Pro Sports Car Racing in America

Penske, Shelby, Hall, Gurney, Hill, Ginther, Reventlow, Miles, Cunningham, Krause -- these are the men who dominated sports car racing in North America at the start of the 1958 racing season. They had spent a lot of their own money on the hobby they loved, but now they wanted something back. They wanted to go pro.For the next 16 years, the cars became progressively faster, the competition hotter, and the stakes higher. But what was it really like to thread a factory-sponsored Porsche 917 or Ferrari 512 through the corkscrew at Riverside or to tromp the brake on a factory McLaren at the last possible deep spot of the Canadian Corner at Road America?. Few are fortunate to know first-hand, but for the rest, Dave Friedman's photography straps you in the driver's seat. More than 300 photos, many in color, relive the fastest, hottest, most intense racing in American history.