BAR Driver Development
In 1973 Miller and Scott devised a driver development program for BAR, before it became widespread in American motor racing, motivated by a question Miller was asked often by potential sponsors in corporate America: What if your primary black driver is killed?
To eliminate this dilemma, Miller signed Coyle Peek, a 23-year-old African American driver from Long Island, New York. Peek was a Formula Ford (FF) driver. Miller placed Peek with S.H.A.R.P Racing Limited in the United Kingdom to aid his development in the most competitive entry-level road racing series in the world: British Formula Ford.
Under the BAR banner, Peek competed in a British-manufactured Royale RP16 chassis powered by a 1600cc engine at world-famous British circuits such as Brands Hatch, the Silverstone Circuit, and Mallory Park. Peek competed against FF chassis types such as Meryln 17a and 20a, Macon MR6, Lotus 51, 61, 61M, Van Diemen FA73, and the Bradley FF.
Coyle Peek progressed rapidly, finishing in the top 10 in most races, with a second-place finish as his highest. He quickly earned the post as a reserve driver in case Benny Scott were to be injured or killed competing for BAR in FSV. After he returned to the US, Peek attended many of BAR’s events. Miller tried to acquire a companion race car and sponsorship for Peek, but it was denied in corporate boardrooms.
Miller is the first documented African American team principal to dispatch an African American driver across the North Atlantic for professional race car driving development supported by his own means.
Read more about this topic: Leonard W. Miller
Famous quotes containing the words bar, driver and/or development:
“Even the most incompetent English actor, coming on the stage briefly to announce the presence below of Lord and Lady Ditherege, gives forth a sound so soft and dulcet as almost to be a bar of music. But sometimes that is all there is. The words are lost in the graceful sweep of the notes.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“God help the horse, and the driver too!
And the people and beasts who have never a friend!
For the driver easily might have been you,
And the horse be me by a different end!
And nobody knows how their days will cease!
And the poor, when they’re old, have little of peace!”
—James Kenneth Stephens (1882–1950)
“The Cairo conference ... is about a complicated web of education and employment, consumption and poverty, development and health care. It is also about whether governments will follow where women have so clearly led them, toward safe, simple and reliable choices in family planning. While Cairo crackles with conflict, in the homes of the world the orthodoxies have been duly heard, and roundly ignored.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)