Head over to SportsIllustrated.com today and run a search for “SCCA”, you’ll find that there isn’t a single article about this year’s racing season. The only article that even mentions the term is about a retired basketball player that owns a Sprint Cup team. It’s almost difficult to imagine an era when back-yard engineers and amateur racers would be featured in a multi-page spread in America’s premier sporting magazine.
Reading the article though, it starts to fall victim to the same pitfalls that today’s mainstream press does when it bothers to cover motorsports: A focus on the personalities and the celebrities attending events. “The meet that doesn’t produce a bosomy Hollywood starlet to top off the black oil grime on the faces of the winners with a scarlet smear of lipstick is impoverished indeed.”
It’s an admittedly short piece, but this photograph of Chuck Daigh’s Troutman-Barnes special trailing Pete Woods’ D-Type Jag more than makes up for any puffery in the text. Also funny now to see Richie Ginther identified as “Ferrari Salesman” and not as the racing legend he would become.
FScheff has the article scanned over on his Riverside page.
Previously: Sports Illustrated’s Racing Covers.