As I navigate having a website for the first time, I have started to think about what kind of content I plan to provide.
Sometimes I will be posting a blog, with what I hope is useful information about auto racing history or collectibles, and on other occasions it will be a photo from the Racing Pictorial archives.
A quick note, I am, I believe the fourth (or possibly fifth) person to own a large chunk of the Racing Pictorial photo library. The first was of course, the great publisher of the magazine, Ray Mann. The collection has passed through a couple of hands over the years, and unfortunately, as happens in these cases, some of it has been pieced out.
But I am proud to own tens of thousands of IndyCar, NASCAR, Sports Car and Formula 1 negatives and slides from this historic magazine.
I plan to share some of the photographs here, as while I enjoy having binders of the negatives on my shelves it is more fun to see reactions from folks and share stories I believe.
Today’s photo is fun because it answers a bit of a trivia question for folks, the Skoal Bandit wasn’t always the Skoal Bandit.
In 1983 the car and driver combination that would shock the establishment at Indianapolis showed up at Atlanta as an unsponsored, but still pretty cool, March. Fabi qualified ninth for his first IndyCar race but dropped out early with a suspension issue.
Of course the next race was Indianapolis, and by then the car looked like this.
Fabi started on the pole at Indianapolis, and didn’t start lower than fourth the rest of the season!
