Hooniverse Asks- What is History’s Greatest Race?
NASCAR, IMSA, FIA, WRC, you’d almost believe that certain race series devolve their names to acronyms so as to lighten the load on the individual teams. Each of those represents the a coming together of great competitors across a number of challenging tracks and road courses in a contest that test both mettle and metal. But sometimes an individual race is so memorable that transcends a series and perhaps even time itself.
Daytona- its wide banks beckoning drivers that three, or even four wide is possible and the key to the checkered flag, only to dash their hopes against an unforgiving outside wall or competitor’s fender. Paris to Dakar; the images of a crash – not compartmentalized in the confines of a track where emergency personnel are mere seconds away, but in the expanse of a seemingly endless desert, alone against brutal odds. Monte Carlo’s needle’s eye mediaeval streets, Baja, Brooklands. Tracks and courses of legend, but was there a specific event on any of these venues which stands out above all other?
Auto racing has been going on since the first cars set spindly wheel to rutted dirt road, and over that more than a century, there have been enough photo finishes, human sacrifices, and just plain mastery of both machine and course to fill volumes. We’re on a history bender this week and so are looking for just one of those – the greatest one.
Which race was, in your opinion, history’s greatest?
Image source: [altfg.com]
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Good thing none of us on Hooniverse are racist, because this question could be interpreted quite differently than intended.
Good thing you got this post and handled it the nice way before I got to post.
How many Neanderthals does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Read that as Netherlanders when scrolling by…
Racist!
Netherlanders are a nationality, not a race. And what's with those wooden shoes, anyway?
When racism is in your heart, semantics don't matter!
How dare you make such an anti-semantic remark!
It's splinters in your piggies. Not for me.
Just one, the rest are too busy dying out
Read more: Neanderthal | Cracked.com http://www.cracked.com/funny-4168-neanderthal/#ix…
You mean Neandertals? (I know both spellings are considered correct, but I like to be difficult).
And you're doing an excellent job of it too.
Thanks. I came here to say "the Human race", but you effed it up for me.
Actually, judging by the vast majority of internet commentary, we're kinda losing that race…
ah, you've been to 4Chan lately.
Nope, but he just left a website where the commenters are on a similar plane.
Never has there been a place where things can go so quickly from mind-bendingly awesome and hilarious to severe levels of depravity never thought humanly possible. The human mind is a simultaneously incredible, beautiful and terrifying place.
I try to avoid it at all costs.
It can be a scary place, but sometimes extremely cool things can be found there.
<img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-X4Kl5n-iiEM/TiNuZRwQhhI/AAAAAAAACiY/gSx8tYPBhe8/s1600/multi3.jpg">
Pikes Peak International Hill Climb! This video is Bobby Regester at this year's race. He climbed out of his car with only bruises. Thank God for that big rock. He says that he has retired from racing. [youtube 7rVdS8Qnvb8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rVdS8Qnvb8 youtube]
Indy has had some great finishes. Al Unser Jr. crashing into the wall and Fittipaldi winning was classic. Last year's finish with Wheldon winning while the leader crashes on the last turn was priceless. But Danny Sullivan's spin and win in 1985 was platinum. That race is my vote for the best.
<img src="http://static.summitracing.com/global/images/prod/large/TMK-29675-902A8.jpg">
The race nobody ever wins. They just go around and around.
Eventually it can be quite galling.
Yes, but if you finally manage to stop just spinning your wheels, you have the satisfaction of knowing that your day is well and truly seized.
I prefer double ball bearing, but to each their own..
What about this Race?
<img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_cQpT7M648Ew/TFxvSRYJ6iI/AAAAAAAAETo/uTM2eNWkazk/s1600/Race10.jpg">
I'm a Brock kinda guy, myself.
<img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_QzWthGInDX0/SKYOs4zViJI/AAAAAAAAANI/TMFsM2dy_F8/s400/brock_color_sm.jpg" width="350" border="2" style="border:2px solid black;" alt=" " />
The race to the moon. America, eff yeah!
<img src="http://www.d118.org/middle/staff/library/Images/50s-space.jpg" width="400">
Well done.
I have to do something to make up for my lack of knowledge of automobile racing.
This was actually my first choice, but by the time Google came back with an appropriate Apollo 11 image, you had already posted. I now realize that mission was the wrong choice, because it wasn't until the missions with the LRV that humans actually got to hoon the moon.
<img src="http://www.doranev.com/lunar%20rover.jpg">
Isn't it awesome that we rocket about a quarter million miles just to cruise around in a car. Should have also brought a TV, Lay-Z-Boy and case of beer.
[youtube 1yNIMtagHck http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yNIMtagHck youtube]
A quarter of a million miles, just to play out of the second largest bunker in the solar system?
True, but it's a very exclusive club.
What's so exclusive about a six iron?
Well, the shaft was made from a contingency sample extension handle:
<img src="http://www.nasm.si.edu/images/collections/media/full/A19751468000cp03.JPG" width="300">
Ah yes, golf. The one activity that makes sitting in a chair, watching TV and drinking beer seem productive.
The Sales Race
<img src="http://www.quackwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/gm-logo.jpg"width=400>
<img src="http://www.ridelust.com/wp-content/uploads/ford-logo2.jpg"width=400>
<img src="http://cache.blippitt.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Toyota-Logo.jpg"width=200>
The only song called "The Race" I could find was really terrible, so there goes that plan.
<img src="http://www.otrstreet.com/Hollywood_Posters/1975%20Death%20Race%202000.jpg" width=500>
My answer varies every time this question is asked. Today I'm feeling especially Baja…
<img src="http://image.4wheeloffroad.com/f/31149466+w750+st0/131_9803_04_o+131_9803_industrial_revolution_baja_1000_anniversary+big_oly_bronco.jpg"width=600>
That spoiler/cabin roof is pretty cool.
It was my second favorite AFX car, after the Shadow CanAm.
I'm feeling patriotic today, so for me it's anything involving Gilles Villeneuve but could narrow that down to the 1979 French Grand Prix and his legendary battle with Rene Arnoux.
Ask me tomorrow and I'll pick the Targa Florio…
<img src="http://www.motorsportretro.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/1961-Isle-of-Man-TT-Race-125cc-Luigi-Taveri-Mike-Hailwood.jpg" width="500">
Isle of Man TT.
…24 Hours of Le Mans is the only other that is even in the same category.
Isle of Man is the last race left that is truly a death wish. I hope it never changes, as it proves that men can still be men, no matter my contemporaries.
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81/Mille-Miglia-Arrow.png"/>
<img src="http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5165/5295055307_deda17bf55.jpg" width="500" height="371" alt="55 mille miglia moss-jenkinson mercedes-benz 300slr">
Sterling and Jenks concur with your selection!
that should be "Stirling", dammit.
It's been known by many names. It started off as the Armstrong 500, then it became the Hardie-Ferodo 500. Then it increased in length to 1000 km, and became the Hardie-Ferodo 1000. Today, it's the [Insert Sponsor Name Here] Bathurst 1000. Six hours of racing around one of the most unique and challenging race courses in the world. It's a test of man and machine. Those machines, while only Ford or Holden today, included Morris, Jaguar, Nissan, Volvo and BMW in the past. Those are just the more successful ones.
In 1977, Allan Moffat and Jacky Ickx finished 1-2 in Falcon XC racers.
<img width=500 src="http://www.musclecarexperience.com.au/site/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/img020.jpg">
Honorable mention goes to other grueling races: 24 Hr du Mans, Paris-to-Dakar Rally, East African Safari Rally, and many others that push man and machine to, and often beyond, the limits.
24 Hours of Le Mans. Ford GT40, Porsche 917, McLaren F1 and any number of other, wonderful cars.
Bonus: Dan Gurney and the birth of the Champagne Spraying Tradition.
It's my favorite race, they still hold it every year, it has not turned into a spec series with the same name, but man, have you guys posted some awesome races.
24 Hours of Nurburgring. Nothing like an endurance race on the world's trickiest, longest, least-engineered circuit.
Any race where Captain Chaos dukes it out with Sheik Abdul ben Falafel. Very multicultural.
<img src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/a0/Cannonball_run.jpg" width="500">
I'll see you, and raise you.
<img src="http://www.movie-roulette.com/posters_new/the-gumball-rally.jpg" width="260">
Hmmm. Depends on mood, but I concede.
But have you ever taken part in this epic race series:
<img src="http://www.disksoplenty.com/images/products/HotChixJCf_1.jpg" width="500">
Somehow, I missed that title.
The correct answer is Carrera Panamericana
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2518/3947571537_9158ce242a.jpg" width="500" height="287" alt="53 Carrera Panamericana Joaquin Castillo de la Fuente Porsche 356">
Another excellent choice.
Dakar has already kinda been mentioned, but it bears repeating.
<img src="http://i.imgur.com/5nN6i.jpg" width="500"/>
Full size image link: http://i.imgur.com/5nN6i.jpg
Photo credit: Denis Klero for Red Bull
Honorable mention: Baja 1000
Came here to post this. Any race that combines, motorcycles, cars, trucks, and heavy trucks wins.
It really is truly awesome to see such a wide variety of bad ass, in one hardcore venue, being beaten within an inch of their mechanical limits, all while testing the limitations of the drivers.
Beat me to it.
"…against brutal odds…" you say?
<img src="http://old.culturegarage.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/lemons.jpg">
<img src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-snc7/388389_10150370664118821_683928820_8491265_2088951964_n.jpg" width="600">
Dakar rally, 24 hours of Le Mans and Nurburgring, Isle of Man TT, and the Monaco GP have been mentioned.
Autodromo Nationale Monza may not be as interesting a racetrack without the banking coming into play and with all the chicanes but it still holds a special place in the heart of every Italian and Ferrari fan (I'm neither). When F1 drivers talk of a win at Monza they get excited. Maybe not as excited as a win at Monaco or even just beating Seb Vettel anywhere. The combined course included parallel straights past the main grandstands. I'd like to run the marathon there some day.
<img src="http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/iipcache/32741.jpg">
As a single event, the first is still the greatest: Paris-Bordeaux-Paris, 1895.
You never cease to amaze me, Mr. Harrell.
The audacity of proposing, running, and completing an endurance run across nearly 1200 km of public roads, as the prototypical example of what a car race should be, never ceases to amaze me.
Yes, but who else but you would have had that as the first thing to come to mind? Or come to mind at all?
Well done!
I suppose I just feel a certain empathy towards the idea of driving across France at an average of 24.5 km/h.
How about finding petrol? I thought about mentioning this race, but thought "Nah, no one will have any idea of what I'm talking about." I should have known that you would.
If you'll forgive my vulgar modernism:
<img src="http://www.prewarcar.com/images/rutger_images/itala-flaminia-2011-2.jpg" width=500>
"What needs to be proved today is that as long as a man has a car, he can do anything and go anywhere. Is there anyone who will undertake to travel this summer from Peking to Paris by automobile?"
I also have a fondness for the 1909 New York to Seattle "Ocean to Ocean" race that marked the beginning of the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, particularly since the finish line was just outside of what is now my office on the UW campus.
<img src="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3662/3382412899_7735bacd62.jpg" width="400">
I was here two years ago for the conclusion of the centennial run; a group of just over fifty Model Ts that had retraced the route from New York were lined up around the perimeter of Drumheller Fountain. Quite the achievement, although shortly after the original 1909 race the Ford team was disqualified for cheating and the victory was awarded to Shawmut. FoMoCo had already run off with the publicity by then, however, so it didn't much matter. Nobody brought a Shawmut to the centennial.
Peugeot FTW!
Paris-Roubaix, The Hell of the North, or as Bernard Hinault called it after crashing 7 times and still winning it back in 1981,
"Paris-Roubaix est une connerie" – "Paris–Roubaix is bullshit" or "Paris–Roubaix is plain stupid"
I used to race bicycles at a pretty high level (not that I was very good), and have crashed hundreds of times on almost every surface imaginable. Most of them have all blurred together except for the most spectacular, but I have not forgotten a single instant of any time I crashed on cobbles. For you all who have not had this pleasure/misfortune, it truly embodies every possible meaning of the word, "sucky". Hell, I've pitched off steep mountain trails down onto piles of boulders and it still didn't hurt like the pave. The closest thing that I've been able to come up with to compare it to is being assailed by an army of kids on Halloween night armed with ball-peen hammers. Truly Sucky.
You crash on dirt and slide 30 feet, you grab your bike and jump back on. You crash on asphalt and slide across 20 feet, you're gonna' hurt later, but you still just get back up and get on. You slide across 10 feet of the cobbles, and you just lay there, your ass handed to you with a little bow on top.
Lance Armstrong can win the Tour de France a hundred times, but he'll never be called a champion until he wins Paris-Roubaix.
I need to watch that movie again. Jack Lemmon, Natalie Wood, Tony Curtis, Peter Falk in The Great Race, directed by Blake Edwards.
Push the button Max!
[youtube Lzaj0bdduHM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzaj0bdduHM youtube]
I watched it again for the first time in years when it was recently on TCM. It really wasn't all that funny, and what humor existed wasn't the least bit subtle.
Well, given that it was slapstick comedy I wouldn't expect any subtlety in the humor. I still find the pie fight hilarious.
Whatever race this was….
<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eogZerLUNKg/Tg0B6OoKjZI/AAAAAAAADfk/Kxgb6AEeYJs/s1600/lion2.jpg" width="500">
Hittites?