This Week in Racing History (May 2-8)

This Week in Racing History

May 2 - Indy car driver Buzz Calkins born (1971).

May 3 - F1 racer Heinze-Harold Frentzen born (1967).

May 4 - Designer John Barnard born (1946).

- Henri Toivonen dies in accident during rally in Corsica (1986).

May 5 - Bob Said, sportscar racer and father of Boris Said, born (1932).

- Tom Pryce dies in accident during South African Grand Prix (1977).

- Judge James F. Nolan rules that CART entries for the Indianapolis 500, previously rejected by USAC, are valid (1979).

May 6 - Diane Holl born (1964).

May 7 - Mike Spence turns a lap of 169.555 mph at Indy in an STP Lotus turbine car. He then crashes in turn one and dies that night. Later that same same night, Carroll Shelby will withdraw his two uncompetitive turbine cars from the Indy 500 (1968).

- After years of running Plymouths, Richard Petty debuts his Dodge Charger stockcar in the NASCAR Winston 500 at Talledega, Alabama, USA. He finishes in fifth (1972).

May 8 - Andy Granatelli passes his Indy rookie driver's test (1948).

- NASCAR stockcar driver Bobby Labonte born (1964).

- Gilles Villeneuve dies in qualifying accident for the Belgian GP at Zolder (1982).

Previous installments of This Week in Racing History can be found at the Motorsport News International website (http://www.motorsport.com/).

Michael Stucker stucker@$sugar-land.spc.slb.com Remove "$" from email address above. Copyright Michael J. Stucker 1999 www.flash.net/~cstucker