1964 in Sports - Motor Racing

Motor Racing

  • Stock car racing –
    • January 19 – death of Joe Weatherly, NASCAR Grand National champion, in a crash at Riverside. He is the first reigning Grand National champion to be killed, and the only reigning champion to die in a racing accident.
    • February 23 – Richard Petty wins the Daytona 500 in the #43 Plymouth
    • July 2 – death of Glen "Fireball" Roberts, American stock car driver, following injuries and burns sustained in a crash during the World 600
  • July 17 – Donald Campbell, son of the great British record-breaker Malcolm, in Bluebird CN7 makes the last wheel-driven land speed record attempt. His speed, 403.10 mph (648.73 km/h), is less than the unratified speed of the controversial Spirit of America.
    • NASCAR Championship - Richard Petty wins his first of seven titles.
    • May 30 – A.J. Foyt wins the 48th running of the Indianapolis 500 in the Sheraton-Thompson Special Watson-Offenhauser
  • USAC Racing - A.J. Foyt wins the season championship
  • Formula One – John Surtees (Great Britain) wins the World Drivers' Champion, driving for Ferrari.
  • 24 hours of Le Mans – Jean Guichet / Nino Vaccarella win, sharing a Ferrari 275P
  • Rally racing - the team of Paddy Hopkirk / Henry Liddon win the Monte Carlo Rally driving a Mini Cooper S
  • Drag racing - Don Garlits wins the NHRA Top Fuel Dragster Championship

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Famous quotes containing the words motor and/or racing:

    “We disparage reason.
    But all the time it’s what we’re most concerned with.
    There’s will as motor and there’s will as brakes.
    Reason is, I suppose, the steering gear.”
    —Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    “Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
    —Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)