Motor Racing
- January 22 – Mike Hawthorn, reigning Formula One World Drivers' Champion, is killed in a road crash in his Jaguar Mark 1
- Stock car racing –
- Lee Petty in the #42 Plymouth wins the inaugural Daytona 500 in a photo finish
- NASCAR Championship – Lee Petty (Plymouth)
- 30 May – Rodger Ward wins the 43nd running of the Indianapolis 500 in the Leader Cards 500 Special Watson-Offenhauser
- USAC Racing – Rodger Ward
- Formula One – John A. Brabham (Australia) is World Drivers' Champion, in a Cooper T51-Climax.
- 24 hours of Le Mans – Carroll Shelby / Roy Salvadori win, sharing an Aston Martin DBR1
- Rally racing – Paul Coltelloni / Pierre Alexandre win the Monte Carlo Rally, sharing a Citroën ID
- Drag racing –
- Chris "the Greek" Karamesines wins the AHRA Top Fuel title
- Rodney Singer wins Top Eliminator at the NHRA Nationals
Read more about this topic: 1959 In Sports
Famous quotes containing the words motor and/or racing:
“The motor idles.
Over the immense upland
the pulse of their blossoming
thunders through us.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“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)