Biography
Leonard won the first A.M.A. Grand National Championship Series in 1954 and won it again in 1956 and 1957. His record totals 27 wins, including the 1957 and 1958 Daytona 200. He retired from motorcycle racing at the completion of the 1961 season and turned his attention to auto racing.
Leonard raced in the USAC Championship Car series in the 1964–1974 seasons, with 98 career starts, including the 1965–1973 Indianapolis 500, sitting on the pole in 1968 in the Lotus 56 turbine car. He finished in the top ten 60 times, including 6 wins: 3 times at Milwaukee (1965, 1970, 1972), and once each at Ontario (1971), Brooklyn (1972), and Pocono (1972). His victories propelled him to the 1971 and 1972 USAC Championship Car Season Championship.
Joe Leonard has won multiple National Championships in both automobile and motorcycle racing back-to-back. In 1991, he was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in the Motorcycles category. In 1998 he was inducted into the A.M.A. Motorcycle Hall of Fame.
Read more about this topic: Joe Leonard
Famous quotes containing the word biography:
“As we approached the log house,... the projecting ends of the logs lapping over each other irregularly several feet at the corners gave it a very rich and picturesque look, far removed from the meanness of weather-boards. It was a very spacious, low building, about eighty feet long, with many large apartments ... a style of architecture not described by Vitruvius, I suspect, though possibly hinted at in the biography of Orpheus.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The death of Irving, which at any other time would have attracted universal attention, having occurred while these things were transpiring, went almost unobserved. I shall have to read of it in the biography of authors.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Just how difficult it is to write biography can be reckoned by anybody who sits down and considers just how many people know the real truth about his or her love affairs.”
—Rebecca West [Cicily Isabel Fairfield] (1892–1983)