The Auto Racing Years
While I was in the Army, I got the chance to travel all over Europe. I had a lot of free time, and spent most of it stringing (that means working as a freelance journalist) for various US publications, covering various races. Mostly I got to do the support races and series; the publications usually had a full-time freelancer assigned to the major events. But, the support races were at the same tracks, the same weekends, so I got to see some great events, meet some wonderful people, witness some of the best races ever run. Unfortunately, I also got to see some people die. It was a fact of life in racing at that time, but the deaths of Piers Courage and Jochen Rindt were my first real introduction to the dark side of the sport.
Now that I knew what I wanted to do, I returned to the Ohio State University, and in three years I completed a double major in photography and journalism. Giving credit where it is due, my photography mentor was my all-time favorite college professor, the late Dana Vibberts. RIP, Dana...I bet there's a great folk band in need of a Dulcimer players. My journalism basic training sergeant was Columbus Dispatch sportswriter Dick Otte. And my professional mentor was AutoWeek Editorial Director and Publisher Leon Mandel. You’ll find more about them in the auto racing section of this blog.
Suffice it to say that I got to cover a lot of Ohio State sports, including Woody Hayes football and Fred Taylor basketball, and I was able to continue my auto racing photojournalism career, stringing for the Dispatch, AutoWeek, Road & Track and many others. By the time I graduated in 1973, I knew how to write, how to take pictures, and how to get into and out of trouble in the publishing industry. I worked a short time for the Dispatch, until Mr. Mandel offered me the opportunity of a lifetime, to move to Reno, Nevada, as an Editor for Competition Press & AutoWeek.
AutoWeek was a great experience. For one thing, the main reason I became an auto racing journalist was because it was so hard to get race results in the late '60s. Newspapers and television did not cover the sport as they do today. There were no live broadcasts. Only a few major races such as the Indianapolis 500 or Monaco Grand Prix were covered by tape delay. There was no TV coverage of NASCAR; in fact, NASCAR was considered a hayseed sport drawing only the interest of rednecks from the southeast United States...no real racing fan took it seriously. Can you believe that, given the attention paid to NASCAR and its stars today?
I used to wait by my mailbox (I kept a post office box in Columbus, Ohio, to speed up delivery) for the lastest copy of AutoWeek, and nothing was more frustrating than if it didn't arrive on Tuesday as it should. So the idea of working there and finding out who won all the major races on Sunday night was extremely exciting to me. And working at AutoWeek gave me entry into, and introductions to, all the major events and participants. All of a sudden, people like Mario Andretti, Richard Petty and Mark Donohue knew my first name. It was hard work...many 16-hour days, seven days a week. Not as much travel as I would have liked...editing a publication is mostly an office job; reporters get to go to the races! But I learned all the basic writing, reporting and editing skills in the real world, including the inescapable fact that the truth will not always set you free. Never forget the the media are in business first, and that all information comes at a price.
In 1976, after three years with AutoWeek, Formula Magazine owner John Benton offered me the chance to become art director. Within six months, I was also the Editor, and we re-named the publication RACECAR, America’s International Auto Racing Magazine. I was named Associate Publisher at the end of the year, and ran the magazine day-to-day until 1980. In the late '70s, just as there had been no TV coverage in the '60s, there was no monthly full-color auto racing magazine in the US, until we made RACECAR into that publication. Looking back, it is one of my proudest achivements even if it was a minor business failure. Along the way, we set the stage for the more successful RACER Magazine, where some of our better staffers ended up. We also trained some very successful people, including the advertising copywriter who coined the phrase "Heartbeat of America" for Chevrolet. My friend, and our Editor, Pete Lyons, was and is recognized worldwide as the finest author ever to write about the sport in the English language. I was proud to be his beta.
In 1980, I returned to freelancing, working for AutoWeek, Motor Trend, the British auto racing Bible, Autosport, and continuing to write and consult for RACECAR. In 1981, Benton and I sold RACECAR to Keith Crane and it was merged with AutoWeek. By 1982, I had a wife who grew up in Ohio, and one son. We decided to return to Ohio, and moved to Akron as Editor and Publisher of ImportCar Magazine, a Babcox publication. Along the way, I also managed public relations for Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course near Mansfield in the first two years the track was owned by Jim Trueman. If you are interested in auto racing, especially the way it was before it became a really big business, I will be adding a large number of articles and memoirs to that section of this blog. Please check them out.
While I was at Babcox, I continued to do some freelancing until about 1985, when the travel simply became too much to balance with job and family. Looking back, I had averaged 35 weekends per year on the road between 1970 and 1985, and had become a classic burnout. Motorsports is a game for young people. It always has been...always will be, even when there are exceptions like Chris Economaki to break the rule. It was a great part of my life, fun, exciting, educational. I look forward to sharing a lot of this life with you. But, by the time I left Babcox for my next life in coporate and sports communications, I was ready for the change.