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jimdonnellyonwheels.com |
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Florida open cockpit racing,
writ large and exceptionally
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Every so often, you run into a
book that’s perhaps not as well known as it ought to be. That’s
underlined when the book in question is a racing history that
involves Florida, our third-largest state, and a place where
cars have been in competition since the dawn of the 20th
century. A lot of that history took place on short ovals, dirt
and paved, and involved drivers in that most primitive and
exciting of classes, Sprint cars. The Sunshine State has a very
rich open-wheel history, and finally, here’s a book that tells
the story with remarkable skill.
Racers in the Sun is an intensely detailed,
delightfully written tale in a sprawling 569 pages, authored and
published by Florida racing historian Richard Golardi, which
covers an impressive amount of breadth in terms of the time
period and variety of driving stars that are outlined chapter by
chapter. The best-known may be Ralph Liguori, who made it all
the way to Indy cars, but the lineup of Florida stars also
includes Robert Smith and the Hall of Fame drivers Pete Folse
and Frank Riddle, the latter of whom was a repeat winner of the
prestigious and historic Little 500 for Sprint cars in Indiana.
The self-published work retails for $32.00 and can be found at
Coastal 181, which sells a whole lot of impressive books on
short track competition. Know what’s most enticing about this
book? As the cover proclaims, it’s only Volume One. |
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