Velocity Calendar 2022

Product Description

The most powerful racing cars on the road courses of planet Earth. That’s what Can-Am 1972 was all about. A thousand horses and more stampeded across North America that summer. Fans had never seen such horsepower. And they got to see it because, despite all the rules and regulations and restrictions so sadly imposed on the formerly “no rules” racing series, born competitors in the drawing offices and dyno cells and race shops came up with ingenious workarounds. And then resolute drivers strapped into cockpits and floored the throttles.

We meet Hulme and Revson of mighty McLaren. We see Donohue and Follmer in a battle neither wanted. We watch hard-driving rivals like Cevert, Hobbs, Minter, Oliver, and others challenging the Big Boys against all odds.

We listen as the once-dominant, thundering Big Block American V8 struggles to stave off a ferociously whispering threat by the novel new twin-turbocharged Flat-12 from Germany.

Motorsports reporter Pete Lyons was there with camera and notepad. Now, 50 years afterward, he brings those days of unequalled performance back
to life with 24 of his own photos, along with his eyewitness memories of those fabulous cars and stars.

Big, bold, and beautiful like the old Can-Am itself, this is not only a premier quality wall calendar for the racing fan, but it is also a glimpse back into an age of epic combat.

About the Author

One sunny day at a sports car race on the old public road course at Bridgehampton, NY, a very young boy who at that time had no interest in automobiles was invited to step into the cockpit of a tiny Cooper-Norton F3 race car. “This one fits me!” he remembers exclaiming in his mind. Today, Pete Lyons looks back on that as a life-changing moment.
Cars that seem to fit are larger now, but the excitement that springs from them is just as fresh. And to his delight, he has been able to devote the intervening decades to happily wandering the raceways of the world, writing about, photographing, and very occasionally being allowed to drive some of the most beautiful and thrilling machines ever created by human genius. Even better, he’s been privileged to know some of the geniuses.
It’s all thanks to his father, Ozzie Lyons, an engineer, photographer and lifelong automobile enthusiast who put Pete’s feet on this road. Ozzie was long the USA correspondent for Autosport magazine, and helped his youngster begin shooting and writing for that British bible too. Gradually, but inevitably, covering motorsports became a career.
For several years Pete reported on the North American scene for Autosport, regularly attending great events like the Daytona 24-hour and 500-mile races, the Sebring 12-hour, the Indy 500, and the annual Formula One Grands Prix in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. A special favorite was the Can-Am, the Canadian-American Challenge Cup series for essentially unlimited big sports racing cars. Those glorious years from 1966 to 1974 are the basis for three of Pete’s books: CAN-AM and CAN-AM PHOTO HISTORY, both from MBI Publishing, and CAN-AM CARS IN DETAIL from David Bull Publishing (see BOOKS page at the author’s website, www.petelyons.com).
Pete then went international, and spent four fulfilling seasons as the F1 correspondent for both Autosport and and the American publication AutoWeek. From January 1973 through October 1976, at a time before live television or the Internet, when fans had to wait for their magazine to arrive to learn the results of a race weekend, Pete tried to put the reader into his shoes at such exotic spots as Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, Japan and all the great circuits of Europe.
After retiring from life on the road Pete spent several years on-staff as editor of a US racing monthly, which at first was called Formula and later renamed Racecar. As a freelancer he has contributed to a wide variety of other automotive publications, including AutoWeek, Car and Driver, Car Graphic, Corvette Quarterly, Cycle, Cycle Worl