[h=2]RACER@25: Issue No. 138, Oct. 2003 - Road Not Taken[/h] Friday, 14 April 2017


By RACER Staff







Related Stories RACER@25: Issue No. 241, May 2012 - Game Changer - the RACER 3.0 era begins


RACER@25: Issue No. 277, June 2016, The Great Teams Issue: Team Penske at 50


RACER@25: Issue No. 247, Winter 2012 - Technology Issue debuts


RACER@25: Issue No. 244, Aug. 2012 - Great Cars








Corvette's 50th anniversary took center stage as RACER celebrated some of the most iconic racing moments in the brand's history. But the cover story focused on the moment that could have been – Dale Earnhardt racing at Le Mans.
Famed Corvette photographer Richard Prince exposed the secret few knew: Following his expected retirement from Cup Racing, the Intimidator intended to run a full Corvette C5-R season to fulfill a quiet dream, testing his skills against the best sports car drivers in the world while seated in Chevrolet's factory Corvette squad. Enraptured by the Pratt & Miller-built GTS Corvette, Earnhardt – who was testing sub-two-minute laps at Sebring prior to the 2001 Rolex 24 at Daytona – and Dale Earnhardt Jr. finished fourth in GTS, a mix of disappointment and "the neatest thing he'd ever done."
Earnhardt's 2003 was supposed to include all American Le Mans Series events in North America and the Vingt-Quartres Heures du Mans. "It was stirring to say the least," Earnhardt's widow Teresa said. "After all of the plans he had made to retire at the end of 2002, he had changed his mind."
Corvette expert D. Randy Riggs took a break from his role as editor of Vintage Motorsport magazine and wrote the centerpiece for the Corvette 50th anniversary tribute section. From the hiring of Zora Arkus-Dunov in 1953 to the 12 Hours of Sebring GTS class win by Ron Fellows, Johnny O'Connell and Oliver Gavin, Riggs brought "The 50 Magic Moments in Corvette Racing History" to life, while RACER founding editor John Zimmermann profiled Corvette ace O'Connell, an open-wheel hopeful who found another road to the top and challenged Hurley Haywood as the United States' top active endurance racer.

By October 2003 Andy Hallbery had left as editor and was replaced by OnTrack Magazine's founding editor Steve Nickless. It was full circle for Nickless, who had previously served as publisher for Pfanner Communications and was part of the original team that developed the RACER concept back in the late 1980s and early 1990s prior to the magazine's launch in April 1992. So RACER had come full circle back to an American editor involved in its creation.

Nickless' chosen theme for the issue was leadership. So it was no surprise that Roger Penske and his new team boss Tim Cindric were the topic of an expansive feature on Team Penkse's new look and approach by Jeff Olson.
Legendary Cobra Daytona Coupe designer and BRE Datsun team owner Peter Brock provided the story and the photos on the Nurburgring 24 hours titled "Die Grüne Hölle" (The Green Hell). If you look closely at the type font used for the RACER logo of the time (and today), you'll see it was inspired by the font used regularly by Brock during his Shelby and BRE days.
NASCAR correspondent Ben Blake and F1 writer Maurice Hamilton compared what Kevin Harvick and Jenson Button had in common as they came of age in their respective sports – meteoric rises for the kart racer with four Cup wins in his first three seasons, and the wealthy "new generation" F1 star who shot his way through Formula Ford and Formula 3.

Champ Car correspondent David Phillips explored the challenges of Derrick Walker's life as a team owner balancing competitive fire with business sense. Phillips also profiled Swift Race car designer David Bruns, who was by then no longer involved in the company he helped create years before. Bruns' remarkable record of building cars that won first time out from Formula Ford to CART Indy cars was celebrated, as was the can-do spirit of the enterprising group that re-wrote the record books. An interesting footnote is that RACER founder Paul Pfanner's career in racing began in 1972 in the same building in which Swift was founded, working with same team that would go on to launch the company. Pfanner designed Swift's original logo and handled their advertising as he was also beginning to publish SportsCar for the SCCA.

The RACER In Focus by Rick Graves featured two cars in the studio: the BMW M3 and Audi A6 contenders in the GT category of the Speed World Challenge (now know as the Pirelli World Challenge). RACER was an associate sponsor of the series through its relationship via publishing SportsCar for the SCCA. Leading off road writer and historian, Marty Fiolka profiled Ivan "Iron Man" Stewart and his Protruck racing future.
The CART IndyCar series was the foundation of the first decade of RACER, but by this time the series was teetering on the brink of collapse after eight years of civil war with Tony George's Indy Racing League. As the racing world headed toward winter, CART would soon head to bankruptcy court and a new drama would begin.