{"id":49931,"date":"2014-07-07T20:09:12","date_gmt":"2014-07-07T19:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/issue_content\/bobby-rahal-7\/"},"modified":"2019-07-19T19:19:30","modified_gmt":"2019-07-19T18:19:30","slug":"bobby-rahal-7","status":"publish","type":"issue_content","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/archive\/article\/february-2010\/27\/bobby-rahal-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Bobby Rahal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reliving past glories<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is my first column for Motor Sport, and I\u2019ll be back in this space every month in the coming year, which is great because I\u2019ve been reading the magazine for as long as I can remember. I\u2019ll be writing about what\u2019s happening here in the United States as well as looking back on some of the highlights \u2013 and possibly low points \u2013 of my career.<\/p>\n

Right now I\u2019m involved in what is a labour of love for me. Together with my friends Zak Brown and Peter Stoneberg, who have huge experience in motor sports marketing and sponsorship, we\u2019ve put together a group called Historic Motor Sport Productions to stage a series of historic racing events in the USA and Canada this coming summer. We\u2019ve been researching the idea for nearly a year and we now have a commitment to put on high-end events at iconic circuits with iconic cars from Formula 1, Can-Am, GTP and the World Championship of Makes, all of which are well known to an American audience. We start in May with races at the Barber Motorsports Park, which will be great because we also have the Barber Museum there with its fantastic collection of racing cars and motorcycles. We\u2019ll have a special all-Lotus race, which should be a lot of fun. <\/p>\n

In June we go to Watkins Glen \u2013 a great circuit and, of course, home to the American Grand Prix for many years \u2013 and after this we\u2019ll be at St Jovite in July, a truly wonderful track which has recently been restored. <\/p>\n

The idea is to bring the best cars, and some real racing, to the biggest possible audience. We don\u2019t have anything like the Goodwood Revival in the States and, frankly, I don\u2019t think you\u2019d be able to get close to that anywhere else in the world, it\u2019s in a class of its own. Nor do we have events like the Masters series, the N\u00fcrburgring Oldtimer or the Le Mans Classic, and that\u2019s because most historic racing over here is more like club racing, and I guess that\u2019s fine. But we do have the Monterey Historics, which has never really been heavily promoted or marketed, and we know there is a big audience for high-quality historic racing. <\/p>\n

We have a lot of great cars and drivers here, but we\u2019re also talking to owners and drivers in Europe and Australia, and there\u2019s been a great deal of enthusiasm for what we\u2019re doing. It\u2019s not easy for Europeans because we share the same racing season, but for Australians there are great possibilities. We\u2019ve talked to the Formula Junior guys in Britain and the Formula 5000 guys in Australia and New Zealand, and I hope we can make it work. But it\u2019s going to be a lot of work, and getting the cars to events will not be the work of a moment. <\/p>\n

I think there\u2019s so much interest in historics right now because people are disillusioned with the modern sport\u2019s preoccupation with \u2018spec\u2019 racing, where all the cars look and sound the same. I remember going to Sebring as a teenager and if you closed your eyes you could tell the different cars just by the sound of the engines. There\u2019s no way you could do that now. People like to see cars that were the idea and creation of one man, rather than cars built to a formula.<\/p>\n

A lot of people ask if I will race in our new series, and will I be allowed to win? Well, I\u2019m not doing this to race myself, so all I\u2019m concerned with is putting on the best events with the best machinery. We\u2019ll give spectators the best possible access, totally the opposite from how Formula 1 is now. The closer people can get, the better \u2013 that\u2019s part of the draw. I\u2019ll still come to Europe and race my own cars, which are managed by Hall & Hall, because I love to race at places like Monza, Goodwood and Silverstone. But over here I\u2019ll simply be trying to make the new venture a big success.<\/p>\n

So, a busy year ahead for me. But, hey, I enjoy it and it\u2019s got to be better than sitting around wondering what\u2019s going to happen next. See you next time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":698,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[],"tags":[167,35468,195,115462,37100,115649,115466,37101],"issue_decade":[121600],"issue_year":[121601],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/49931"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/issue_content"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/698"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49931"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/49931\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":227899,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_content\/49931\/revisions\/227899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49931"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49931"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49931"},{"taxonomy":"issue_decade","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_decade?post=49931"},{"taxonomy":"issue_year","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/issue_year?post=49931"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}