Current Biography Excerpts: Auto Racing

To view an excerpt from the Current Biography profile, choose from the list of names.

FITTIPALDI, EMERSON
SHELBY, CARROLL
YARBOROUGH, CALE

FITTIPALDI, EMERSON
Dec. 12, 1946- Auto racer; automotive designer.

In 1972 the twenty-five-year-old Emerson Fittipaldi became the youngest driver ever to win the Formula One international racing championship. After winning the crown again in 1974, he was acknowledged to be one of the great drivers in the history of auto racing. Over the next several years, his career languished, and in 1980 he retired from driving on the Formula One circuit. Viewed as a has-been in European racing circles, Fittipaldi abandoned his retirement in 1984 to enter the North American fray as an Indy-car driver and competitor on the Championship Auto Racing Teams circuit. Five years later, Fittipaldi completed a fairy-tale comeback when he won a thrilling last-lap duel with the American driver Al Unser Jr. and raced to victory at the prestigious Indianapolis 500. "Motor racing's been a passion for me all my life," said Fittipaldi. "The feeling of speed, the challenge of driving, controlling a racing car, sliding, the motion you go through. If I had to, I'd pay to drive a racing car."

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1992 Current Biography Yearbook.

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SHELBY, CARROLL
Jan. 11, 1923- Automotive designer; race driver; business executive.

In the world of auto racing, the name Carroll Shelby is synonymous with the best in American innovation. Once described as "a guy who could sell iceboxes to Eskimos," Shelby made his mark as a racer in the 1950s and early 1960s, when he captured three national titles and brought worldwide attention to American automakers with a victory at Le Mans, France, and numerous other wins. But he is best known for his work as the founder and mastermind of Shelby-American, Inc., the company that created a number of high-powered sports cars, including the aluminum-bodied, tube-frame Cobra, one of the most successful cars in racing history and a prize of collectors worldwide. Although the safety requirements and emissions standards established since 1966 have put an end to the maverick brand of designing that was Shelby's trademark, he has continued to influence the new breed of American cars as a consultant to Chrysler, most recently putting his signature on the Dodge Viper. Now in his seventies, he remains active in the racing world through his programs to help beginning drivers, and Shelby-American cars continue to be the bench marks against which newer models are judged.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1993 Current Biography Yearbook.

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YARBOROUGH, CALE
Mar. 23, 1939- Racing car driver.

"It's called being a hard charger," the stock car racer Cale Yarborough, the only five-time Southern 500 winner, asserts of his nervy, foot-to-the-floor driving style, "and there's only one other type of driver, and that's an also-ran." For three decades Yarborough has been thrilling stock car fans throughout the United States and outmaneuvering or even angering other drivers with his surgically precise, canny, and ruthless charging. He has won the Daytona 500 four times (second only to Richard Petty's mark) and once set a record qualifying time of 205.109 miles an hour for that race. Between 1976 and 1978 Yarborough won a record three consecutive Winston Cup championships. His eighty-three career wins (third on the all-time list) have made him a folk hero in his native South. In his 1986 autobiography, Cale: The Hazardous Life and Times of the World's Greatest Stock Car Driver, written with William Neely and published by Times Books, Yarborough traces his achievements back to the South Carolina countryside where he grew up and where he still makes his home. In reviewing his career, which has proved that fortunes can be made in stock car racing, he also provides a history of the rise of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing to prominence.

The complete article can be found on the Current Biography CD-ROM and in the 1987 Current Biography Yearbook.

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