SUNDAY DRIVER

by Brock Yates ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 13, 1972

Good Christ!,"" exclaims Brock Yates, the mythbusting racing journalist--he's always exclaiming things like ""Christ, that'll take hours"" as he is seen here behind the wheel, roaring around the track at speeds, well, you wouldn't believe. ""I could not depend on secondary sources. I would have to do it myself,"" shouts Yates, Car and Driver's answer to Hunter Thompson of HeWs Angels and Fear & Loathing. And, Christ, Yates did it. Going--and we mean flying--from driving school to the pits towide-open. You're with him all the way, whipping around the raceways, circling, following, gaining, giving it the gas, thinking, observing -- the scene, the men who race for a living for thrills or for blood, the Foyts and Andrettis and Gurneys, those ""zany, nomadic soldiers-of-fortune"" who might be ""motorized lemmings"" (as Ring's son John Lardner once called them) but are really nothing more than car freaks and overgrown boys playing a fast game with death. And always writing -- poetically (""The sun was being sucked into the murk over Los Angeles"") and metaphorically (""Swede's engine had blown up like a Fourth of July rocket"") and philosophically (""Mad enterprises seldom have cogent beginings""). Finishing it all with a 36-hour zoom across this country via Interstate in a Ferrari with Dan Gurney as co-driver. For anyone into auto racing, this travels.

Pub Date: Nov. 13, 1972

ISBN: 1560255412

Page Count: -

Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1972

Categories: NONFICTION