Pete Lyons' Travels On Racer Road: Can-Am & Formula 1 in their Golden Age

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Break Fix podcast is all about capturingthe living history of people from all
over the autos sphere, from wrench,turners, and racers to artists, authors,
designers, and everything in between.
Our goal is to inspire a new generationof Petrolhead that wonder to.
How did they get that jobor become that person?
The Road to Success is paved by allof us because everyone has a story.

(00:27):
Tonight we're honored to welcomeone of Motorsport Journalism's
most respected voices.
I. Pete Lyons with a careerspanning over five decades.
Pete has covered everything from the rawthunder of Can-Am and Formula one to the
gritty drama of endurance racing at lama.
His vivid storytelling, deep technicalinsight, and front row access to some
of racing's most iconic moments havemade him a staple in publications

(00:50):
like Auto Sport Road and TrackAuto Week and Vintage Motorsport.
Whether he's recalling battles betweenlegendary drivers or peeling back the
curtain on Motorsports innovation, Petebrings history to life with unmatched
passion and precision, and we're goingto dive into his latest publication.
My Travels on Racer Road, Canamand Formula One in their golden Age
with a man who not only chronicledMotorsport history but lived it.

(01:13):
Joining me tonight is JohnSummers, the motoring historian,
one of the many personalitieson the Motoring Podcast Network.
And with that, let'swelcome Pete to break fix.
Well, Eric, John, and, and everybody,thank you so much and I'm gonna
hire you to be my publicist.
You did a great job there.
It really is.
Marvelous, isn't it?
Some of it's almost true.
It's all true.
Even the lies.
Pete, with that said, reading your mostrecent book, it looks like you weren't

(01:35):
that enthusiastic about cars when youwere younger, but yet by your teenage
years, it became a passion of a lifetime.
So what were the experiences thathad piqued your interest and set you
on the path for your future career?
My dad was really keen on cars.
Ozzie Lyons, photographer,engineer, movie guy.
He did a lot of things, but he was a,a journalist, did a lot of photography

(01:57):
at car races and so he was reallyvery interested in cars, especially
car racing when I was like 12 yearsold or so, I would go along with him
to the track, like a family vacation.
We go from New York state all theway down to Florida to Seabring every
March, so dad could photograph theraces and we could play in the sand
and the mangrove swamps and so on.
But I was completely bored by cars.

(02:18):
I mean, I'm in the backseat.
I'm a kid, I don't get to do anythingbut sit there and wait for us to
get to the next Howard Johnson so wecould have some lunch or something.
And so I had no hands onexperience of a car, so I didn't
understand what it was all about.
But then when I got to learner's permitage, dad started teaching me to drive.
Oh, I get it.

(02:39):
This is fun.
In the matter of weeks, I wasa converted race car person.
I remember vividly my first time haddriving a car and also being in at a
race where I was interested and Dad gaveme a camera and told me about shooting,
and then he had a dark room at home.
Every house we lived inin, he built a dark Aram.
So I got hands on instruction on Soupingfilm and making prints and so on.

(03:01):
Basically, that's the paththat set me on and here I am.
So as we continue down your journey,looking through the chapters of the
book, it seems like you were a backpackerbefore backpacking was popular,
and you hear those romantic storiesabout a loaf of bread and a bottle
of wine and traveling through Europe.
So you found yourself in England andthen continuing on European travel.

(03:22):
What drove you to go to Europe?
Well, let me first say that therewere a lot of backpackers in my day.
It's not a new phenomenon.
We're talking 19 61, 62, 63.
When I was there.
I was with backpackers all the time.
There'd be two or three standingat the side of the road when you'd
walk up and stick your thumb out oron trains or sleeping in campsites
or on park benches in Paris.

(03:43):
True story.
I did that.
So, you know, backpacking wasnot novel, but it's a way to go.
So was it motor sportthat drew you to Europe?
Oh yes.
Yeah.
I was not doing much of anythingby the time I turned 20 years old.
A whole bunch of stories in the,in the book about what I was doing,
traveling and working and so on.
But I was really trying to go to all theraces I could and I decided I have to

(04:05):
go to Europe and so I went to Europe.
I had enough money forabout two months in Europe.
And then at the end of that twomonths, I didn't want to come home.
So I found a job and I worked thatwinter and then I traveled the next
summer and worked again that next winterand traveled some more the third year
and I just didn't want to come home.
I went to as many races as I could.
I bought an old Norton motorcyclesecondhand, and I traveled all the way

(04:27):
down to Sicily, to the Target Florio.
In 1962, I went to the BergRing in Germany where I froze
the piston and the cylinder.
It was a single cylinder engineand I devoured the piston and
had to wait in Germany for ninemonths before I could fix the bike.
I learned a little German then.
What Model Norton was it?
It was a 1959 model.
50. It was a three 50 single, very basic,but the engine wasn't anything special.

(04:51):
What I liked about it was whatI'd read about the road holder
forks and the featherbed frame.
You know, the man won so manymotorcycle races in that era.
I. And this was basicallythe same motorcycle.
A lot heavier, a lot slower,a lot cheaper, but so am
I. So it suited me fine.
I, I enjoyed riding that all over Europe.
Where did you buy it?
In London.

(05:12):
I bought it, I walked into adealer in London and you showed
me the bike and I bought it.
It was the new bike, was it?
No, no, no, no.
Two years old.
This, this was almost wintertime of 61 when I bought it.
And it was a 59, so it was two years old.
It was a good bike, but I didthanks to it that I shouldn't have.
So you're deepening your romance,your love affair with Motorsport
being in Europe, because every timeyou turn around there's a famous

(05:33):
racetrack here, there and everywhere.
Had you established, at this point,maybe some favorites or some bucket
list tracks that you were tryingto get to, to record a photograph
or capture or just experience?
Yes, but the first one on top ofthe list is always going to be the
Burging, that Fantastic MountainRoad course in eastern Germany.
In those days, it was 14.7 miles aroundand it had something like 184 corners

(05:59):
depending on how we count a corner.
And it was incredibly difficult to learn.
It was incredibly devious.
It was really damned dangerous.
It's my idea of what a racetrackought to be, and I know it.
Doesn't fit into the modern, uh,conception of what racing ought to be.
So be it.
I'm in the old days.
Compare that to Lama.
Lama is totally different.

(06:19):
There's a lot of magic there.
It's not as long.
In those days, it was about ninemiles around far fewer turns.
The driving isn't as intricate.
But of course you do it for 24 hoursand there's two to three, even sometimes
four different people in the car.
So each one wants something different.
So you have to compromise.
And also in those days it was reallyendurance cars could not stand flat out

(06:41):
driving for 24 hours like they can today.
It's astounding what they can do today.
But you, you had to nurse the car.
I've been at Lama late in the afternoonand on Sunday afternoon they're, they've
been running like 23 hours and theyjust have to get through the last hour.
The engine note that used tobe so pure and clean and lovely
in the middle of the night.
It's sounding hoarse and raspyand something's gonna break

(07:03):
if I'm not really careful.
The cars are streaked with filth.
I mean, they have been through along, long endurance, you know, 3000
probably miles, uh, in the 24 hours.
So it, it's a totally differentexperience and perfectly valid.
Is that.
And I love night racing.
I love watching the car has emergedfrom the darkness and flash by and you
see the flames from the exhaust andthe bright red brake rotors and so on.

(07:27):
So it's a spectacle, but it's notlike Formula One at the Berg Brain.
For instance, your story at the beginningof your book that's just coming out.
The story of seeing the mat coming byat Lamar, it really resonated for me.
Thank you.
My best memory of Lamar, I went threeyears in the Audi years, about 20 years

(07:47):
ago, and my best memory of Lamar is havingthe ritual Chinese meal at the restaurant
at Herand Air, which I only did that once.
And then walking down, and itwould've been like 2000 or 2001, the
guys I were wi was with were like,you know, za Straits just there.
We could like walk down this drivewayand like into this guy's back garden.
And so we got close to the, and Iremember the, I remember the night of the

(08:10):
Corvettes and the glowing break discs.
Yes, your piece.
Brought that alive for me again.
Ah, thank you.
Thank you.
It was magic.
It was magic being there and I, I alwaysfigured my role was to try to express
the magic for what I felt for people whocouldn't be there, but wish they would.
So that's the perfect segue into ournext portion of your story, which is

(08:31):
when did the light switch flip and youwent from backpacker and motorsport,
enthusiast to motorsports journalist.
What were the series of steps that broughtyou to that point and then realizing
that that was gonna be your career?
That overstates the case.
It just sort of happened and it happenedbecause my dad was already associated
with Autosport, the English weekly.
You know, Motorsportspublication from London.

(08:53):
Dad was their USA correspondentand photographer for some years.
And so it was actually not apath I chose, it was the path dad
was following as on a weekend.
And so I'm going along with himand I remember the thrill I had
the first time, bought a sport,published one of my own photos.
I mean, this is so exciting and I haveto tell you, it's still exciting, but

(09:15):
I couldn't figure out the, I was notaware of anything else I got to be doing.
I thought I should do this.
So I did.
I wondered if.
Part of the reason why you came herein the first place wasn't Dennis
Jenkinson's Continental Notes.
You're exactly right.
As a mobile sports subscriber myself,that lifestyle was appealing to me,

(09:35):
and I wondered if the Norton bikeand the coming to Europe and the
following, the Continental circuswas DSJ instrumental in that.
I got the sense he was absolutely.
I often call Jens my guru.
I never said that to his face, butwhen I was still in high school,
someone gave me a book for Christmas.
Obviously my dad, it was DennisJenkinson's book called The Racing Driver,

(09:55):
which I still have, and I've photographed.
There's a picture from it in the book.
Jinx had this life, and it wasthe Continental Notes you could
read sometimes in the magazine.
We didn't get that magazine, butI saw copies from time to time.
So I knew this English guy.
In those days, he had a Porsche, a little3 56 coop, and he would motor around
Europe going to these fantastic raceslike the Targa, Florio like spa, like

(10:19):
Monaco, Rimini, Pescara, places like that.
And then he would write about his journeysand then his stories about the races.
They just spoke to me.
He brought out the feeling in me.
I can remember there, there wasa, a story that Jenks wrote.
I think it was about Pedro Rodriguezdriving a Porsche nine 17 around
brands Hatch and probably the BOACsix hour race, something like that.

(10:42):
As I recall, it was a rainy dayand he just described Pedro just
dancing slithering around that wet.
Racetrack.
And honestly, John, I feltmy breath coming fast.
I was, and I'm sitting 3000 milesaway months later reading words
and I, this is powerful stuff.
Yeah, it's, it is awesome.
That reading your words in the book,expressing that for me, the article

(11:06):
that did that for me was Dan Jenkinson'sarticle about the Milli Milia in 1955.
It was republished in 1995.
In the June edition of Motorsport,and it was right after I'd finished
graduation so I could read somethingthat wasn't the decline and fall
of the Roman Empire for a minute.
Yes, and I read the Jenkinsonarticle and I loved it.

(11:29):
Yes.
Love the sense of.
Adventure and there's a sense of joydiviv, which is missing from contemporary
motorsport, and it's sad that that's gone.
I'm not close enough to motorsport tobe sure, but I think the people who
are involved in current motorsport,I think they're as passionate

(11:49):
about it as we were in those days.
So I'm not gonna say that they're notfinding the same kind of enjoyment.
It's different from what I remember.
But on the other hand,there's a lot of it.
It's good too.
For one thing.
We're not killing as many people.
That was the perfect segue intotalking about the mortality.
I don't think we want to dwell on it.
I think people know thatit was very dangerous.
I mean, all you had to do is look at thecars and the circuits and the driver's

(12:13):
suits and so on and and the helmets.
And they were very awarethat it was dangerous.
There were ongoingefforts to make it safer.
Every year they tried their bestto improve the cars and improve
the barriers and et cetera, etcetera, but we kept losing people.
The first year in my, in Formula onefor me, we lost two drivers and then

(12:33):
the next year we lost one, and thethird year we lost two more in 76.
My last year, I don't think anyone died.
I not on in Formula onethat I can remember.
I might be wrong, but it wasa very, very dangerous period.
I put this in the book, theeditor of Autosport in those
days, he was the founder.
He was a Scottish guy named Gregor Grant,and he said something once, I think

(12:55):
he wrote it in one of his editorials.
He said that, you know, motor racing isindeed dangerous, but you know, you must
remember that when we started in thelate forties, early fifties, we had just
come through the most dreadful war and wewere used to horrible things happening.
And so motor racing is quiteinnocuous by comparison.

(13:17):
So that was their thought.
Nowadays we have moved so far beyond that,we just don't know what it was like then.
And nowadays when someone is.
Killed.
And it does happen.
Many younger people are just shocked.
How can this possibly happen?
And yet it was part of the gameback in those days, very much so.
And I, I feel like that kindof motorsports survives in the

(13:38):
form of the Isle of Man tt Yes.
Have a place of studentsat local university.
And for them, they see the TT more asexisting with other extreme sports than
it does with Motorsport, as the residentmotorsport as they understand it now.
And I thought that was quitean interesting perspective.
It was something that we had to deal with.
I had to write obituaries forpeople that I thought of as friends.

(14:01):
I used to try very hard not to getclose to them because there was
that risk of, you know, losing them.
I wasn't very good at notbeing friendly with 'em because
they're such fascinating people.
I've said before that I don'trecall ever meeting someone in motor
racing who wasn't an interestingperson in one way or another.
Part of it is we're all therebecause we're all enthused by
the same thing, and you just feellike you're part of a fraternity.

(14:24):
I'm on the outskirts.
I'm a journalist.
There's an adversarial relationshipthat one is aware of subliminally.
It's not that they were unkind to me orwary of me, but you could see that the
way the mechanics talk to each otheris a little different than the way they
talk to the journalists who stopped by.
I developed good friendships and, andthey would tell me things that I heard

(14:47):
them not telling other people, youknow, you never actually break through
the barrier and get to the inside.
I discovered that a couple timeswhen I joined the crew of a, a race
team on a, like a club racing thing.
All of a sudden I'm a remember a teamand somebody else comes around and
wants to know what we've done and.
I can feel it.
I'm not going to tell him.
I can see from that perspective how myapproaching any of the mechanics or, or

(15:12):
designers or crew chiefs around the racingteam in those days, they would be cordial
and friendly and partly because I'm thepress and so they want to be nice to you
so they will write about them and so on.
So it's a, it's a lovely conversation.
In the same moment you can see intheir eyes, I'd best be careful.
He might ask me somethingI shunt wish to tell him.
You know, let's switchgears and talk about Canam.

(15:35):
We have had only very few opportunitiesto discuss Canam on this show.
I had been fortunate to sitdown with a friend of yours.
We had Rick Nup on here.
Yes, talk to us abouthis Lamont experience.
But he has tons of racingexperience in Can-Am and he
shared those stories with us.
And so I want John to lead usdown this exploration of Can-Am.
It has such a mystique around it and hassuch an epic period in Motorsport history.

(15:58):
So, John, take us down this roadwith Pete really does have a
epic kind of, uh, worldly feelfor me as a, as an Englishman.
So let's begin with the obvious about.
Canam.
The perception is thatthere were no regulations.
It was this sort of wild west of no rules.
Was it really like that?
There were some rules, butthere were so few rules.

(16:19):
Many people have said, I like to say itwas the thinnest rule book in Motorsport.
It probably rivaled only by thePikes Peak Hill Climb Rules where
it says Open class at Pikes Peak.
Is any car capable of going for theHill Climb Track record is eligible.
Okay, we can work on that.
Canam did have rules because itwas associated with the Sports

(16:43):
Car Club of America and theirCanadian counterpart, CASC.
They came together and they produceda sports car series, an international
one between the two countries.
That's why it was called Can amCanadian American, and it was
a series of professional races.
Across North America and they adopted theold idea of sports cars as experimental

(17:06):
things Can-Am cars didn't come into being.
They evolved outta whathad existed before.
In Britain, you had what theycalled big banger racing.
They were McLaren's andLolas and other cars.
British made chassis with bigChevrolet Ford and Oldsmobile engines.
They were called big bangers,and the crowds loved them.
And I'm talking, you know, 64, 65, and wehad the same thing going on in the States.

(17:30):
Not only English cars with Americanengines, but we had American cars
like the Cunninghams came before them.
Then we had the scabs in the latefifties, and then by the early 1960s,
they were building things like theChaparral 63, 4, something like that.
Again, all of that was.
A fermenting growing blossoming thing,which in 1966 was codified in the Can-Am.

(17:57):
But that whole ethos of you wannaput a bigger engine in it, oh,
that's great, let's hear it run.
Whereas eventually, and in most cases.
Rules get piled on top of rules.
One rule leads to two moreand eventually you can't move.
If you wanted to design a Formulaone car or a Lama car today, but
you wanted to make it a little widerthan usual, Uhuh can't do that.

(18:20):
Lad, you wanted to makethe engine a little bigger.
Uhuh not allowed.
Seems like every line of a moderndesign race car is drawn for the
designer by some rule or another.
It's so constrained, whereasCan-Am was wild and free.
You want a bigger enginethis year or this week?
You want a bigger engine.
Okay?

(18:40):
We'd love to see that.
You want a different transmission.
You want to make different aerodynamics.
Remember, the Chaparral came up withthat wing on the above, the rear wheels
so that it would, aerodynamics wouldpush the back wheels down on the road.
That was unheard of and yetwas perfectly legal in Canam.
Everybody loved it so that itwas a totally different era.
So thinking about those kind ofcreative innovations, I mean, you

(19:03):
mentioned Jim Hall and Chaparral.
Who would you say the topthree innovators were in Canam?
Chaparral with Jim Halland Hap Sharp for sure.
They did the first fiberglass, meaningcomposite chassis in racing in 19 63, 62.
There had been a car made by ColinChapman at Lotus, which had a glass

(19:26):
fiber chassis, but that was a road car.
The elite Jim Hall, I'm sure heknew about that car, but they
built a rear engine sports carthat had that fiberglass chassis.
Guess what?
Today everybody has acarbon composite chassis.
So that was an innovation which has stuck.
Jim Hall pioneered what everybodycalled an automatic transmission.

(19:47):
It wasn't automatic.
It was a torque converter transmission.
So in other words, there was noclutch, but you put your foot on
the gas pedal and the thing lockedup in the car moved forward.
And the way you changed gearwas you simply moved a lever.
You had to move the lever.
It didn't do it by itself, soit wasn't automatic, but it was
an innovative, different kind oftransmission that allowed the driver
to have two pedal control, justlike you have in a Google cart.

(20:10):
Left foot brake, right foot gas,and like you have in Formula
One cars and other cars today.
Again, that that was a Chaparral thingthat came about in the early 1960s.
And then the aerodynamic revolutionsthat Jim Hall came out with, I described
the wing, and later on there wasthe fan car that had an extra motor.
You could add an extra motor to a KN car.

(20:30):
Nobody said you couldn't do it.
And that was to spin a couple of fans atthe back, which extracted air from out
under the car and turned the whole carinto a limpet, you know, suction cup.
It just grabbed the road.
Those are the main thingsthat Chaperral did.
They also were the first people that Iwas aware of doing instrumented testing.
I have a picture that I took at BridgeHamden once, a big passenger seat

(20:51):
of the Chaparral with a big reel toreel tape recorder sitting in the
passenger seat, belted in with wires,going to all sorts of sensors around
the car, and I knew enough not toask, what's all that for Mr. Hall?
Oh, would rather not talk about that.
I asked Jim Hall once there had beena little aerodynamic appendage at

(21:12):
the nose of one of the chaparrals,like a little additional aerofoil,
no, no bigger than my arm, stuck atthe front where the air intake was.
Then it disappeared,and I, I said, Jim, why?
Why did you, why have you removedthat little appendage that
front of the car while Pete.
I had enough time to think I'mgonna get a great answer here.
He's thinking about his answer.

(21:34):
It had a neurodynamic effect thatI'm not gonna tell you about.
Thank you, Mr. Haler.
This is the kind of thing that made thatwhole episode of my life so much fun.
I felt like I was in a giant adventuregoing along with people who were opening
doors into the future and they toleratedme tagging along and watching them and

(21:55):
taking pictures and writing about it.
I wasn't one of them, but theywelcomed me to come along on the ride.
It was just so much fun.
I was lucky enough to meet Don Nicholssome years ago, and I found talking
with him in the pit lane at Monterey.
He clearly relished tellingstories, and I found myself
thinking some of these are true.

(22:16):
Some of them I'm not really sure about.
I'm just enjoying all of them.
Talk about some of the innovations thatyou remember shadow bringing to Can-Am.
Well, the first one of course was TrevorHarris's tiny tire car, the 1970 car.
Trevor and Don got together.
Trevor had fountains of ideas.
He's an amazingly talented,brilliant, innovative guy.

(22:37):
His mind just throws outideas like sparklers.
He wanted to try a car that was likea go-kart and that had small wheels.
He had, he wanted 10 inch diameterwheels, so therefore like 14
inch, 15 inch diameter tiresand slightly larger at the back.
But the whole idea was to make acar that was lower to the ground.
Trevor knew about endurance carts.

(22:57):
Doesn't say that.
That's what led him to the idea,but the same concept, getting
a smaller package down low.
And so there's less air resistance.
And he thought with a, a smallerengine but less air resistance
and less weight, you could go asfast as a big block heavy car.
And so he got done.
Nichols interested in that,and Don agreed to finance it.
And so they came outin 1970 with this most.

(23:19):
Amazing thing.
I mean, it would literally stop youin their tracks the first time you
saw it, thought for the first timeat must sport in 1970, I knew what
it was, but I hadn't seen it before.
And good Lord, so howcan I photograph this?
You know?
So get down to my knees, and I lookedphotographed up because that would
elevate the height of the peoplearound it and things like that.
It was not a successful car.

(23:41):
A lot of that had to do with circumstancesoutside of Trevor's control, but it
led to a long line of other shadows,each of which got more and more
conventional, but finally won theCanam Championship four years later.
So that's an important car.
And then in Formula One, they did do somecars that were fast, particularly in 1975.

(24:04):
The Shadow DN five was it.
That started from pole positionon a couple of races that year,
which is darn good in Formula One.
In 76 I think they won a race.
They won the Austrian Grand Prix.
Alan Jones, later a Formula One championwon his first Grand Prix with shadow
at the Austrian Grand Prix in 1978.

(24:25):
So, but then the team never had thefunding it needed, not when they
started to get good, so it faded away.
The story is fascinating.
Don Nichols own personalstory is fascinating.
Trevor Harris and Peter Bryant, who was aninterim designer, and then Tony Southgate
who did the successful cars later, whata kaleidoscope of fascinating people.
Absolutely.

(24:46):
That's what I found myselfthinking that Don Nichols was
in his seventies when I met him.
He had a long ponytail and I was like.
Dude, that's just so cool.
Riding with Revy.
Ah, you must have been friends withhim for that all to come along and just
explain to people who've not perusedyour book, what that's all about.
Riverside Raceway 1971, a few days beforethe very last Canam of that year, and

(25:12):
at the end of that race in 1971, Revsonwas going to be the first American to
be the Can-Am champion in McLaren MAF.
You can see the two seats in there and thefull Bo that you work over the wheels and
it actually has doors here on each side.
And those three thingstogether make it a sports car.
Other than that, it's a, it's awild, basically unlimited car.

(25:34):
The engine was as big box Chevy asthey could make with an aluminum block.
Gearbox was big and, and theycould absorb that torque.
The tires were big and fat.
It had aerodynamics on it.
By this time, there were some rulesrestricting The aerodynamics could
no longer have them mounted up in theair like Chaparral had with struts
going down to the wheels to press thewheels themselves down onto the road.

(25:56):
This way, the downforce goes throughthe body and the suspension down to
the wheels, which isn't as pure asthe Chaparral, but that got banned.
So more and more rules werecreeping into the cannon.
Anyway, to your question, it was a, Ithink it was Tuesday before the race
and one of the sponsors had some oftheir people out, and I was out there
anyway because I'm a racetrack junkie.

(26:16):
Hey, they're gonna betesting today, I'm going out.
And I found that, uh, ready wasgiving people rides from the sponsor.
So I got in line and they looked at me,oh, I paint in the seat on this side.
There was no upholstery in it.
It's nothing but a sheet metaltub, you know, aluminum tub.
Although the rules said that itwas supposed to be equal for the

(26:37):
driver and the passenger, they didcheat it over a little bit because
there wasn't enough room betweenthe fuel tanks for two human beings.
So the driver needed to have a good seatand the passenger only needed to be along.
He didn't have to actually be comfortable.
I can, I remember sort of drivingmy hips down into this narrow thing.
And then I had to keep myright arm away from Revson.

(26:59):
He's right hand drive car, andhe's shifting with his left, doing
this with his steering wheel.
And so I didn't want to get intohis way when he's steering the car.
Teddy May, the teammanager, he clasped by hand.
He was doing this to everybody.
He said, give your hand.
He held it up and clamped ontothe roll bar here, where, where my
thumb is, that sloped part of it.
And, and that's my head underneath there.

(27:19):
And so I'm holding on like this.
And on the left side, I've gotmy hands out as far as I can and
holding it over the outside of themono clock underneath the door.
And then my foot well, was so narrow.
The only way I could get in therewas to take off my shoes and in my
stocking feet, I put one over the otherand just sort of slipped in there.
So it was not what you call a, arelaxing and comfortable position, but.

(27:41):
At a time like this, who goes for comfort?
We went out of the pit.
By that time I knew Riverside, I'ddone a Formula Ford School there.
So I, I was familiar with going aroundRiverside at Formula Ford speeds.
But this thing was, he sort of motored outof the pits and then nailed it in first
gear and literally my head went like that.
I mean, you know, we hear aboutnext snapping acceleration.

(28:04):
It's true and nothing but blue sky.
Then you put your headdown and then bang again.
And even when he went from fourth gearin into fifth at 140 miles an hour,
whatever it was, there was the same thing.
It didn't lessen with the speed.
And I reckon we, by watching thetachometer, which I could see in
the wiggling needle, the highestnumber I saw was the equivalent.

(28:27):
I found out later from the lapchart, from the gearing chart,
it was 185 miles an hour.
And then after that, he stillhad his foot down on the
throttle for a couple of seconds.
So I'm convinced I saw like 190miles an hour down the back,
straight at Riverside with like that.
And at the end of it, there'sthis boilerplate steel wall
around the outside to turn nine.
It's a long way away, butit's coming at me like this.

(28:50):
And, uh, kept thinking, Mr. Revson,sir, perhaps you might want to
think about putting your foot onthe brakes, sir. I'm exaggerating.
But when he did, I saw why hedidn't have to do it before.
I mean, we just like that.
And if I had not been holding ontothe bar like this, I have a feeling
I would've pivoted outta the car,forward my ankles over my heels,

(29:12):
out over the nose of the car.
That was the feeling I had.
I'm glad Teddy put my hand here.
You mentioned Teddy Mayer there.
Yes.
In the wake of Bruce McLaren's passing,did Teddy hold the team together?
I mean, it's astonishing that the teamleader passes and then all of a sudden
you have this incredible success inCan-Am and then through the seventies.

(29:35):
Building success in FormulaOne into the Ron Dennis era.
So did you perceive that firsthand?
Talk about that Teddy Mayer for sure.
I mean, he was a veryearly friend of Bruce.
He was a business partner.
He was a manager financial guy I think.
And Teddy was an instrumentalportion of the structure that
makes a team a part of the machine.

(29:55):
But the mechanics, they were all on boardwith this keeping Bruce's legacy going.
Tyler Alexander, another American, bothTeddy and Tyler were Americans there.
There were a whole bunch of Kiwis,some English, there might've been
other nationalities, I'm not sure.
But it was the kind of team that wasso successful and so solid that people
wanted to come and work for McLaren.

(30:16):
They brought Dan Gurney and whenBruce was killed 10 days before
the first race of 1970, they tappedDan Gurney to come in and drive the
car for the first couple of races.
And of course he won the race, both ofthose races, and then he'd step back.
So all of those people,including Denny Hall.
Denny home was often describedas sort of a tower of strength.
I've used that phrase that held the teamtogether, but it wasn't any one person.

(30:39):
But certainly all the people we'vementioned, it's just the way they were.
They're racers, and if youare a racer, you keep racing.
If you decide you don't wannarace anymore, you stop racing.
I mean, it's actually a fork in the road.
Thinking about the tracks,you mentioned Moss Port.
Was canam better to watch when thecircuit was really fast, or was
Canam better when it was a slowercircuit and it slowed the cars down

(31:03):
and they couldn't use all that power?
Each circuit tends to be different,which means you see different things.
I wouldn't say one isbetter than the other.
Mosport is a wonderful track,still is today swooping and
fast and bumpy and varied.
You know, I love trackswith hills on them.
For that reason.
I used to love San Javein Canada, in in Quebec.

(31:24):
Province we go is like that.
Watkins Glen has a lot of that road.
Atlanta and mid Ohio and so on.
Riverside was wider and faster,more open, and longer straits gets
the same number of corners roughly.
I used to think of that as a faster trackthan Laguna second, but then I think it
was Denny Holm one day who corrected me.
He says, no, Laguna secondis bloody fast, Mike.

(31:46):
I think it has to do with, even thoughyou're not going that speed, you're in
a tighter turn and there's things closerto you, so it still feels that fast.
It might be a little like Silverstonein Silverstone in its original form.
Yes.
None of the straits were that long,but you didn't have to slow down
for any of the corners that much.
So the overall lap speedwas not that far off.
Monza?
Yes, Silverstone is a track I've known fora lot of years, various iterations of it.

(32:11):
It was built on an airfield, a World WarII bomber base, and so it's basically
on flat terrain, so it doesn't havethat dramatic up and down that I love.
And you're right, in those days it had, itwas the perimeter road around the runways.
It went around the X shaped runways.
So it wasn't that complex acircuit, but it was fast and wide
open and wood coat turn in thosedays, the last turn on the lap.

(32:35):
Was a blood accordingly,fast, right-Hander, I mean
fifth gear, practically flat.
Practically flat and fifth gear.
And on those tires in the seventieswith the big baggy Goodyear tires,
their bias play tires were not radial.
So they, they were floppy springswere soft and the aerodynamics
were not very strong in those days.

(32:56):
So you could reallysee something going on.
The cars would lean and slide andthe drivers are working like this and
there, there's two of them doing that.
And through boot coat it, who knows?
160 miles an hour maybe that was a vision.
And then of course they put inthe bloody chicane that ruined it.
Didn't shechter one year cause abig pile up or, so I've probably

(33:17):
denigrated Shechter name unjustifiablythere, but there was a big rack.
One year and that's whatmade them put the chicane in.
Shechter did have a big crash there andI guess it was not immediately after,
but after that they did put in a chicane.
That's right.
Yeah.
Later did what everyone called theShechter chicane at Watkins Glen.
Watkins Glen had a somewhat similarsequence, uh, as you know, the glen sort

(33:39):
of down and first in those days it wasthe first turn, sort of fast downhill
right up the hill over the crest andso on, and there was a nasty fatal
accident that crested that hill once.
Subsequently Shechter lobbied peopleto introduce a chicane partway
through it to slow the cars down.
And immediately there were all sortsof accidents at the Shechter chicane.

(34:00):
So they took it out andwent back to the original.
That's Jodi's, uh, contributionto this particular discussion.
Silverstone used to be my local circuit,so the first time I ever watched a motor
race was in the grandstands at Woodcote.
Oh, great.
Fully, I appreciate what you mean.
It wasn't until I came to Californiaand I rode motorcycles around Laguna
and Infineon see's point that Irealized what they talk about when

(34:23):
they say technical because no circuitin Britain is remotely technical.
All the corners, they're just like there.
And how big are your cahones?
And you turn in and maybe thecar slides and maybe it doesn't
and you wrestle it round.
And Silverstone was wonderful for that.
Do you have a favoriteBritish Club circuit?
Well, I didn't see enough ofthem to actually judge that.
I liked Brand's Hatch.
In the old days, the first racing carI ever drove was at Brand's Hatch.

(34:47):
I fronted up one day in 1967, I think,and I paid X pounds and I got four laps
and a little formula Junior or something.
And it was all over so fast.
I can't really tell you what Ithought about it was, oh, this is,
I'm closer to the road than I thought.
Oh, those are wheels there.
My gosh, this thing just Agile.
Oh, you know, oh, is that the last lap?

(35:07):
You know, it wasn't until I tookthe formula of the Ford School,
then I had three days of it, thenanother three days of the racetrack.
Then I began getting an acclimatedto it and I felt, I knew what a
Formula car should feel like then.
But I liked Brand's Hatch.
I had a wonderful ride with RonniePeterson once he was out there testing
one of the Lotus Formula one cars,and of course testing his little

(35:29):
while of intense action on the track,and then an hour between times while
the mechanics changed something.
And so he had a Lotus that was themid-engine car with a rental engine.
So we're, we're sitting inthe B. He's sitting there.
And the thing aboutRonnie is he was so langy.
I mean, he was tall, Swedish guy,pale blonde hair, very placid.

(35:50):
And in that car, he was sitting back andhis left hand was just sort of lying on
the console, massaging the gear lever.
And his right hand was on the steeringwheel and it was going like this,
and his face was perfectly placid.
And at Bren's Hatch, you came past thepits and went uphill over the crest of a
hill, which then went down into a gully.
The S speed motor was about 80,and the thing is healed over and

(36:12):
sliding and Ronnie's doing this,it felt like we were in streetcar.
You know, it was pretty hairy.
And all this while Ronnie's drivingthis and he's got his head turning
me, he's talking to me the whole time.
And I thought I couldn't do that.
I liked Brian's aelant, but, but youdon't consider that a technical circuit?
I dunno.
Brands.
I know Thruxton pretty welland Thruxton is my favorite

(36:34):
of the British Club circuits.
It seems like every adventure we go onwith Pete, we can't stop talking about
Formula One in some capacity or yourreturn to Europe after the advent of
Can-Am and finishing up that series.
So let's talk about returningto Europe in more detail and
your time with Formula One.
How did that come to be?
How did you pick up that gig?
The short story is that LeonMandel at Autoweek informed me

(36:57):
that I was coming to work for him.
Canam was dying at the end of 72.
There were several reasons for it.
Not at the only reason, but partof it was, you know, the Porsches
had come in with factory cars.
The Canna McLaren's, for instance,had roughly 750 horsepower if you
could believe what people told you.
Whereas the Porsches came in at like 980and very quickly were at 1100 horsepower.

(37:21):
I mean, there's just no wayMcLaren could compete with that.
They would've had to build awhole new car, go through a
whole new development program.
They did a turbocharged Chevyengine, but they were breaking the
gear boxes, so they'd have to gothrough a whole gearbox program.
So at the end of 72, theywere beaten by Porsche.
They just decided they couldn't come back.
It was a financial thing.

(37:41):
It was business matter.
You know, you can't squander money.
And at the end of that year,I could see that coming.
Lola was gone, Chaperral was gone.
Shadow hadn't yet amounted to anything.
So it was just a matter ofPorsche, Porsche, Porsche, and
I was losing interest and I.
Just one make racing per se.
And so I was thinkingof doing something else.
Anything else?
I didn't know what I would do, butI was thinking, I, I think this

(38:03):
is my last year, I'm gonna quit.
And I was walking into the pit lane onthe first day of practice and there's,
uh, race cars and they're running andit's hard to hear anything but Leon
Mandels at the far side of all four ofthem, they're two McLaren and two forces.
But Leon had the kind of voicethat pierced that cacophony, and
he said, lines, don't go away.
Your future all planned.

(38:25):
That sounds interesting.
So basically he, he hired me andsent me to Europe to do Formula One.
So that's actually the story of howit happened Comes at a super exciting
time in Formula One history, right?
This is the advent of the aerodynamics andthe Y tires and all the sponsorships and
the famous deliveries and the Marlborosand all the other brands that we can't
talk about or show on cars anymore.

(38:45):
And don't forget, at that point, 73was the same year that Shadow came
in, followed by both Penske and vs.
Parelli Jones.
For one point we had three separatemakes of American car in Formula One.
But it was, I think, was part of thereason Leon sent an American to cover
the races and in so much as Can-Am hasthis mystique unto itself, the team,

(39:06):
the name, the brand Lotus is alsoshrouded in a bit of mystery, right?
There's so many different storiesand hearsay and you're there in
the middle of it, in the fray withColin Chapman and everyone else.
Can you talk about your time witnessingLotus and what was going down?
Not from any good insider perspective.
They were one of the 15 teams, let'ssay, that I had to keep track of.

(39:28):
I had to write two stories from eachrace, auto, sport, and auto week.
And I had to keep track of chassis numbersfor odds sake, which is kind of a joke,
but we won't go into that right now.
So Lotus was here, but then therewas McLaren Ferrari, Heskith March
problem, whole bunch of them, youknow, so that my time was split.
And so I didn't live Shea Lotusfor the whole period of time.

(39:49):
They had some marvelous cars.
They were fascinatinglyinnovative within the rules.
My favorite was the wedge-shapedLotus 72 that Emerson Foral
drove for a championship.
I mean, that car, I've writtena book about it and that car is
just so elegant and interesting.
It was a car unlike any other, itwas almost like a spaceship compared
to a, a typical Braham or Laren.

(40:11):
Well, and the reason I bring itup is because things are happening
simultaneously and we tend tofixate on a single point, or a
single person or a single thing.
But at this point, fellow Motorsports,journalists, Jerry Cromack is chronicling
the story of Lotus that later becamethe book Chapman and his machines.
And so I'm wondering, you know,did you rub elbows with Rom back
and was he able to share anythingthat he was working on with you?

(40:33):
I did know, Ja, of course.
In fact, I visited him in Paris oneday and he gave me an assignment.
It's like seem to remember, Ican't tell you what it was now,
but I didn't delve into it.
I mean, it was well known thathe was a Colin Chapman fan.
Oh, I was a bit of a McLaren fan.
You talk about you, you knew MikeSson and were were friends with Mike.
Oh, yes, yes, yes.
He was my landlord for some time.

(40:53):
I believe.
Mike Sson was the journalist whodeveloped a close relationship with
Sana, and then SNA felt that he liked.
Betrayed his trust and youwouldn't speak to him anymore.
And there was a whole, Iknow nothing about that.
That was after my time and I,I can't say a thing about it.
I didn't know that.
My thought about that was there musthave been occasions where you were told

(41:17):
things or overheard things or learnedthings just by being around the pit, just
by walking from the shadow garage to theMcLaren garage past the Ferrari garage.
There must have been things that youheard or saw or juicy bits of news
that you didn't want to write about.
Very little, but I was told things inconfidence and I promised I wouldn't say

(41:41):
anything, and I'm gonna hold to that.
Nothing earth shaking, I mean nothingscandalous, no bodies anywhere.
There is something I can talk about.
Just to satisfy you, BKI Sims, who wasat Braham one day came to me and he says.
Pete, what do you know about thatChaparral that had the fans on the
back and it stuck to the ground?
I said, oh, are you thinkingof doing something like that?

(42:03):
Then Beaky, he says, oh, thegovernor wouldn't want me to say,
but you, do you have any photographs?
And so I went into the Autosport archivesand I dug through file folders, and
they came up with two or three, fourpictures that I had personally taken
back in 1970 and sent to Autosport.
Then I got on my Norton and I wrotedown to, uh, almost straight to, uh,
Gordon Murray, the designer at Bra.

(42:24):
I says, BKI tells me you're thinkingof doing a ground effects car.
Did he?
That was indiscreet of him.
But the end result was I took thosephotographs on my bike riding down
to where he and his wife livedon in the, it, it actually looked
like a little cottage in the woods.
It a pretty, and, uh, I turned up and hiswife says, oh, yes, Golden's expecting

(42:44):
you, but he's, uh, he's out in thewood at the moment on his motorbike.
And presently I heard this trial'sbike coming, PA, pa, pa, pa. And.
Gordon appeared coming outta the woodsand stopped me, and he looks at me,
he says, you can't think about bloodymotor racing when you're riding this.
So we went in and I displayed myphotographs and I told him what I knew
about it, the Chaperral and how it worked,and what the effects were and so on.

(43:07):
And then I said, I won't saya word about this until you're
actually ready to announce it.
If you go ahead and do it, Iwant an exclusive on the story.
And that was the deal.
But the car actually came outafter I had left Formula One, so
I never wrote about it and it wasmany years before I wrote about it.
But that's the kind of thing that youcan get into, particularly if you're

(43:29):
accepted and trusted to a degree,they will tell you things, but on the
understanding, you both understand thatyou're going to keep it to yourself.
People would say that Lotus is,were built a little too light.
Well, unfortunately thatprobably was accurate.
Lotus did have a number of nastyfailures that caused accidents.
A team like McLaren was probablyon the other side that, you

(43:50):
know, they were conservative,which is why they finished races.
I used to keep statistics and at theend of one year I figured out that
the team with the best reliability,the best finishing record was
McLaren by quite a long bit, likesomething like 84% of the races.
Whereas other teams were down in the50% range, they broke that often.
Why were you able to perceivea difference in the approach?

(44:13):
Yes.
McLaren, for instance, wasmuch more conservative.
They didn't fly out and try to dosomething novel just because it was novel.
They had plenty of ideas of their own.
They made the interesting developmentsof their car, but they didn't suddenly
decided they needed to take a hundredpounds off the weight to the car.
You know, the idea is to finish the race,and they built cars to finish the race.

(44:36):
My perception of it, they might sayto something else, but at the same
time they were qualifying on pole.
They were doing fastest laps.
They were making world champions.
So you can't say they were slow, but theywere built in a kind of robust, logical,
solid way, and they lasted through races.
Whereas Lotus's tendedto be a bit fragile.

(44:56):
So let's turn the page and talk aboutanother team that I think many people
have probably spent time on unpacking.
And that's Tyrell.
Oh yes.
I used to hear the story thatthey were built in a timber yard.
A woodyard, I thought, ohyeah, sure, sure, sure.
And it turns out to be absolutely true.
So stupid.
I never went there.
I mean, it was a matter of45 minutes drive from where

(45:17):
I was living in those days.
I could have gone to Terrell,I could have gone to Lotus.
I did go to McLaren.
I went to a couple of other places, butI never went to some of the ones that, in
hindsight I wish I had, in which case Iwould have walked into this timber yard.
Ken Carroll was, he sold a lumberand it would've been a, a woodyard
piled with timber and sheds.
And one of the sheds that youmight not have looked twice at,

(45:39):
if you open the door, there wasthe Formula One racing shop in it.
So it's true that they werebuilding a in a timber yard.
Ferrari's Garage, east Easter Jaw.
He had some truth to it.
Oh.
Oh, he called them the Galler East.
That's right, yes, that's right.
It was thanks to first the Coventry climaxengine from Britain and then the Cosworth
DFE engine that Keith Duckworth designed.

(46:00):
Those were the ones that wereavailable publicly so that so many
could participate in Formula One.
In those days, you did have Ferrarithat built their own engines and
gearboxes as well as chassis.
And you also had BRM that didthe same thing in England, and
occasionally you had somebody likeAl Romeo or at TS or Mara did that,
but list all the cars on the grid.

(46:21):
You had the Lotus's thatMcLaren's the Tyrells, the
Brahams marches, uh, keep going.
They were all built around theFord Cosworth DFVV eight engine.
Yes.
To the extent they were hot Rods garageEast, perhaps some of them were actually
built in garages like the Terrell's were.
But I know that the, the first shadowwas started construction in the guy's

(46:44):
garage, literally his home garage.
He pushed his wife's car out andput the bare metal that they were
putting together for the first shadowbefore they got their actual factory.
So yes, it garage east is accurate.
But, excuse me, sir, that Mr. Uh,crime back, they were winning races.
It's astonishing for me that this oneengine packet, were they different
or when you walked down the pit laneand stood close to them, was the

(47:07):
construction similar, even though thelivery and the wings were different?
Very similar because, let's face it, theywere all built by the same basic people.
A lot of the chassis were actuallyfarmed out to, uh, specialist
that built things like that.
So they were similar.
They were built to the individualdesign, but they were riveted and
glued together, and that probably thethickness of the metal was the same.

(47:27):
And all the tools and the,the workmanship was the same.
Not all of them, but they used the samesuppliers for brakes, for wheels and
tires, suspension springs, gearboxes,almost all used a specific gearbox.
So there was a lot of commonality.
On the other hand, at the same time, youcould see that the designers were trying
different things, but it, it wasn't major.

(47:49):
You know, they would change littleshapes here and there and different
suspension geometries and put theirradiators in different places and
try different body profiles anddifferent wing shapes and positions.
So there was some difference, but itwas variations on a theme, let's say.
Whereas in Kda, you know, the Chaparralhad very little resemblance to a McLaren,

(48:09):
to a Lola, to a shadow, to a Bryant, yes.
They tended to have big block Chevyengines and Hu and transmissions.
Okay.
And this, at the same time,they did have the same kinds
of brakes and shocks and so on.
And the tires all came fromthe, the supplier, Goodyear, I
think, and Firestone for a while.
So from that standpoint,they were the same.
And yet the fact that.
You could do a different chassis.

(48:32):
In the earlier Chaparrals, theyhad these aerodynamic changes
that other people didn't have.
Even though they were using many ofthe same components, it's still, they
were, I think there was more variety ink and m than there was in Formula One.
Formula One had more rules.
My perception is certainly that therewas more variety in Can-Am and there
was in Formula One, and I wonder howmuch the, you know, similar components

(48:53):
and all of that led to Formula Onebeing, I'm not sure if competitive's the
right word, but certainly its popularappeal grew right the way through the
seventies and its appeal to sponsorsgrew out the way through the seventies.
And I wondered how much of that wasdue to the fact that the cars were.
Relatively similar.
So you didn't have the situationwhere Porsche came along
and kind of won everything.
I'm sure you're right.

(49:14):
Yeah.
The days of Mercedes having thedominant car and then Ferrari having the
dominant car, it's still an interestingspectacle to watch, but it's much
more exciting if you have differentcars and different drivers doing
different things on different tracks.
You know, in one track, certain caris good, the next track you go to, the
other one has an edge, and sometimesthe races are just dreadful, boring

(49:36):
processions, but other times they'rejust wheel to wheel and oh my God.
Did you see that?
So it's Vila di.
I'm sure we could talk about FormulaOne and Canda all night, but let's not
give away all the details in your book.
So let's switch gears into our finalsegment and talk more about your book
and let's talk about the journey of whatI call 80,000 words and setting off.

(49:58):
And you've written booksbefore, but let's talk about.
Why this book?
Why now?
Why put this compilation together?
What inspired you to writebasically your life story?
I'm going to turn 85 in a fewweeks, and the morning of my 80th
birthday, almost five years ago, Iwoke up thinking, ha, 80 years old.
Who would've thunk it?

(50:18):
I've had one hell of a life,and I think that was the germ.
I, I can remember taking a piece of paper.
Well, before I got outta bed, I, and Istarted writing down some thoughts, which
over time sort of turned into the book.
I think it was just an idea until one daymy wife said to me, her name is Lorna.
She said, Peter, you shouldwrite your own life story now.
Okay.

(50:38):
You know, my wife isn'tgiving me instructions.
I can do that.
And then totally serendipitously thepublisher in England, Evro Publishing,
Mark Hughes is the editor there, andhe's a wonderful person to work with.
I had done a couple of books with himbefore Lotus and Shadow and so on.
We were talking one day and hesays, Peter, have you ever thought
of doing a book about your life?

(50:59):
And I said on, you shouldmention that, mark.
So I sent him some samples of what I'dbeen kind of noodling up and he says,
yes, yes, we'd like to see more of this.
So what really pushed it over the edgewas the photos I could bring to it.
The words are one thing, but I was blessedwith having such a huge photo archive.
Not only my own, but of my father'sbefore me and including childhood

(51:21):
photos, and even back when he wasa, a young man dating my mother.
You know, he's got photos anda lot of those are in the book.
And when Mark saw the wealthof photography I could offer,
they got quite excited.
And I thought, this makes a good book.
With a normal biography, there'smaybe one or two childhood pictures,
but I get the impression becauseyour father was into photography.

(51:43):
Those early chapters give a reallycomplete picture of your childhood and
sort of set the scene for the personthat you become in later chapters.
It's, it's really an enjoyable experience.
Those early chapters.
John, you make my heart soar.
That's exactly what I hope to come across.
Thank you, sir. How did you find it?
Writing about yourself andnot writing for someone else.
You had such a long illustrious career asa journalist, writing about other things,

(52:06):
and you're always that omniscient thirdparty looking in and then, you know,
reporting the story to us, the audience.
But now you're reporting yourlife story to us, the audience.
You maintain a sense of your journalisticstyle in your writing in the book,
but did you find it to be a whole newchallenge, really writing about yourself?
I'm not sure challenge is the rightword, because it seemed to flow.

(52:26):
You're right, it's differentand the whole period of time,
and I'm still feeling it is.
What bloody cheek to writeabout yourself, who cares?
But I'm getting a lot of peoplethat seem to like what I did,
so that's very gratifying.
It's sort of narcissisticto do a thing like this.
If people wanna read it, I'mperfectly happy to do that.
But it is different.
You're right.

(52:46):
So when you look back over your chronologywith wiser eyes and maybe rose colored
glasses in some ways, do you have a sensethat your journalism, or even journalism
in general in motor sports has evolvedover this time and putting together
all of your memories and your memoirs?
Before I ever even thought of becominga writer on that trip to Europe, the

(53:07):
two and a half years I spent in Europe,I was keeping journals all the time.
Diaries, I guess wecall them in those days.
I filled several notebooks or you know,composition books with, I'd have a few
hours of motorcycle ride and then I'dstop at I'd sidewalk cafe for light
lunch or something, and I'd pull outthe notebook and I'd write down some
of the things I'd seen in my sleepingbag that night in the campsite.

(53:27):
I'd write some more.
And so I got used to writing what I hadseen during the day, not necessarily
anything to do with motor racing.
I'm talking about the Alpine Pass that Ijust crossed earlier that day, and now I'm
sitting at a gustof and I'm having a beerand a wienerschnitzel, and I pull it on.
I talk about riding thatmy Norton across the A.
That was fantastic.

(53:47):
That's the kind of thing thatset me up for doing what I
did later and professionally.
And we've had other writers on the show,and they've talked about the editing
process being one of the biggest hurdles,you know, getting their story told the way
they want it to be, because some editorssaid, well, you should take that out.
Yeah, that makes sense when you're tellinga story again from that third party
view because you're like, well, maybewe can take out that paragraph or two,

(54:08):
because it doesn't really add any value.
But here again, you're writing aboutyourself and what do you say to your
editor when they go, oh, come on Pete.
We really wanna talk.
You wanna talk about this?
And you're like, yeah.
Right.
It's my story.
I wanna tell it the way I wanna tell it.
So what was the editing processlike for an autobiography?
Well, particularly with MarkHughes, it was marvelous.
It was a delightful experience, butas you say, there are things that

(54:31):
they want to take out, and I wasable to dissuade him on occasion.
He accepted my reason for wantingto leave something in, but
thick as this book is 550 pages.
It would've been like 700 had they printedeverything I sent them to begin with.
So there had to be a really painfulchopping off your left arm kind of thing.

(54:51):
There's a value in that storytelling.
I mean, obviously you have those 200extra pages somewhere, but do you feel
like part of your story is left untoldby not having that information published?
No.
No.
Honestly, I think Mark's expertise,his vision, his view of it, his
perspective is superior to mine.
I really actually enjoy writing.
I like to watch thoughts appearon the screen, and just because

(55:15):
I've had the thought, it doesn'tmean it needs to be in the book.
Just as an example, riding acrossFrance, I stopped for supper one night.
I had a experience in the restaurantthat I wrote about for the book,
but Mark thought, well, it doesn'tactually advance the story much.
It was a matter of my firstFrench restaurant meal.
So I thought, oh, this is,I've heard about French dining.

(55:36):
Let's see what it is.
So I ordered a salad and something else.
Presently the salad appeared and it wasa very good salad, and I ate some of it.
Then I put it aside to enjoythe rest of it with my meal,
and I sat there and no meal.
I sat there some more, no meal.
Started crossing my armslike this and looking around.
There was nobody else in the restaurant.
I was alone.
Looked around and finally outta thecorner of my eye, I saw the face of

(55:58):
the waiter stick his head out of thekitchen and he looked back and got back.
And the third time he did it, I was ready.
And I said, where's my supper?
And he came over and he carried a dish outand there was something about his posture
and his movements, his deliberate motion.
He was telling me something like,and he put it down in front of me.
Then he moved to takethe half eaten and salad.
I said, no, no, I want to have that.
And he put it back and he just gaveme this weird look and he walked away.

(56:22):
Then I remembered that I'd heard thatin France, they eat meals and courses.
We eat everything.
I mean, I eat everything together.
I'll take some meat andthen some potatoes, and then
some salad and vice versa.
In France, apparently you're supposedto finish the salad and then that goes
away, and then you have the main course.
And I told that story.
It was part of the adventure ofcruising through Europe and getting

(56:44):
to know what was going on there.
So that's one of the stories thatgot put on the cutting room floor.
Thank you for letting me tell it.
Now, inside of that anecdote is.
Moral for younger writers who arelooking for some inspiration from you.
And, and I, I wanna expand upon thatto ask any advice for someone who's
sitting down and maybe consideringwriting their autobiography.

(57:05):
Not to mention writing an a novel ora biography or another type of book,
but if you're considering writing anautobiography, do you have any words
of wisdom that you can pass on or, orlessons learned from your experience?
I won't call anything I say is wisdom.
No way.
I often get asked when people know thatI've been writing my biography, they
say, oh, I've always wanted to do that.
I said, well, what's stopping you?

(57:25):
Oh, I know I don't have time, or Idon't know how to write or anything.
So I say, start simple.
You know, just think of somethingthat happened in your life.
It could have been this morning, it couldhave been when you're more five years old.
Just put some words down onpaper and I don't know any
other advice to give somebody.
It's just to start developing it.
The people so far that I've talkedto that I've told them that to,

(57:47):
I asked them a few weeks later,well, how's the biography coming?
Oh, well, I haven't,haven't actually done that.
You know, so I haven'thelped anybody is the answer.
I, I would seriously adviseanybody to just keep a diary.
Also do photographs.
And I don't mean just put them upon the cloud from your cell phone,
keep them somewhere, get an officelike uh, John has of your own photos.

(58:09):
But the fact that my dad hadthis archive and I had an archive
helped a lot with the book.
But even if you don't have that, butwhat you need to do is make writing
a practiced thing that you do.
I'm not sure that the skill is the rightword either, but if you just write and
write and write and think about what youwrite, am I expressing what I felt like?

(58:29):
What happened to me going to work today?
What did I see that was differentand what do I think about it?
Stop and scribble down something.
Things like that.
And eventually you'll build upsomething and you'll find that, you
know, this reminds me of somethinghappened when I was four years
old and I see a relationship.
This kind of thing has happened to me.
So I, I think it's a voyageof self-discovery, but

(58:50):
you've got to actually do it.
Keep rolling the boat.
Pete, at nearly 85 years young,it took you almost five years
to complete this project.
Yes.
What's next?
Is there something else on the horizon?
Well, I, I am in fact workingwith another guy on a book.
I don't think he's ready for me to tellthe world what he's working on, but he's
a person who has a fascinating life storyto tell, and I'm helping him tell it.

(59:13):
Well, Pete, we've reached that pointof the episode where I like to invite
our guests to share any shout outs,promotions, thank yous, or anything
else that we haven't covered thus far.
Let's not forget this.
This is available@petelyons.com.
Lorna and I sell it.
You're all invited to go to petelyons.com and uh, look for it.
And if you like what yousee, there's other places you
can get it, but you get it.

(59:34):
My, with my autograph here.
And folks, that's a wrap on thisincredible conversation with a motor
sports author and historian Pete Lyons.
From the Thunders Days of Canam tothe drama of Formula One, Pete's
storytelling continues to bringracing history roaring back to life.
His passion, insight, andfirsthand experiences remind us why
motorsports isn't just about speed.

(59:55):
It's about the people, the machines,and the moments that define them.
Whether you're a longtime reader ofPete's books or just discovering his
work now for the first time, we hopetoday's episode inspired you to dig
deeper into the archives and relivesome of racing's most iconic eras.
So be sure to check out hiswebsite, www.petelyons.com to
learn more and pick up a personallyautographed copy of his latest book.

(01:00:18):
My Travels on Racer Road,Canam and Formula One in the
Golden Age from his website.
And with that, Pete, I can't thankyou enough for coming on Break Fix
and sharing your stories with us.
This has been a beautiful experience,reliving the past, an epic past in
one of the best periods of motorsportsthrough your words, and it's been an
absolute privilege to share your stories.

(01:00:39):
So thank you for doing this.
Thank you for writing the book, andwe hope to hear more from you soon.
Thank you to both of you.
It's been a great fun day.
And John, thank you again for comingon and sharing this journey with me.
Thank you, Eric.
Thank you very much.
And thanks, Pete.
Thank you.
This episode is brought to youin part by the International

(01:01:01):
Motor Racing Research Center.
Its charter is to collect,share, and preserve the history
of motor sports spanningcontinents, eras, and race series.
The Center's collection embodiesthe speed, drama and camaraderie
of amateur and professional motorracing throughout the world.

(01:01:22):
The Center welcomes serious researchersand casual fans alike to share stories of
race drivers race series, and race carscaptured on their shelves and walls, and
brought to life through a regular calendarof public lectures and special events.
To learn more about the center,visit www.racing archives.org.

(01:01:46):
This episode is also brought to you bythe Society of Automotive Historians.
They encourage research into anyaspect of automotive history.
The SAH actively supports the compilationand preservation of papers, organizational
records, print ephemera, and images tosafeguard, as well as to broaden and

(01:02:08):
deepen the understanding of motorizedwheeled land transportation through
the modern age and into the future.
For more information about theSAH, visit www.auto history.org.
We hope you enjoyed another awesomeepisode of Break Fix Podcasts, brought
to you by Grand Tour Motorsports.

(01:02:30):
If you'd like to be a guest onthe show or get involved, be sure
to follow us on all social mediaplatforms at Grand Touring Motorsports.
And if you'd like to learn moreabout the content of this episode,
be sure to check out the followon article@gtmotorsports.org.
We remain a commercial free and noannual fees organization through
our sponsors, but also throughthe generous support of our fans,

(01:02:52):
families, and friends through Patreon.
For as little as $2 and 50 cents amonth, you can get access to more
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So consider signing up for Patreontoday at www.patreon.com/gt motorsports.

(01:03:18):
And remember, without you.
None of this would be possible.

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