Stay ConnectedFrom race fixing attempts to kidnappings, the backbone of motorsport is built on scandal, intrigue, danger, and deception.
Rev your engines and dive into the heart-pounding world of motorsport with Elizabeth Blackstock’s captivating new podcast, Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys. Join us on an adrenaline-fueled journey through the scandalous, the intriguing, and the perilous tales that define this high-octane universe.
Copyright: © Elizabeth Blackstock
In the build-up to the 1934 German Grand Prix, the already formidable Nürburgring was transformed. Gone were the days of packing a race track with nothing but enthusiasts; under the control of new chancellor Adolf Hitler, motorsport was the ideal venue in which to display the might of his new, robust Germany under the Third Reich.
Track facilities were draped in swastika flags, while a regiment of brownshirts had marched for weeks from Berlin to be present at the July event. Over 150,000 spectators had descended on the rural track, keen to lay eyes on the new German racing machines that promised to be unstoppable — The Mercedes W25, and the Auto Union P-Wagen.
Marvels of automotive innovation, these Grand Prix cars were heavily funded by the German government and looked set to dominate the European racing scene in just the same way that Hitler was hoping to dominate the entire continent: Resoundingly, quickly, and packed with pageantry designed to inspire a nationalistic zeal.
This month on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” we're digging deep into Nazi participation in Grand Prix racing with a two-part series, with each episode focusing on one of the two state-funded automotive programs. We'll be starting off with Mercedes, then dig deeper into the exploits of Auto Union in the next show with an eye to understanding the complex and often uncomfortable role that motorsport played in the revitalization of the German military after the country was devastated by the First World War.
Over the next two episodes, we'll trace the origins of the automobile in Germany and investigate the impact of the Treaty of Versailles on both industry and national image in order to link Hitler's ascension to power with his emphasis on revitalizing the automotive and motorsport industries. Naturally, we're going to begin with a titan: Mercedes.
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Episode Bibliography:
Faster: How a Jewish Driver, an American Heiress, and a Legendary Car Beat Hitler's Best by Neal Bascomb
A Race with Love and Death: The Story of Britain's First Great Grand Prix Driver, Richard Seaman by Richard Williams
Grand Prix Driver by Hermann Lang
In the late 1950s, the folks in charge of The Autodromo Nazionale di Monza had to face a harsh reality: They had spent millions to revitalize the banked oval that had been an original feature of the track back in the 1920s, but that had been destroyed prior to World War II. They had thought the Italian Grand Prix would be made all the more compelling with a flat-out banked section to challenge the drivers.
But Grand Prix cars weren't built to withstand the high speeds and g forces of oval racing, and the European drivers hated the addition. Hoping to get the most out of its investment, Monza called upon the only drivers that did know how to race an oval: The Americans.
What resulted was the Race of Two Worlds — an exhibition event with a huge prize purse designed to pit the Americans against the Europeans in a friendly competition that soon got feisty. This week on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” we're exploring the long-term implications of this event, and how it very well may have contributed to the ongoing ill will between two very distinct forms of motorsport.
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Episode Bibliography:
Cars at Speed: The Grand Prix Circuit by Robert Daley
Monza: A Glorious History by Paolo Montagna
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/fords-assembly-line-starts-rolling
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/october-1955/22/26th-gran-premio-ditala/
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/august-1957/31/the-monza-500-mile-race-2/
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/august-1958/15/the-monza-500-mile-race/
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/august-1958/36/another-monza-500-miles/
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/articles/single-seaters/f1/f1-vs-indycar-monzanapolis/
Camille du Gast wasn't the first woman to get behind the wheel of a race car, but she was the first woman who gained international recognition for doing so when she began taking part in grand epreuves as early as 1901. She was the first woman in France to earn a driver's license, the first woman to hold an official role in the Automobile Club de France.
But to call Camille du Gast a racer and nothing else would be to diminish a lifetime of accomplishments. She donned the title of exploratrice, traveling the world while also competing in motor boat racing, fencing, skiing, tobogganing, fencing, and hot air ballooning. She was the controversial subject of a pornographic scandal, and the intended target of a failed murder plot hatched by none other than her only daughter. And while that might have been enough to push a person into hiding for the remainder of her life, Camille du Gast wouldn't be silenced. Instead, she became a prominent activist campaigning for the rights and dignified treatment of both women and animals.
This week on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” we're delving deeper into the remarkable life of Camille du Gast and situating her turn-of-the-century accomplishments within the greater context of women in motorsport.
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Episode Bibliography:
Race to the Future: 8,000 Miles to Paris — The Adventure that Accelerated the Twentieth Century by Kassia St. Clair
Cars at Speed: The Grand Prix Circuit by Robert Daley
https://www.beaulieu.co.uk/news/women-in-motorsport-social-history-camille-du-gast/
https://guides.loc.gov/feminism-french-women-history/famous/camille-du-gast
https://www.vintag.es/2023/05/camille-du-gast.html
https://blog.imagesmusicales.be/camille-du-gast-the-valkyrie-of-motorsports/
https://speedqueens.blogspot.com/2010/01/camille-du-gast.html
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vjd61.7?seq=12
https://gettingaround.substack.com/p/dufayel-paris-had-the-most-beautiful-staircase
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-paris-berlin-motor-carriage-rac/
https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/AS19020920.2.64.36
If you're a fan of the Indianapolis 500, then there's a good chance you know who won the first race back in 1911: It was Ray Harroun behind the wheel of a Marmon Wasp, the only driver in the field to opt against using a riding mechanic and running solo — albeit with a little help from a relief driver.
What if I told you that might not be true? What if I told you that we don't actually know with 100% certainty who won the inaugural Indy 500?
Today on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” we're going to continue our discussion from last week concerning the founding of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the chaotic first races held at the track in its first three years of existence. This week, it's all about the inaugural Indy 500 — and about trying to track down who it was that really won the first edition of the Greatest Spectacle in Racing.
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Episode Bibliography:
Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and the Birth of the Indy 500 by Charles Leerhsen
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/one-hundred-years-of-the-indy-500-158836397/
On August 21st, 1909, the 300-mile Wheeler-Schebler race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway was waved off — not because that weekend's racing had claimed the lives of five drivers, mechanics, and spectators, but because, after the racing had continued, yet another car crashed into a pedestrian bridge crossing the racing surface.
No one was killed in that crash. No; the real reason the race was being flagged was because so many spectators had flocked to the pedestrian bridge to gape at the wreckage that the whole structure was sagging. That, finally, gave Speedway personnel a reason to call things off.
In the days that followed, newspapers erupted with condemnations about auto racing — but before we can really understand the outcry and its impact on the motorsport scene in America, we need to understand more about the man who concocted the audacious scheme to build a 2.5-mile race track in Indiana within the first decade of the 20th century.
Today on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” we're going to delve into the life of Speedway founder and confidence man Carl Fisher, and how his harebrained marketing schemes brought to life a track that still hosts one of the world's greatest motorsport events. Over the next two episodes, we're looking at the early history of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and how, against all odds, it became an American institution.
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Episode Bibliography:
Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem, and the Indy 500 by Charles Leerhsen
On May 12, 1957, a group of locals from Guidizzolo, Italy gathered in front of their homes to watch some of the world's finest sports cars flash by en route to the finish line that would mark the end of the grueling Mille Miglia. For 30 years, other locals and previous generations stood alongside that very same ribbon of road, watching that very same race.
But on May 12, a Ferrari 335 S scythed through the crowd, and in an instant, nine spectators were dead — cut down just outside their homes. This was the crash that would kill the Mille Miglia, Italy's iconic 1,000-mile race from Brescia to Rome. Ask around, though, and you might find that the tragedy of civilian deaths was nothing compared to the horror of that Ferrari's driver, Spanish nobleman Alfonso de Portago.
If you watched the 2023 film Ferrari starring Adam Driver as Enzo Ferrari, then you're likely familiar with this incident; the crash shown at the end of the movie is the very one that ended the Mille Miglia. Today on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” though, we're going to turn our gaze to the driver in question, Alfonso de Portago, in order to better understand how some motorsport accidents are deemed more tragic than others thanks to the mythic status drivers like Portago held.
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Episode Bibliography:
Cars at Speed by Robert Daley
The Limit by Michael Cannell
Enzo Ferrari by Brock Yates
https://www.history.com/news/the-horrific-1957-ferrari-crash-that-ended-the-mille-miglia-race
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/june-1956/26/another-mille-miglia-with-moss/
https://archive.org/details/sim_car-and-driver_1957-08_3/page/n70/mode/1up
https://www.newspapers.com/image/70006822/?match=1&terms=mille%20miglia
In April of 1978, a chartered plane full of USAC officials crashed just outside of Indianapolis, killing everyone on board. With American open-wheel racing already in disarray as team owners began to demand greater accountability from their sanctioning body, the plane crash only served to accelerate a battle we've come to know as the Split.
What role did that plane crash play in the ultimate fracturing of CART (Championship Auto Racing Teams) from USAC? And how did that crash unsettle the very foundations of American motorsport as we knew it? That's exactly what we'll find out in this episode of “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys.”
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Episode Bibliography:
Indy Split: The Big Money Battle that Nearly Destroyed Indy Racing by John Oreovicz
The IndyCar Wars: The 30-Year Fight for Control of American Open-Wheel Racing by Sigurd E. Whitaker
https://www.usacracing.com/news/a-tribute-to-those-lost-in-the-1978-usac-plane-crash
https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=a5cpAAAAIBAJ&sjid=hckEAAAAIBAJ&pg=1079%2C1093218
From the moment his father died behind the wheel of a race car, Alberto Ascari was haunted by loss. Against his mother's wishes, he pursued a racing career of his own and went on to become Formula 1's first-ever back-to-back World Champion with Ferrari. Still, he was unable to shake the feeling that he was following in his father's footsteps — right down to wondering if he, too, would die behind the wheel.
Throughout his life, Ascari turned to superstition to make sense of the chaos. He avoided black cats and shunned the numbers 13, 17, and 26, the latter of which was the number of the day his father died. He worried he'd die at age 36, just like his father, and fiercely protected the blue helmet that soon became as much a talisman as it was a protective device.
Today on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” we're digging into the life of Alberto Ascari, the superstitions that helped him find order, and the shocking reverberations of his father's death in Alberto Ascari's own fatal crash on May 26, 1955.
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Episode Bibliography:
The Man with Two Shadows: The Story of Alberto Ascari by Kevin Desmond
Alberto Ascari: Ferrari's First Double Champion by Karl Ludvigsen
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9885050/
https://umsu.unimelb.edu.au/news/article/7797/The-fantastical-realm-of-Italian-superstition/
https://farragomagazine.com/article/farrago/the-fantastical-realm-of-italian-superstition/
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/june-1955/36/xiii-grand-prix-de-monaco/
When we last left the Formula 1 scene, the 1977 season was underway. Over a decade had passed since the formation of the Formula One Constructors Association — an organization first formed to guarantee better starting, prize, and travel money for low-budget teams, but that had morphed into a powerful force that could challenge for control of the sport.
In this special two-part feature on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” we're going to uncover everything there is to know about the FISA/FOCA war — and in this final section, we're going to get into the nitty-gritty details of the specific fights that characterized the battle after the formation of FISA.
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Episode Bibliography:
Many of the defining characteristics of modern Formula 1 — two-car teams, limits on who can enter the sport, big-money broadcasting deals, and so much more — are the direct result of a decades-long battle between the Formula One Constructors Association (FOCA, which represented the teams) and the Federation du Sport Automobile (FISA, a subsidiary of the FIA).
Fans have likely heard of the FISA/FOCA war, but truly understanding how it impacted the sport of Formula 1 isn't easy when there were so many little battles taking place from 1964 through to 1987. In this special two-part feature on “Deadly Passions, Terrible Joys,” we're going to uncover everything there is to know about the FISA/FOCA war — and in this section, we'll dig into the origins of FOCA and its grievances with F1’s lack of professionalization.
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Episode Bibliography:
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/august-1967/12/continental-notes-august-1967/
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/december-1967/16/continental-notes-december-1967/
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/may-1970/26/the-grand-prix-of-spain-ole/
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/december-1972/32/continental-notes-december-1972/
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/january-1973/25/continental-notes-12/
https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/archive/article/july-1977/27/continental-notes-july-1977/
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