by Bob Priddy, Missourinet
Before we launch into covering the only remaining major racing series still generating heat, we pause to mark the death of champion driver-turned-teacher Bob Bondurant, who helped teach race driver-wanna-be people such as Paul Newman, James Garner, and Clint Eastwood how to drive a race car and who taught racers such as Dale Earnhardt, Sr., and Jeff Gordon how to fling a stock car around a road course.
Bondurant was 88 when he died during the weekend in Paradise Valley, Arizona.
He won a world sports car championship while driving Cobras for Carroll Shelby (right) in Europe. He founded the Bondurant Racing School after a His Lola T70 Mark II broke a steering arm at 150 mph in a 1967 Can-Am race at Watkins Glen and flipped eight times. Bondurant suffered serious back, rib, leg and foot injuries and was told he might never walk again.
But he did and in 1968 founded his racing school that is now considered the top racing school in the world.
And he kept racing. And winning. His last championship was in the 1997 World Cup challenge. He ran his last race at the age of 79—and won—driving and ERA reproduction of the GT40.
His school filed for bankruptcy in 2018, was sold earlier this year, and is now known as the Radford Racing School.
While NASCAR is planning its championship celebration to be held next month in Nashville and INDYCAR is in its silly season of team realignments, Formula 1’s closest championship contest in years is down to its last three races.
(FORMULA1)—Lewis Hamilton overcame two major setbacks to win his 101st career grand prix by running down points leader Max Verstappen in the Brazilian Grand Prix, getting past him and pulling away to a ten-second win. Some observers think it is one of his greatest races.
Hamilton led all qualifiers but was penalized for a rear wing rule violation and started Saturday’s qualifying race dead last, 20th. He sprinted to fifth place at the end. But then he had to take a five-place starting grid penalty for an engine change that buried him midway in the pack, tenth, for Sunday’s race.
Hamilton climbed to second behind Verstappen and the two spent several laps in intense competition before Hamilton got past his rival on the 59th lap of the 71-lap race.
“This has definitely been one of the best weekends, if not the best weekend I’ve experienced, probably, in my whole career,” he said afterward.
Hamilton’s win comes at a time when Verstappen was in position to build a strong points lead. Instead, he has seen Hamilton cut his 19-points lead cut to 14 with three races left, two of them in Qatar and Saudi Arabia on new tracks on which neither driver has competed, and their in Abu Dhabi on a track that has been changed since they drove on it.
(Picture Credit: Bob Bondurant Official Fan Page)