Customer Reviews

The Stainless Steel Carrot: An Auto Racing Odyssey

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This book is incredibly hard to find...and with good reason. It chronicles the early career of John Morton, a sports car racing driver, and the way the money end of the sport works (in the early '70's of course) and how teams are structured and the commitment required to "be good" at racing. I'm on the inside of racing. I crew on a sports car and have worked as a press photographer for over ten years in all types of professional motorsports. I've seen what it's really like. If you want to find out what it's really like....read this book. It has no peer.

This is the only book available that gives a detailed look as the brief Trans-AM 2.5 Challenge series. This short lived race series introduced sedan racing to America and produced many memorable battles between Alfa, Datsun and BMW. This book was invaluable in researching the Trans-AM history for the popular BSedan.com web site. Highly recommended!

As an SCCA racer who recently bought a Datsun 510 to run in Vintage races, I found The Stainless Steel Carrot: An auto racing odyssey, fascinating.

Covering the 1971 - 1973 racing seasons, author Sylvia Wilkinson follows SCCA racer John Morton and the BRE (Brock Racing Engineering) team. A talented driver, Morton drove the BRE 2.5 Datsun 510 in the SCCA TransAm Series, a Formula A Lotus in the L&M Continental 5000 series, a Sprint car, and co-drove with Brock in the Baja California.

Ms. Wilkinson is like a fly on the wall, giving an intimate descriptions of conversations, attitudes, arguments, races, rationales of all the players - everything that goes on in the '71 - 73 season, no holds barred.

People who have been around SCCA racing in the past will recognize names of well-known drivers, as well as people they know. 24 pages of race and trackside photos round-out this excellent book. (Alfa lovers will be glad to see photos of their favorite marque and drivers, too.)