RACING NEWS:

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UPDATED 01/03/2023

Sad Sad news, Professional rally driver and YouTube star Ken Block died in a snowmobile accident on Monday, his Hoonigan Racing team announced. He was 55. Block is survived by his wife, Lucy, and three children.
“Ken was a visionary, a pioneer, and an icon. And most importantly, a father and husband,” Hoonigan Racing said in a statement. “He will be incredibly missed. Please respect the family’s privacy at this time while they grieve.”
The accident occurred at 2 p.m. when Block was riding a snowmobile down a steep slope in Wasatch County, Utah,
Ken Block and Alex Gelsomino competed at the WRC Rally Mexico in 2012.
Before embarking on his rally driving career, Block co-founded sportswear company DC Shoes in 1994, which went on to become one of the most recognizable skateboarding apparel brands in the world.
He began rallying in 2005 and two years later made his debut on the FIA World Rally Championship (WRC) circuit in Mexico. He started 25 WRC events and won five X Games medals in RallyCross between 2006 and 2015.

 

 

 


 

UPDATED 05/24/2022

SAD NEWS:

Voice of Drag Racing Dave McClelland Passes Away

Dave McClelland, 85, the voice of the NHRA through the ’70s, ’80s, and early ’90s, both on television and at the racetrack, passed away May 22 of natural causes. He was surrounded by his family at the time of his passing, which was quiet and peaceful.

Dave McClelland

For many years, Dave McClelland served as emcee for the annual SEMA Awards Gala and SEMA Show Banquet.

McClelland, whose skills, talent, and charm reached all corners of the motorsports world and was always everyone’s first choice as an emcee—including several years as emcee for the annual SEMA Awards Gala and SEMA Show Banquet—was honored with hall of fame enshrinements and awards that spanned his more than 60 years in the broadcasting business. He was inducted into the SEMA Hall of Fame in 1994.

McClelland continued to be a master of ceremonies and do voice-over work for clients, including NHRA, SEMA, NASCAR, ISCA, AARWBA, PWA, Wally Parks NHRA Motorsports Museum, R.J. Reynolds, Petersen Automotive Museum, International Drag Racing Hall of Fame, Championship Auto Shows, Petersen Publishing Company, Emap, Primedia, ProMedia, General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, Castrol, Mopar, Toyota, Shelby Automobiles, Meguiar’s, The California Highway Patrol 11-99 Foundation, Los Angeles Orthopaedic Hospital and many other organizations.

Dave McClelland

McClelland was enshrined in the SEMA Hall of Fame in 1994.

Away from the microphone, McClelland’s motorsports career runs the gamut from track operator to the founder of the Super Chevy shows to serving as the NHRA’s director of communications. He has been involved with drag racing since 1955; a racer himself, his dragster is in the NHRA museum. Additionally, he has served on the board of directors and as chairman for Racers for Christ, and was a recipient of the SEMA Industry Icon Award and the Car Craft All-Star Drag Racing Team Award, as well as the NHRA Good Hand Award, Don Prudhomme Award, Texas Associated Press Broadcasters Association Award and Goodguys Hot Rod Hero.

McClelland is survived by his wife of 64 years, Louise; son Kevin and his wife Lisa; son Mike and his wife Laurie; daughter Melissa Knight and her husband Tony; granddaughters Ashley and Sara McClelland; grandsons David McClelland and his wife Brittiney; Daniel McClelland and his wife Shirley; Matthew and Ryan Knight; and great-granddaughters Alana and Mylah Knight.

Dave McClelland

McClelland was inducted into the SEMA Hot Rod Industry Alliance (HRIA) Hall of Fame in 2012.

 


 

By Ashley Reyes

Education

 

 

 

While the current trajectory of OEMs focusing on EV technology threatens the potential applications for products designed for internal-combustion engines (ICE), a new hydrogen-fueled ICE offers manufacturers hope into future possible markets and applications.
Introduced by Mike Copeland of Diversified Creations, the new technology was recently showcased on a ’48 Chevy truck with a supercharged LS engine.

Codenamed Zero, the truck—which produces zero tailpipe emissions—debuted at the 2021 SEMA Show and amassed wide media coverage and industry interest.

 

 

 

 

 


Ford Performance Announces Mustang GT3 Racecar

Ford

The new Mustang GT3 racer will be powered by a Ford 5.0L Coyote-based V8 engine developed by Ford Performance and built by long-time racing collaborator and world championship winning team M-Sport of Cumbria, England.

Ford Performance has revealed plans for its all-new Mustang GT3 racecar that will compete in the International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) 2024 race season, including the 24 Hours of Daytona. The new Mustang GT3 racer will be powered by a Ford 5.0L Coyote-based V8 engine developed by Ford Performance and built by long-time racing collaborator and world championship winning team M-Sport of Cumbria, England.

The effort will be a joint program between Ford Performance and long-time racing collaborator Multimatic Motorsports. It will feature both a two-car factory-backed IMSA GTD Pro works team managed by Multimatic and customer Mustang race cars for the GTD class starting at Daytona in 2024. The two organizations have a rich history in the FIA World Rally Championship and recently collaborated on developing and preparing the Ford Puma Hybrid Rally1. For more information, visit performance.ford.com.

 

 


Bob Bondurant, Car Racer Who Tutored Actors on the Track, Dies at 88

After a racetrack accident put him in the hospital, he pivoted to open a driving school, where his students included Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, and Christian Bale.

Bob Bondurant, left, was a racecar driver with a knack for teaching actors how to take on that role. He gave instruction to Yves Montand in 1966.
Credit…Central Press/Hulton Archive, via Getty Images

Bob Bondurant, a master race car driver who was better known for his driving school in California and later in Arizona, where he tutored actors like Paul Newman, Tom Cruise and Christian Bale for their onscreen racing roles, died on Nov. 12 in Paradise Valley, Ariz. He was 88.

A death certificate provided by his wife, Pat Bondurant, said he had a “suspected immune reaction related to vaccinations.” It cited cerebrovascular disease and cerebral arterial stenosis as underlying conditions. He died at an assisted living facility.

Mr. Bondurant began attracting attention in the racing world in 1959 when he won 18 of the 20 races he entered behind the wheel of a Corvette.

“I am an original California hot rodder turned white-hot when I started winning everything in my Corvettes,” he was quoted as saying by the National Corvette Museum, which inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2016.

He continued to win races regularly in Corvettes in the 1960s, but he also began to race successfully in other sports cars and open-wheeled Formula 1 machines, including for the elite Ferrari team from 1965 to 1966.

“He was top of the line,” said Peter Brock, who designed the Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe that Mr. Bondurant raced with Dan Gurney to first place in the GT, or Grand Touring, class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race in 1964.

But in 1967, Mr. Bondurant crashed during a race at what is now the Watkins Glen International in upstate New York, suffering multiple injuries, including fractures of both feet and a broken right ankle. It was a turning point.

In the hospital, he came up with the idea of opening a school that would teach safe, defensive driving to auto enthusiasts.

The Bob Bondurant School of High-Performance Driving opened in early 1968 at the Orange County International Raceway in Irvine, Calif. “We want to make a better driver, rather than make a faster driver,” he told The Los Angeles Times at the time. He also offered instruction in racecar driving, motorcycling, and drag racing.

Even before opening the school, Mr. Bondurant had some well-known students. He had coached James Garner and Yves Montand in driving Formula 1 cars for John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film, “Grand Prix.” Mr. Bondurant, who was a stunt man and technical adviser to the film, wore 16-millimeter cameras on the sides of his helmet to record racing action on the track while moving at 150 miles per hour.

Mr. Bondurant, in the car, with Paul Newman on the set of the 1969 movie “Winning.” Mr. Newman was one of his first big-name students.

Credit…Universal, via Everett Collection

Soon after Mr. Bondurant opened the school, Mr. Newman and Robert Wagner signed up as students. They had been cast as racecar drivers in the film “Winning” (1969), in which Mr. Newman’s character dreams of winning the Indianapolis 500.

“Paul has a knack of knowing how to learn,” Mr. Bondurant told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1988. “He’s like most actors — they know how to listen. He would move at his own pace, and wouldn’t go too quick. He took it step by step, and it came naturally to him.”

He tested Mr. Newman on three tracks before he handed him off to another instructor, who familiarized him with the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. Mr. Newman’s experience on the film led him to take up racecar driving as a sideline, both as a successful professional driver and as a team owner.

As Mr. Bondurant’s school grew, it moved from Irvine to Ontario Speedway, near Los Angeles, then to Sonoma Raceway, in Northern California, and in 1989 to its most recent location, Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park, in Chandler, Ariz.

“I love teaching and I love driving,” he told The Post-Dispatch. “I hope I never grow up. It would be a disaster.”

 

Robert Lewis Bondurant was born on April 27, 1933, in Chicago to John and Ruth (Williams) Bondurant. His mother was a homemaker, and his father was a luxury car dealer who sold his business during the Depression; moved the family from Evanston, Ill., to the Westwood Village neighborhood of Los Angeles; and made his living selling surgical instruments.

His parents divorced when Bob was 12; four years later his mother died.

“My dad took me to Gilmore Stadium when I was 7 to watch the races, and that got me interested in racing,” Mr. Bondurant told Motor Trend magazine in 2012.

He drag-raced, began racing motorcycles at 18, moved on to sports cars — a British Morgan Plus 4, a Triumph TR2 — then drove a 1957 fuel-injected Corvette in his stunningly successful 1959 season, when he was named best Corvette driver of the year. He kept winning in Corvettes into 1963.

After studying business, he graduated from Woodbury College in Los Angeles in the early 1960s.

Driving for the Shelby American team, Mr. Bondurant raced Cobras in the United States and Europe; in addition to the Le Mans triumph in 1964, he helped Shelby and Ford win the prestigious World Manufacturers’ GT Championships the next year.

After his interlude with Ferrari, Mr. Bondurant leaped to the Canadian-American Challenge Cup circuit — better known as Can-Am — in cars that went even faster than those in Formula 1. His 1967 accident came at the Can-Am race at Watkins Glen. He was driving his McLaren Mark II at 150 miles per hour when his steering arm broke, causing the car to flip multiple times.

After recovering, he continued to race occasionally; he raced for the last time in 2012. But his focus was on his school, which his wife said had taught more than 500,000 people over 50 years, including professional racecar drivers, celebrities, military officers, F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents, Navy SEALs, and teenagers learning safe-driving skills, usually at the request of their parents.

 

In recent years, after Mr. Bondurant became less involved in it, the school was beset by financial problems; it filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2018. An investment group purchased its assets the next year and renamed it the Radford Racing School. Ms. Bondurant said she was working to start another school that would use the Bondurant name.

Mr. Bondurant in 2016 behind the wheel of an Alfa Romeo Giulia.“I love teaching and I love driving,” he said. “I hope I never grow up.”
Credit…Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images

Mr. Bondurant married Pat Chase at the Monaco Grand Prix racetrack in 2010. In addition to his wife, he is survived by her son, Jason Bondurant, whom he adopted and was a vice president of the racing school; his stepdaughter, Meagan Radigan; and two step-grandsons. His previous marriages ended in divorce.

In 1990, Mr. Bondurant trained Tom Cruise for his role as a stock-car driver in Tony Scott’s “Days of Thunder,” and in 2000 Nicolas Cage trained at the Bondurant school for his role as a car thief in “Gone in 60 Seconds.”

Mr. Bondurant worked with Christian Bale in the summer of 2018 as Mr. Bale trained to play the British racecar driver Ken Miles in “Ford v Ferrari” (2019), James Mangold’s account of the cutthroat competition between the two automakers at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966.

“Bob spent hours with Christian in his GT40, talking to him about how to play Miles,” Ms. Bondurant said in a phone interview. “Bob had great reverence for Christian because both were motorcycle racers. With Christian’s motorcycle racing experience, Bob said: ‘I’d do anything to get him to quit acting. I could get him to win Le Mans.’”

 


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