Road & Track October/November 2022

I FIRST MET Sebastian Vettel 11 years ago. He was 23 years old and in the midst of his staggering four-championship run, during which he dominated a Formula 1 field that included seasoned powerhouses like Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, and Jenson Button. At the time, only the racing faithful cared all that much about F1 in the U.S. It was a Euro thing. The races ran at awkward hours when Americans were sleeping off hangovers. An F1 driver could walk the streets of New York City or go clubbing in L.A. with near anonymity. In 2011, work had only just begun on North America’s premier track, Austin’s Circuit of the Americas. Vettel, the son of a German carpenter named Norbert, showed up to lunch at a mid-town-Manhattan Cantonese restaurant freshly shaven, wearing…

Marshall Pruett The 2022 season marks Pruett’s 36th year working in motorsport and 13th with Road & Track. Pruett is also an editor-at-large for Racer magazine, where he covers open-wheel and sports-car racing as a writer, reporter, photographer, and filmmaker. In his previous career, he served as a mechanic, engineer, and team manager in a variety of series, including IndyCar and IMSA. In this issue, he interviewed IndyCar hopeful Myles Rowe (page 062), sports-car ace Ricky Taylor (page 070), and Speedway Motorsports chief Marcus Smith (page 078). Andy Blackmore Originally from the U.K. and now living in British Columbia, Blackmore specializes in creating spotter’s guides for fans and motorsport liveries. In the Nineties, he designed liveries for McLaren, as well as the team’s Formula 1 pit equipment. Some of his best-known liveries are…

SITTING IN THE Aston Martin Valkyrie AMR Pro with a pro driver is an experience only slightly less violent than a fistfight. I’m squashed into the passenger’s seat next to Andy Priaulx, former World Touring Car Cup champion and one of the AMR Pro’s development drivers. The savagery of the g-forces and the rate at which corners appear and vanish in the narrow windscreen make the Valkyrie feel physics defying, a quality my sagging neck muscles do not celebrate. As I clamber out of the cockpit, I’m exhausted and elated in equal measure. This is Florida in the summer at the road course of Homestead-Miami Speedway. Even Priaulx is looking sweaty as we return to the pits. I’m buzzing with adrenaline but also questions, the biggest being not why but rather…

THE ST REET IS RACING’S first and oldest home. Long before paved coliseums and striped curbs, and even before vehicles of any sort, there was an itch to see who could cross town fastest. Feet alone were enough. Sandals made the racing faster. Horses, chariots, bicycles, and eventually cars made it ever better. In time, flat-out open-road racing was snuffed out by sanity, but the draw of racing on public roads remains. In series after series, more urban races are filling the calendar. There are events in Chicago, Nashville, Las Vegas, Miami, and Los Angeles, none of which were on the F1, NASCAR, or IndyCar schedule just two years ago. For its entire eight-year existence, Formula E has run almost nothing but street circuits. These series chase city centers for the…

YOU THINK YOUR JOB is stressful? Paul Seaby would like a word. That was him engulfed in flames during the infamous Jos Verstappen pit stop at Hockenheim in 1994, the subject of one of F1’s most iconic images. Today, Seaby has gone out of the fire and into the frying pan, so to speak; he’s in charge of travel logistics for the Alpine F1 Team. When you watch F1, nearly everything you see has to move around the world between the 22 races plus two preseason tests. With a global supply-chain meltdown hamstringing the shipping industry, logistics have never been more chaotic or expensive, Seaby says. “It’s a very volatile world out there at the moment,” he explains. “I’ve never known it like this.” The team moves supplies in a few…

FEW STORIES ARE WRITTEN about some of the toughest battles in motorsport—those fought over drivers’ contracts. In the era of mustaches and mortal peril, these agreements were practically unwritten and sealed with a handshake. Modern contracts, meanwhile, often run longer than 100 pages. Regardless of era, almost none become public, especially those of superstars. Except one of those short and sweet older deals recently did. The University of California, San Francisco, has collated documents disclosed in litigation between tobacco companies and various U.S. states. A selection of these documents covers the deal for the 1987 season between Lotus Formula 1; its primary tobacco sponsor, R.J. Reynolds (RJR); and its No. 1 driver, Ayrton Senna. The contract shows that Lotus paid the Brazilian $1.5 million and RJR, promoting its Camel brand, contributed $2.5…