49 Fun Facts About Racing

The Indianapolis 500 winner traditionally drinks what in victory lane?

Milk. Louis Meyer asked for buttermilk after a 1930s win because his mother swore by it on hot days, and dairy companies later paid to make a bottle of milk part of every Victory Lane.

Why is the Indianapolis Motor Speedway nicknamed the Brickyard?

It was paved with 3.2 million bricks in 1909. All but a yard-wide strip at the start-finish line now lies under asphalt, and since 1996 winners have knelt to kiss it.

Which three races make up the unofficial Triple Crown of Motorsport?

Indy 500, Monaco GP, Le Mans: only Graham Hill has won all three, and Fernando Alonso skipped Monaco in 2017 to try for the Indianapolis leg.

The 24 Hours of Le Mans is won by the car that does what?

Covers the greatest distance. In 1966 Ford staged a side-by-side finish, and the win went to the car that had started farther back, because it had covered more ground.

Which carmaker puts its ignition left of the steering wheel, a habit it traces to Le Mans running starts?

Porsche. With the key on the left, a driver who had just sprinted across the track could fire the engine with one hand while the other found first gear.

Which carmaker quit motor racing for three decades after 1955, when its car flew into the Le Mans crowd?

Mercedes-Benz. Pierre Levegh's car killed him and more than 80 spectators; the team pulled its other cars out during the night and left racing when the season ended.

Who won six Monaco Grands Prix, five in a row from 1989 to 1993?

Ayrton Senna. It could have been seven: in 1988 he crashed out alone while leading comfortably, then went home to his Monaco flat instead of returning to the pits.

The Monaco Grand Prix is the only round of Formula One excused from which rule?

The minimum race distance. Monaco's streets are so slow that its race is set at 260 km instead of 305, and even so the two-hour limit cut the wet 1997 race 16 laps short.

Which driver matched Michael Schumacher's record of seven Formula One titles in 2020?

Lewis Hamilton. He sealed the seventh title by winning the Turkish Grand Prix from sixth on the grid, on a rain-soaked new surface with almost no grip.

Which Formula One team went 21 years without a drivers' champion before five straight titles from 2000?

Ferrari. Michael Schumacher ended the wait a year after a broken leg had wrecked his 1999 title bid, then kept the crown until 2005.

Which team gave Formula One its first Black driver in 2007, having backed him since he was 13?

McLaren. At ten the karting champion walked up to team boss Ron Dennis at an awards dinner and said he wanted to race his cars one day; three years later Dennis signed him up.

NASCAR traces its roots to drivers in which outlaw trade?

Moonshine running. Bootleggers tuned ordinary-looking cars to outrun the law, then raced each other for pride; Junior Johnson, one of NASCAR's early stars, served a year in prison for keeping an illegal still.

What makes NASCAR's Daytona 500 unusual among the showpiece events of major sports?

It opens the season, as it has since 1982. The first running, in 1959, ended in a photo finish so close that officials studied film for three days before naming the winner.

Which driver, nicknamed 'The King', won 200 NASCAR Cup races?

Richard Petty. He won 27 of them in the 1967 season alone, and in 2006 voiced a veteran racer called 'The King' in Pixar's Cars.

Which driver was known as 'the Intimidator' and died on the last lap of the 2001 Daytona 500?

Dale Earnhardt. His death pushed NASCAR to make head-and-neck restraints compulsory and to line the walls of its ovals with energy-absorbing barriers.

Mario Andretti won the Formula One title in 1978 driving for which team?

Lotus. Its 79 was the first Formula One car to make full use of ground effect, shaping the air beneath it to pull itself onto the track, and it won the team its last world titles.

In 2020 the Dakar Rally moved from South America to which country?

Saudi Arabia. The rally had left Africa after security threats in Mauritania cancelled the 2008 race, and spent eleven editions in South America before the move.

Which class of dragster had its races cut from a quarter-mile to 1,000 feet in 2008?

Top Fuel. The NHRA shortened its races, and those of Funny Cars, days after Scott Kalitta was killed when his car failed to stop at the end of a quarter-mile run.

ThrustSSC set the land speed record in 1997 by becoming the first car to do what?

Break the sound barrier. RAF pilot Andy Green did it in Nevada's Black Rock Desert on 15 October 1997, fifty years and one day after Chuck Yeager first did it in the air.

A land speed record must be averaged over two opposite passes within how long?

One hour. The two runs in opposite directions cancel out any help from wind or slope, and the average must beat the old record by at least one percent to count.

Which Colorado mountain hosts the hill climb nicknamed 'the Race to the Clouds', finishing at 14,115 feet?

Pikes Peak. The road climbs 12.42 miles through 156 turns, and in 2018 an electric Volkswagen beat every petrol car's best to take the outright record, at just under eight minutes.

Peter Brock, the 'King of the Mountain', won which Australian touring car race nine times?

Bathurst 1000. Brock raced as number 05 to promote Victoria's 0.05 drink-driving limit, and the winners' trophy was named for him in 2006, weeks after he died in a rally crash.

Why is the Kentucky Derby nicknamed the 'Run for the Roses'?

The winner is draped in roses, a blanket of red blooms laid over the horse's shoulders. New York columnist Bill Corum coined the nickname in 1925 and later ran the racetrack himself.

The Kentucky Derby's founder, a grandson of explorer William Clark, built which racetrack?

Churchill Downs. Meriwether Lewis Clark Jr. came home from the Epsom Derby in England wanting a track like it, and built one on land from his mother's family, the Churchills, whose name it took.

Which race, nicknamed 'the Test of the Champion', is traditionally the final leg of America's Triple Crown?

Belmont Stakes. Between 1979 and 2014, thirteen horses won the first two legs, and not one of them added the third.

Which Grand National fence is named after a captain who fell there?

Becher's Brook. Captain Martin Becher was thrown from his horse Conrad in the first official National and crouched in the water while the rest of the field jumped over him.

Which 100-1 outsider won the 1967 Grand National after a pile-up at the 23rd fence?

Foinavon. He was so far behind that jockey John Buckingham had time to steer wide of the pile-up, and the fence where it happened has carried the horse's name since 1984.

Which horse, trained on a Southport beach, won the Grand National in 1973, 1974 and 1977?

Red Rum. He arrived with an incurable bone disease in his foot, and galloping through the sea water is said to have kept him sound; he never fell in 100 races.

The Melbourne Cup, 'the race that stops a nation', is run at 3pm on which day?

The first Tuesday of November. Melbourne gets a public holiday for it, so much of the city really does stop; the first winner, Archer in 1861, earned a gold watch on top of the prize money.

Which mare won the Melbourne Cup three years running, in 2003, 2004 and 2005?

Makybe Diva. Her owner, a tuna fisherman, built the name from the first two letters of five employees' names, and announced her retirement at the trophy presentation for the third win.

The Palio di Siena is run bareback for three laps around which square?

Piazza del Campo. The square is covered in a thick layer of earth for the race, which lasts about 90 seconds, and a horse that has thrown its jockey can still win.

The Iditarod runs from Anchorage to which Alaskan town?

Nome. Joe Redington, the 'Father of the Iditarod', pushed for the long-distance race at a time when snowmobiles had almost wiped out dog sledding in rural Alaska.

The Tour de France was created in 1903 to boost sales of what?

A newspaper. L'Auto launched the race to win a circulation war with its rival Le Vélo, and the leader's yellow jersey is said to echo the yellow paper it was printed on.

Which cyclist, nicknamed 'the Cannibal' for his hunger to win everything, took five Tours de France?

Eddy Merckx. The nickname came from a teammate's daughter, who had heard how he refused to let anyone else win; in 1969 he took the overall, points and mountains prizes at once.

The Boston Marathon, the world's oldest annual marathon, is run on which holiday?

Patriots' Day. The Massachusetts holiday marks the opening battles of the American Revolution at Lexington and Concord, which is why the race falls on a Monday in April.

The America's Cup was held by the New York Yacht Club for 132 years until which yacht took it in 1983?

Australia II. Her radical winged keel helped her come back from 3-1 down against Dennis Conner's Liberty, ending what is often called the longest winning streak in sport.

Since the mid-2000s, camel racing in the Gulf states has replaced child jockeys with what?

Remote-controlled robots. Their operators are driven alongside the track in SUVs, working each robot's whip and reins by radio as the camels run.

Which two universities have raced each other on the water in The Boat Race since 1829?

Oxford and Cambridge. It was started by two old school friends, one at each university, and the 1877 race is still on the books as a dead heat.

The Cooper's Hill Cheese-Rolling chases a wheel of which cheese down a 200-yard hill?

Double Gloucester. The cheese gets about a second's head start and soon outpaces the field, so the first person over the line at the bottom of the hill wins it.

Byzantine Constantinople's rival chariot-racing factions were known by which colours?

Blues and Greens. In 532 the two rivals united behind the chant 'Nika', meaning victory, and their riots burned nearly half of Constantinople and almost toppled Emperor Justinian.

Modern pigeon racing originated in the mid-19th century in which country?

Belgium. Flemish fanciers bred the fast, long-distance birds they called Voyageurs, and because every pigeon flies home to its own loft, the winner is the bird with the best average speed.

Where was the first Formula One world championship race held, on 13 May 1950?

Silverstone. Four years earlier it had been an RAF bomber station, and the first circuit was laid out along the airfield's runways and perimeter road.

Giuseppe Farina won Formula One's first drivers' title in 1950 for which Italian marque?

Alfa Romeo. Its 158 'Alfetta', a design first raced in 1938, won all six championship races it entered that year, three for Farina and three for his teammate Juan Manuel Fangio.

Ray Harroun won the first Indianapolis 500 using what instead of a mechanic?

Rear-view mirror. Every other car carried a mechanic to watch for overtaking traffic, so rivals protested Harroun's single-seat Marmon Wasp until officials accepted his mirror instead.

Which driver won his fourth Indianapolis 500 in 2021, tying the all-time record?

Hélio Castroneves. He held off Álex Palou in the final laps, then climbed the catch fence, the celebration that earned him the nickname 'Spider-Man', to join A. J. Foyt, Al Unser and Rick Mears on four.

In motor racing, which flag tells every driver that the session has been stopped?

A red flag. At the 2021 Belgian Grand Prix, rain kept it out so long that the result was declared after one counted lap behind the safety car, and the drivers were given half points.

Which horse set the Kentucky Derby record of 1:59.4 in 1973?

Secretariat. Most horses tire late, but he ran each quarter-mile of that Derby faster than the one before, covering the last in about 23 seconds.

Which Italian rider, nicknamed 'The Doctor', won nine motorcycle Grand Prix world titles?

Valentino Rossi. He raced with number 46, his father's old number, for his whole Grand Prix career, even in the seasons when the champion was entitled to number 1.

Which British driver won the 1955 Mille Miglia at record speed, guided by pace notes on a paper scroll?

Stirling Moss. His co-driver was the journalist Denis Jenkinson, who compiled the notes on practice runs, then wrote up the thousand-mile ride for Motor Sport magazine.