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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
A.J. Baime
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April 11 - April 15, 2020
So they waited for the resignation that never came.”
Ferrari learned, as he would later describe, “what life means to a young man who is leaving it.”
and wrote one final sentence: “The match is lost.” “I have lost my son,” he said.
Cars raced in national colors: red for Italy, blue for France, green for England, yellow for Belgium, white (later silver) for Germany.
It was Baracca’s mother who told the young racing driver: “Ferrari, why don’t you put my son’s Cavallino Rampante on your car? It will bring you luck.”
Ferrari laid this Prancing Horse symbol against a yellow shield, the color of Modena. This badge would one day become one of the most recognizable brand symbols in the world.
Competition is the impetus for innovation. The fiercer the competition, the faster cars will go. There is in some men a need to achieve greatness. When matched with talent, this necessity can turn humans into demigods. A man who is willing to die at the wheel is always likely to beat a man in a faster car—if he can survive until the end of the race.
The first Ferrari arrived in the United States in June 1949; the buyer was Briggs Cunningham of Connecticut, the renowned yachting champion and soon-to-be racing driver and constructor. Chinetti understood that his customer had to be special. Not just anyone could buy a Ferrari. The car would be defined in part by the man who sat in it.
Years later Ferrari was asked: Which of his cars was his favorite? He answered, “The car which I have not yet created.” And which of his victories meant the most? “The one which I have not yet achieved.”
They say automobile racing is as old as the second car. Since Karl Benz first patented the “motorwagen” in 1886, cars evolved into two diverse species on either side of the Atlantic. In America, with its vast roads, mapped out by urban planners who literally moved mountains to make way for them, cars were all about the big engine.
If it were not for these checkered flags, would these companies exist today?
In the long run, death is the odds-on favorite.
Ah, the stress of Le Mans!
“True concentration is not aware of itself,” Hill explains.
Shelby never claimed to be a technical genius. His strategy was to surround himself with talent and to inspire his men to achieve beyond what they believed they could.
Ferrari had created a Shakespearean world where intrigue was always brewing and men sometimes paid for mistakes with their lives.
“Women are more intelligent and dominating than men,” Ferrari said. “Men are creatures of their passions, and this makes them victims of women. Ettore Bugatti, a great driver and racing car builder, and a fine gentleman, once told me, ‘The perfect machine does not exist, mechanically speaking. The only perfect machine is a woman.’”
“I prefer living in a state of problems and contradictions to believing in religion. You must be courageous in looking at the truth. Only he who looks at the truth is a whole man.
“When such passion connected to the human spirit explodes like this, it is stronger than life itself, and it is stronger than death.”
He had to sense a problem before it happened. He must have felt like a bullet in a gun barrel.
“To do something well is so worthwhile that to die trying to do it better cannot be foolhardy. It would be a waste of life to do nothing with one’s ability, for I feel that life is measured in achievement, not in years alone.”
As one obit put it, “We don’t have to feel sorry for people who choose to live dangerously, and lose. So the bull wins one. The matador must take the risk. The closer he plays to the horn, the better the show . . . Well, Miles, good show.”
Then: “There will never be another Ken Miles.”
Miles should have taken that Le Mans trophy—the greatest of them all—with him to his grave.
