One day a long long time ago I took the day off school to mourn the passing of a racing driver I admired greatly. Ronnie Peterson.

I've been waiting for this months issue of Motorsport, and now that I've read it I'm dissappointed.

The Ronnie Peterson I believed in was magical. The Ronnie Peterson that John Tipler painted isn't.

Sure he gives Ronnie his due as the King of Oversteer, and Master of Commitment. But it just doesn't seem like it gives him his due.

When I was a little kid I was vaguely aware that my Dad admired Fangio and Nuvolari. When I was a little older I remember hearing about Phil Hill, Dan Gurney, Jim Hall and the drivers of the 60's. But MY examples, that I built my standards around, were Niki Lauda and Ronnie Peterson. Niki was science, and Ronnie was magic.

It certainly helped that the idea that Ronnie had magic was widely prevalent. I remember that Road & Track had a technical article on grip that used him as an example - outside the circle seemingly defying the laws of physics.

As a relatively unsophisticated kid, but not a fool, I adopted as my own standard the idea that you could at the very least go right to the edge and hang all ten toes over it.

I'm sure Ronnies death was no greater loss for me than Jim Clark's was for an earlier generation of aspiring kid racers. But again - I lost a Magic hero, not just a Maestro.

Adult Scott knows that Ronnie was, like all of us, just a man. And as Tipler has shown me - a good man too.

I've got a couple of friends - good men - who are getting close to leaving this world for the next. Both are racers with massive amounts of guts and heart. That describes as well their approach to the rest of their lives too.

I've lost friends and family before, and I feel the hole left in this life by their absence. In my way I try to carry them with me on my ride thru life. I do it in lots of ways - some trivial and silly.

I run a number on my car for instance that I picked from the list of what little was left on the reserved list last year. I picked 42 - "For Two" - for my Dad and me. I didn't think of it till later that it's also the number that alot of notable racing ITR's have run. But in my mind, on my car, that's my number now.

That's such a little thing. And there aren't enough of them to get me thru the losses that are coming. Many of my best friends are older than I am, and I depend on them in the same way that younger me depended on Ronnie - I believe in them.

These friends of mine have, upon reflection, the same magic. The magic of pushing thru life with the utmost commitment. No different than they do on the track. As old as I am, I wonder if I've noticed this and made use of the examples sufficiently in my own life. I doubt it.

When I think of my city, my motorsports, my friends - I think of the comfort of belonging. I have my place, a good place, in a world I want to be a part of, friends with people that I would choose to be friends all over again given the choice.

With each friend I lose, my world shrinks that much - that much more of it only inside me now, no longer without.

When I'm behind the wheel, or in the shop, I'm in an imperceptible part of our reality where I share again with them the spirit of life that draws us to sport, or love.

Scott, who's glad he's not on the frequency that picks up Elvis...




Modified by RR98ITR at 9:31 PM 10/6/2003

 

cars make me cry sometimes. I can sit and think of the feeling that is inside of me when I drive through any givin turn on the racetrack or when I daydream about what the paint scheme will be on my racecar....this sport is very emotional for me. I have just begun my *actual* journey into motorsports, but in my mind I have been here for as long as I can remember.

Jeremy- who hopes his dad will live long enough to see him finish on the podium.

 

Sounds like I need to check into Motorsport. I too grew up in a house where names like Fangio, Nuvolari, and Rosemeyer were well respected and enjoy reading about hero drivers of a past era. I don't really recall that much about Ronnie Peterson personally and his style, just that he was a successful member of the John Player Special Lotus Team. When I smoked cigarettes in school, I even smoked the balck and gold Players becasue of the team connection.

I do recall being crushed when my hero Mark Donahue was killed in testing and when Graham Hill was killed in a light plane crash.

 

Ronnie Peterson to me fell into that group of legendary drivers who were on the edge fast and lost their lives because of it: sometimes your strength becomes your weakness.

These include Clark, Donohue, Senna, and for a Canadian kid influenced by racing Gilles Villeneuve.

The circumstances of their loss seems to be a glossed over happenstance phenomenon. We glance over it briefly and don't explore why a person used to tightroping the edge had lost it that day. Their racing careers are what predominates the discussion (as it should be) and how they are remembered but can we as drivers learn anything (as if we could imagine their skill level!) the fateful day when we lost them?