design, and horsepower when put in the hands of an incredibly talented driver, enabled Ford to win.

The Wood Brothers notable contribution at Indianapolis, which led to the Venturi tube that the Wood Brothers added to the gravity Fed fuel rig that was now required. The [00:23:00] idea that Venturi tube made the fuel flow smoother and faster. But anyway, after getting through USAC inspection. Leonard Wood then devoted several hours to polishing and fitting, making sure all the connections and nozzles worked right to ensure maximum efficiency come race day.

Jim Clark had to stop precisely in his box to maximize his refueling strategy. Leonard Wood quoted Clark as saying, you tell me where to stop and I’ll stop. Wood showed Clark the exact location the crew needed and the world driving champion. According to wood, squatted the Lotus 38 down on the exact spot every time.

Stops were simpler for the wood brothers because Clark went the entire 500 miles on a single set of tires. The first stop took only 17 seconds, which is an amazing time given that pit stops during the era. Typically ran about a minute or so. Colin Chapman was taken aback by the efficiency of the wood brothers after their first record [00:24:00] breaking stop.

Chapman apparently looked over at Glen Wood and asked, I say, did you fill it up? Wood assured him the car was full, and Chapman simply turned away and said, jolly good. In a way, they went. Even the wood brothers themselves downplayed the significance of their role at Indianapolis in 1965, giving credit not only to Team Lotus and Jim Clark, but to the powerful 4.2 liter double overhead cam Ford motor that took them to Victory Lane.

As Leonard Woods said many years later, it was their engine, so it was all about Ford and what they brought. The Ford Motor Company wanted to gain a stronghold in European style endurance racing, so they turned to racer. Turned innovator. Carol Shelby for guidance. Not only did Shelby oversee production of the 4 27 Cobra in 1965, finding a practical use for the high performance motor, but he also assumed control of the company’s GT 40 [00:25:00] program that it struggled mightily at LA Mall in 1964.

At Daytona in February, 1965, Carol Shelby brought a roster of competitive cars and drivers to open the FIA World Sports Car Championship season. Shelby went to Florida with four Cobra Daytona coops and a pair of brand new GT forties. When the checkered flag fell, Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby went to Victory Lane earning Ford’s GT program.

Its First World Sports Car Championship win. Taking first place with a five lap advantage and setting the stage for the GT Forty’s future success. All in all, Shelby entries that day took five of the top six finishing positions, the global presence of Shelby and his GT forties, and his Cobra Daytona coops turned forward from a pretender into a contender.

While Daytona Coops performed well in World Sports Car Competition and won the CCAs United States GT [00:26:00] title in 1964, the cars did even better in 1965, winning not only at Daytona, but also at Sebring Monza, the Berg Ring and Ream. To take the International Championship for GT manufacturers in November of 1965, Carol Shelby received a call from Goodyear with an offer.

The company had four days available to run at the Bonneville Salt Flats, but no viable car. The forecast for weather wasn’t good and the clock was ticking. Art Arfons was preparing to make a record attempt using Firestone Tires, and the rules at Bonneville dictated that cars not ready to run, had to yield to other competitors.

Shelby sent a Daytona Coop that competed at Lima in June to the Salt Flats with a new motor. New Goodyear tires and the same rear axle ratio used in France. The Shelby entry traveled the 700 miles from California to [00:27:00] Utah overnight, and upon getting there, the car wound up setting 25 FIA records. One of the records was when Bobby Tero and Craig Breedlove teamed up to run 1,931 miles on the 12 mile Bonneville loop, and they reached an average speed of 150 miles an hour.

No review of motor sports during 1965 would be complete without the Bonneville salt flats. The dry lake bed in Utah was a hemi friendly environment, uh, where the big engine was enthusiastically welcomed in November, California and Bob Summers set a world land speed record for wheel driven vehicles achieving a two pass average of 4 0 9 0.277 in his revolutionary golden rod car measuring 32 feet long by 48 inches wide.

Its frontal area was calculated to be 8.53 square feet with a drag coefficient of [00:28:00] 0.1165 making the vehicle literally more aerodynamic than a bullet. Goldenrod was designed by Bill Summers. Bob’s brother using four Hemi Motors borrowed from Chrysler. The hemis ran in line two-faced front, two-faced rear with a five speed truck transmission mounted at each end.

The entire powertrain linked by custom built drive shafts. Bill and Bob Summers handcrafted the car’s entire chassis roll cage and body in a converted vegetable stand in Ontario, California, creating a vehicle that set a land speed record that stood until 2010. In addition to the record, Craig Breedlove.

Set in Carol Shelby’s Daytona Coop, he and Art Aons, they took turns breaking speed barriers in their renowned battle of the jet cars. The rivalry between breed love and Aons actually began in late 1964 when breed love’s [00:29:00] Spirit of America reached 526.28 miles an hour before his parachute failed and the car was wrecked.

Art Aons set a new record about a year later in his green monster, only to lose it to Breedlove the following week. The one upsmanship came to a head when Breedlove hit 5 55 0.485 on November 2nd, only to be outrun by Aons on November 7th at 5 76 0.55. Three breed love made yet another. Record attempt on November 15th in his Spirit of America, Sonic One, and this time, the third time was the charm as Breedlove’s fighter jet shaped race car broke the 600 mile an hour barrier.

He hit 600.601 miles an hour, and Craig Breedlove was instantly labeled by the media as America’s quote. Astronaut on Wheels Breed Loves 1965. Records stood until Gary Gli ran [00:30:00] 6 22 in October of 1970. 1965 was populated with an incredible assortment of motorsports talent. Mario Andretti won the 1965 USAC National Championship, taking the title by 610 points over a j Foyt in 1965.

Andretti drove Roadsters. Rear engine cars, dirt cars, and was named Rookie of the Year at the Indianapolis 500. An example of the young driver’s tenacity at the Trenton one 50 in July, Andretti wrecked his Dean Van Lines entry and failed to qualify for the race. Even after missing Trenton and including back-to-back DNFs at Milwaukee and Decoin, Mario Andretti took the 1965 U Sac title with one win.

12 top fives, 13 top tens and three poll positions across the Atlantic. A young Scotsman named Jackie Stewart Advanced from Formula two to Formula [00:31:00] One, making his first championship start in South Africa and finishing sixth for BRM. His first World Championship victory came in the Italian Grand Prix at Manza, where he finished ahead of his teammate Graham Hill.

Stewart’s rookie season in 1965 was an impressive one as he scored one win three seconds, a third, a fifth, and a sixth performances that put him third for the World Drivers Championship that year behind Jim Clark. And Graham Hill. No review of 1965 would be complete without considering the historic accomplishments of a sheep farmer from Fife named Jim Clark.

Jim Clark’s modesty was only overshadowed by his immense driving talent. His racing career began in 1958 with road rallies and hill climbs eventually leading to Formula two, and then a quick promotion to Formula One partway through the 1960 season. Jim Clark won seven F1 races in 1963 to claim his first world [00:32:00] driving title.

In addition to finishing second at Indianapolis. At India, 1964, Jim Clark started from the pole but finished 24th. The we, Scott also came parly close to winning another world driving championship that same year. He won the most races in 1964, but struggled with late season engine problems and finished second behind John Certes.

It was in 1965 that Jim Clark experienced a season that remains 60 years later. Unmatched Clark not only won the Indy 500, but also his second world driving championship with five consecutive victories. Jim Clark spent the 1965 Formula One. Off season racing against other F1 and regional drivers to win the Tasman series in Australia and New Zealand taking the title with one race to go on the schedule.

Clark also won the British and the French Formula Two championships in 1965, making him [00:33:00] the first and so far the only driver to win multiple championships in a single year. To his legendary credit, Jim Clark still holds the Formula One record for the most Grand Slams with eight, his closest competition being Max Tappin and Louis Hamilton who were tied with six.

It is highly unlikely we will ever see another driver who exceeds the success that Jim Clark experienced in 1965. Now a conceptual foundation that lies beneath the historically significant events of 1965 can help us understand the many levels of meaning we commonly apply to such narratives from our past as Aca o Mossoff, and Steele suggest in their 2016 article in the Academy of Management Review.

Quote, societal logic serve as the organizing principles for distinct domains of social activity. The authors theorize that there are at least seven societal logics, [00:34:00] including the family, religion, the state, the market professions, community. And the corporation. Now, they continued to explain their idea, and it’s one that’s actually rooted in organizational studies.

They said, and this is a quote, collective memory making is not just a cognitive process, but a social one generated through communication and dynamic patterns of interaction and stored in material artifacts and collective consciousness. Each of these societal logics related to motor sports and space exploration, especially with regard to the events of 1965.

That year highlighted our shared understanding of family via the Petties, the woods, and the summers, while showcasing the almost religious nature of an event like the Indianapolis 500. The man space program in 1965 identified the state as in the United States through our acknowledgement of professions like astronauts and engineers as managed by the [00:35:00] corporation as in like, say nasa.

For every player in the market, whether it be Ford or Firestone or Goodyear, there is a community of fans, competitors that supports their cause. What makes this history relevant to historians is the fact that societal logics are established through collective memory. Collective memory creates resources we use to better understand and navigate societal logics, which in turn, shape cultural identity and institutional legitimacy.

Through the lens of collective memory, 1965 emerges not just as a year of remarkable accomplishments, but as a moment when Americans organized their understanding of technology, identity and ambition. The stories that endure from Ed White. Floating Above the earth to Jim Clark dominating Indianapolis to the summers brothers.

Engineering Marvels at Bonneville reflect the interplay of societal logics that shape our [00:36:00] shared narratives. What we remember of 1965 reveals how technological power becomes cultural power, rockets, engines, chassis, and speed records gain, meaning only when filtered through the stories we tell and retell stories that craft identities, legitimize institutions, and shape our understanding of history.

Over time, these events have been distilled not simply into facts, but into symbols that express national purpose, corporate competition, and human ambition. I was only an infant in 1965, unaware of the significance unfolding around me. Yet the records, the recollections, and the narratives passed down through family, community, and institutions have shaped my understanding of that year.

History gains meaning because we give it and ourselves, meaning the human experience, whether on a racetrack in orbit, or in everyday life, becomes more powerful when [00:37:00] it is shared. And with that, I thank you for your time and your attention.

That was terrific. Mark questions? I think Eric has a question. Alright, mark. Ben writes, this is a fascinating talk. You mentioned the collective memories influence on how we recall the 1965 Indy 500. Do you think there’s similar influence on our memory of the space race? It’s such a great story of triumph over adversity.

I wonder how much is clouded by our desire for everything to fit into that narrative? That’s a great question because that’s something that I’m wrestling with in this manuscript. When the space race started. We, pardon my language, sucked. The United States couldn’t do anything right. The Soviets put Sputnik into space, into orbit.

We tried to counter with putting our own satellites in space. Most of them blew up on the launchpad to the point where the national media started to wonder if maybe we were doing the wrong thing in the wrong sort of prioritization [00:38:00] that we should be thinking about. Other ways to put our technology because we just couldn’t get a satellite in orbit.

It took a couple years. We missed out on the first man in space. Gagarin went up first. He went up and orbited went up for 108 minutes and orbited the earth. We scrambled. About three weeks later, Alan Shepherd went up and his time in space. Was five minutes. If you remember Shepherd’s flight. It was a suborbital hop.

He went up and then came down. The whole flight lasted 15 minutes from lift off to splash down. It’s a swing and a miss. The Russians are still ahead. Second flight, Gus Grissom, same thing up down in his case. The hatch blows off the spacecraft while it’s in the ocean. Fills with water, spacecraft sinks. He gets accused of making a mistake and it’s a whole big kerfluffle.

Again, swinging a Ms. John Glenn goes up, okay, we’re gonna orbit the earth. John Glenn goes up, gets the go ahead for seven orbits on orbit. Number two, there’s a problem with, they think the heat shield, meaning that they’re gonna have to stop the mission [00:39:00] quickly instead of doing seven orbits. They’ve got what they think is a defective spacecraft, they cut it down to three and they bring ’em back.

So right off the bat, I mean, we were struggling and it seemed like everything we did, the Russians could do a little, is that whole thing, you know, whatever I could do, you could do better. It was really the space race was not really going our way at first. But that said, we immortalized Alan Shepherd. We immortalized John Glenn.

I didn’t talk about 1966. That’s a whole nother speech, but in 1966, Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott on Gemini eight Dock with one of those Gina Target vehicles. They dock as soon as they get there. It’s about half hour after they’re docked one of the thrusters on the Gemini spacecraft. It’s a steering rocket, activates short circuits and puts the thing into a spin to the point where they almost lose consciousness.

It’s only after they get rid of the Gina. Well, that actually makes it worse. They get rid of the Gina and the Gemini spun even faster, and they had to cut that mission short because otherwise they would’ve passed [00:40:00] out and probably died. So right off the bat, we are compartmentalizing a lot of these events and making them collective memory and making them significant history.

When if you match what we did versus what the Soviets did, we weren’t that great, but we got better. And finally we won the space race, Gemini seven. That puts us ahead, you know, we could do things that nobody else could do. And then in December of 68, Apollo eight goes around the moon, orbits the moon, and that’s the end of the space race.

We got to the moon first. We didn’t land first, but it was a matter of semantics. Who could get there first? And actually the Russians were in the process of sending a cosmonaut to the moon to orbit. So NASA hurried up and scrambled and said, okay, we’re gonna change the whole flight routine here. We’re gonna move this flight up, move this crew back.

Apollo eight went with an untested Saturn five rocket. No human had ever ridden on a Saturn five rocket, the biggest, most powerful vehicle ever built. But Frank Borman, Jim [00:41:00] Lovell and Bill Anders got on top of the thing and. Went into space because they had to do it. We had to beat the Soviet Union. So I hope that answers Ben’s question.

It’s a whole nother tangent there. Sorry. Hey, mark. Yes, mark A. Okay there. You’re over there. Good to see you. So I think actually my question is maybe even a development on that. So in talking about the societal logics, these collective memories that play together, I’m sort of a historian. I work at a museum.

I interpret objects. I interpret material culture from history, and yes, I can observe the. Collective memory and societal logics and just put the objects in a place that people understand because hey, it plays into the story you already have as a culture. But actually, how much of my job is bursting that bubble?

So for example, most people come in, look at our GT forties and think Ford versus Ferrari. How much is my job talking about Roy? And Don Frey, how much of it is actually saying it’s not just one guy in a cowboy hat. It was a huge organization, the equivalent of billions dollars today. That’s a [00:42:00] great point.

You know, one thing that doesn’t play into this is popular culture and that adds a whole new wrinkle to it because so much of our collective memory is shaped by not historical fact. You know, we kind of know history a little bit, but we know movies. TV shows books, and that’s what we often use as sort of the guidepost for artifacts and personalities and things like.

Yeah, I mean, Ford versus Ferrari totally changed our narrative of the GT 40 program because it was a hit movie. And it was, it was a fun movie. People went to see it. I remember when the movie came out, the first weekend it came out, I came back to my office. People started coming to my office to say, Hey, did you see forward versus Ferrari?

You must have seen Ford versus Ferrari. I saw Ford versus Ferrari. Now tell me all about it. Was that real? You tell me. What did you think was real? What did you get from that? That was real? Because popular culture often takes it upon itself to sort of recreate fact, you know, this [00:43:00] idea of based on a true story, all these movies that are based on a true story.

Well, how do you define that? Is it a true biographical depiction or is. 5% based on fact and artifacts work that way. You know, especially cars, race cars are amazing museum exhibits because when you get a race car, as anyone in this room could attest, what car are you getting? Race cars are in constant states of change.

So when somebody comes up and says. Here’s a car that won such and such an event on this day. It’s like, what’s the provenance on that? If I’m the archivist or the historian who’s gonna bring that car into a collection? I wanna know, are those the same shocks? Are they the same brakes? Are they the same tires?

What has happened to that car from that victory? To this point when it’s being donated, you know, and I think NASCAR kind of got the jump on that. The whole Daytona USA thing, you know, the car wins the Daytona 500. It’s immediately impounded, even with the confetti and all the stuff on it. The next morning it goes into Daytona USA, and it [00:44:00] stays there for a year, and it’s what you run is what you brung to the museum.

So in that case, there’s a sense of authenticity. And that’s kind of like real history. So much of this other stuff, we just play fast and loose with it and we make it what we want it to be, and that’s what a lot of these societal logics do. We can kind of compartmentalize and subdivide what we know and what we experience into these neat packages that we can then share.

They help us understand these complex events. They also help us understand ourselves and where we fit in. This may be a topic for another discussion, but uh, I was just thinking about the amazing influence that the Space Age had on automotive styling and even. Industrial products like toasters and things.

Yeah. I mean, if the whole Fins concept, as soon as the jet age rolls around, you start seeing that sort of absorbed by the auto industry and you start to see concept cars that look more and more like aircraft and the, yeah, the space age was the same way. Anybody drink Tang? When they were a kid, [00:45:00] you know, there’s like no history at all that astronauts drank Tang, but that’s how they marketed that for years it was, this is the drink of the astronauts.

The astronauts who did drink it just as like a sample kind of thing, didn’t like it. They didn’t want to take it on missions, but. General Mills or whoever it was, that’s the way they sold it. Astronaut ice cream. Go to a museum and see, you’ll see freeze dried ice cream. That’s what the astronauts eat on the Space Station.

No, it’s not. There’s no such thing on the Space Station. Even though what the space station’s involved with Gemini seven and Gemini six, what happened when those spacecraft were able to fly in formation for that length of time? That’s what led to. The International Space Station, we could not have an international Space station if it weren’t for the ability for two vehicles at that speed, at that altitude to come together and do stuff.

And so we forget that. My quick question is about the uh, Lotus at one in 65. I’m so used to seeing it appear at events in the UK year after year, after year. I was [00:46:00] surprised to see it listed as resident at the Henry Ford Museum. You know, the, the Henry Ford has that whole big section that’s devoted to racing and that’s where the car actually has been kept.

But that raises a good question. What’s the car that’s going around Europe? What’s the car that they’ve got? That’s my, yeah. What’s the car that they’re taking to Goodwood and places like that and saying, here, here’s Jim Clark’s, you know, Lotus 38. Really? Prove it, you know, is that the one, and I dunno if you noticed too, in the car in the background, that was the Wood Brothers car from this year in honor of Jim Clark’s Indie win.

They took their stock car for this year for one of the races for, uh, Darlington, and they painted it to look like. The Lotus and they put the number just the way it was. And so it even said on the side it said, you know, wood Brothers powered by Ford. You know, it had all the same kind of nomenclature and it was a slick looking car.

They should have run it more than just at Darlington, but that’s on display with Jim Clark’s car as kind of a, this was then here’s now. And interestingly enough, it’s the wood brothers, it’s their car mark. That was [00:47:00] terrific as always. Thanks everybody for the questions. Um, thank you. Thank you very much.

This episode is brought to you in part by the International Motor Racing Research Center. Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history of motor sports. Spanning Continents, eras, and race series. The Center’s collection embodies the speed, drama and camaraderie of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.

The center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike. To share stories of race drivers race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls, and brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events. To learn more about the center, visit www.racing [00:48:00] archives.org.

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Highlights

Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

00:00 Setting the Stage: 1965 in Motorsports and Space Exploration
00:50 The Significance of 1965
04:07 The Space Race: Achievements and Challenges
05:03 Gemini Missions and American EVAs
13:27 NASCAR’s Evolution and Controversies
18:52 The 1965 Indianapolis 500
24:37 Ford’s Global Racing Ambitions
27:21 Bonneville Salt Flats and Land Speed Records
30:03 Motorsports Legends of 1965
33:25 Societal Logics and Collective Memory
37:12 Q&A Session
47:13 Closing Remarks and Credits

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The United States entered 1965 trailing the Soviet Union in the space race. Russia had already claimed firsts with Yuri Gagarin’s orbital flight and Valentina Tereshkova’s groundbreaking mission as the first woman in space. America’s response came through Project Gemini, a program that tested the endurance, engineering, and improvisation needed to reach the Moon.

Ed White’s EVA (spacewalk) became a cultural symbol, his tethered silhouette against the void embodying both vulnerability and triumph.
Gemini 5 and Gemini 7 pushed flight duration records, proving astronauts could survive long enough for lunar missions.
Rendezvous maneuvers between Gemini spacecraft demonstrated precision at 17,500 mph – an achievement as daring as any motorsport duel.

Astronauts themselves often drew parallels between rockets and race cars. Gordon Cooper compared the Titan II launch vehicle to a Corvette Stingray, underscoring how speed and control defined both frontiers.

Motorsports in 1965 mirrored the pressures of space exploration. NASCAR, Formula One, and endurance racing all faced technological upheaval and cultural shifts.

NASCAR’s Engine Wars: Chrysler’s 426 Hemi dominated early, only to be banned by Bill France, sparking boycotts and reshaping competition. Richard Petty’s detour into drag racing highlighted both the risks and resilience of the sport.
Indy 500 Revolution: Jim Clark’s victory in the Lotus 38 marked the end of front-engine dominance and the dawn of rear-engine supremacy. The Wood Brothers’ famed pit crew added efficiency and spectacle, though history suggests their role was more symbolic than decisive.
Ford vs. Ferrari: Carroll Shelby’s stewardship of the GT40 program transformed Ford from pretender to contender, with Daytona and Le Mans victories laying the groundwork for endurance racing glory.

Meanwhile, Bonneville Salt Flats became the proving ground for speed itself. Bob Summers’ Goldenrod shattered land speed records with four Chrysler Hemis, while Craig Breedlove and Art Arfons pushed jet cars past 600 mph, earning Breedlove the moniker “Astronaut on Wheels.”

The year also introduced names that would define motorsport for decades:

Mario Andretti, Rookie of the Year at Indy, claimed the USAC National Championship.
Jackie Stewart debuted in Formula One, quickly proving himself among the elite.
Jim Clark, already a champion, achieved an unmatched season—winning the Indy 500, the F1 World Championship, and multiple Formula Two titles. His modesty and mastery cemented him as one of the greatest drivers in history.

Dr. Howell emphasizes that 1965’s significance lies not only in its achievements but in how societies remember them. The year’s stories—of innovation, competition, and national ambition – continue to shape our understanding of technology and culture.

Motorsports and space exploration may seem like separate pursuits, but in 1965 they shared a common ethos: pushing boundaries, embracing risk, and redefining human capability. Whether on the track or among the stars, the spirit of that year reminds us that innovation knows no limits.

1965 was not just a year—it was a turning point. Engines roared, rockets soared, and humanity learned to dream bigger than ever before.

This episode is sponsored in part by: The International Motor Racing Research Center (IMRRC), The Society of Automotive Historians (SAH), The Watkins Glen Area Chamber of Commerce, and the Argetsinger Family – and was recorded in front of a live studio audience.

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