Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Behind the Lens: Richard Prince’s Road to Racing Immortality

Transcript

Behind the Lens: Richard Prince’s Road to Racing Immortality · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

0:00
BreakFix podcast is all about capturing the living history of people from
0:04
all over the autosphere, from wrench turners and racers to artists, authors,
0:09
designers, and everything in between.
0:11
Our goal is to inspire a new generation of petrolheads that wonder How did they
0:17
get that job or become that person?
0:19
The road to success is paved by all of us because everyone has a story
0:27
involved in the car hobby.
0:28
Since his childhood, our guests founded a vintage restoration business
0:32
after completing his graduate degree.
0:35
And by 1991, his career had evolved into being an automotive
0:38
photographer, journalist, and author.
0:41
Richard Prince has photographed for brands like Aston Martin, Audi, Bentley,
0:45
Cadillac, Ferrari, Jaguar, Mercedes Benz, and at some of the most interesting
0:49
locations and racetracks around the world.
0:52
He's published numerous books as well as authoring and illustrating
0:56
thousands of magazine articles.
0:57
There's no doubt you've seen his photography in dozens of books
1:01
and over 400 publications in more than 80 countries worldwide.
1:05
And he's here to tell us all about his exciting journey filled with
1:09
twists and turns that he never thought his career would take him on.
1:13
And with that, Richard, welcome to Brake Fix.
1:15
Thank you very much.
1:16
Thank you for having me.
1:17
Well, Richard, like all good Brake Fix stories, there's a superhero origin.
1:21
So tell us about the who, what, when, and where of how you got involved in
1:26
the automotive and motorsports world.
1:28
Take us back to the beginning, up through 1988, and this restoration business
1:32
and the journey into photography.
1:34
How did that all play out?
1:36
Well, as with many people, it began as a hobby.
1:38
It was mesmerized by certain cars.
1:40
From early as childhood and among them were early Corvettes, E
1:44
type Jaguars, certain Ferraris.
1:47
I was in love with first generation Camaros.
1:50
Grew up at a time and in a place where cars were very
1:53
central to young people's lives.
1:55
What really got me going was we went on a family trip to California and
2:00
while there my sister bought a copy of a car magazine and they happened to
2:04
have an article about a 1967 Corvette.
2:08
I took one look at the photos of that car and I was absolutely infatuated.
2:13
I was, I think about 12 years old.
2:16
All of a sudden I couldn't wait to get home because I wanted to get a job, start
2:19
earning money so I can save money so that I could buy a, an early Corvette.
2:23
And in fact, I did exactly that.
2:24
I got home and the only job I could get at that age was a paper route and was cutting
2:28
lawns and shoveling snow in the winter and doing anything I could to earn a little
2:32
bit of money to, Save up for that car.
2:35
So do you think that magazine was a little bit of foreshadowing?
2:38
It is always interesting looking back at how small things can
2:42
ultimately really profoundly change the trajectory of one's life.
2:46
Had my sister not bought that magazine?
2:48
Well, I still would have been in love with cars, but.
2:51
Wouldn't have been a turning point where I went from being interested in them as a 12
2:55
year old to being absolutely obsessed with earning the money to buy one of these.
3:00
And I was still obviously several years away from being able to drive one.
3:04
But yeah, it is interesting that.
3:06
Her simple act of buying that magazine and sharing it with me changed a lot for me.
3:11
What did you go to school to study?
3:12
Was photography at the front of your mind?
3:14
Was that something you wanted to do?
3:16
Or even that was like a hobby in the background, something you were
3:19
just doing because you enjoyed it?
3:20
It was a hobby and I was not obsessed with it.
3:23
Around four or five years old, my grandfather bought my sister and
3:26
I, uh, I want to say a toy camera.
3:27
It wasn't a toy, they were real, but they were inexpensive
3:30
kind of throwaway cameras.
3:32
And this was in the late 1960s.
3:34
I was fascinated with it and loved it.
3:37
A few years later, my parents gifted me a Polaroid camera.
3:41
And of course that was like magic technology as well, but I
3:44
did not, as a child, aspire to be a professional photographer.
3:48
It just never occurred to me.
3:49
I wasn't infatuated with photography.
3:52
And I went to school for unrelated subjects.
3:54
My undergraduate degree was in English and the history.
3:58
And simply because I was interested in those subjects, I did not know
4:01
what I wanted to be when I grew up.
4:03
Followed my heart and studied what I was interested in.
4:05
And then went to graduate school.
4:07
And then started a restoration business.
4:10
How does that all work out?
4:11
Well, it was a very intense hobby for my girlfriend, who's now my wife and I,
4:16
we did a complete restoration, our first complete restoration when I was at the
4:21
end of my high school career, we had a 66 Corvette that has some, Rust in the
4:26
chassis and the best way to fix that was to take the body off the chassis.
4:30
And we didn't have facilities, we didn't really have all the tools we
4:34
needed, and we certainly didn't have the experience we needed, but we were pretty
4:38
fearless as a lot of teenagers are.
4:40
So we dove right in and working out of our home garage at her parents house
4:45
and mostly working in the driveway, we did a complete body off the chassis
4:49
restoration of that car in circa 1981, 82.
4:55
And I went off to college in Manhattan, and I did my four years there, and
5:02
then, still not knowing what I wanted to do with myself, decided to go to
5:05
law school, so I went to California, completed law school, and was
5:09
working at a law firm in Los Angeles.
5:12
And I had mixed feelings about staying there on the West coast, but I likely
5:16
would have at least for some amount of time, but it was actually my girlfriend
5:21
who became my wife, who was really determined to turn our hobby, which we
5:25
both love very much into a business.
5:27
I was a little hesitant about that.
5:29
I thought it might take a lot of the joy out of it if we had to do
5:32
it every day, rather than doing it because we wanted to do it.
5:35
I did realize.
5:37
It would be much more difficult later on to walk away from a career and
5:43
take a risk and start a business.
5:45
I don't know if it was a logical choice, but the logic seemed to be, I'm at the
5:49
very beginning of my legal career, so I don't have, A lot of time and effort
5:55
invested in a trajectory there, and the trajectory is either toward a partnership
6:00
if you're with a firm or typically toward building your own business,
6:04
building up clientele and hiring people.
6:07
You know, once you get years into that investment, it's
6:10
very difficult to step away.
6:12
And also, of course, it's very difficult to step away from the income.
6:15
I went from working your typical lower paying jobs.
6:19
It's through junior high school and high school and through college.
6:23
And then all of a sudden I was earning a new lawyer's salary and it
6:26
was a lot of money to leave behind.
6:28
But three, four, five, seven years down the road, it would
6:31
have been way more difficult.
6:32
So I agreed to give it a try, give it one year, start a
6:36
business and see how it goes.
6:38
So that's how we ended up in the car restoration business.
6:40
That was 1988.
6:42
And in 1991, according to your resume, you started working as a photographer.
6:46
So in those three years, what changed?
6:49
What was your big break?
6:50
How did you suddenly go from doing the restorations and all
6:53
these other plethora of things?
6:54
As you said, trying to find your way.
6:57
And now you're behind the lens of a camera.
6:59
Yeah, that's another very unusual part of my story.
7:03
The answer involves my wife.
7:04
We were very, very busy right from the moment we opened the doors,
7:08
we specialized in old Corvettes at any given time had five or six or
7:13
seven of something else in the shop.
7:15
We typically had about 18 or 20 vintage Corvettes and five or
7:19
six or seven of something else.
7:21
And that ranged from your typical muscle cars, SS Chevelles and Shelby
7:25
Mustangs to one offs and odd cars.
7:29
I had one custom.
7:30
We had a customer who was really fascinated with Paso Vegas,
7:32
where it was a French made car.
7:34
We restored a vintage MG.
7:36
We had a customer with a vintage Bentley, a one off custom body Bentley.
7:41
Well, what happened was my wife wrote a letter to the editor of Vet magazine.
7:45
The editor at the time was a man named D, Randy Riggs.
7:49
He received her letter and was planning to publish it, but he had some questions.
7:53
So he called the number that she provided in the letter, which was the shop
7:57
number, and he spoke with her first.
7:59
The name of the business was Real Cars and he said, what's Real Cars?
8:03
And she explained it's a full service restoration business.
8:06
He said, Oh, what a coincidence.
8:08
I am looking for somebody with a lot of hands on experience with the cars who
8:13
can write a column for me every month.
8:15
Would you be interested?
8:16
She doesn't like writing.
8:17
It's not her thing.
8:19
And so she immediately said, no, definitely not.
8:21
Not for me, but maybe my husband would be interested.
8:23
He's done quite a lot of writing, uh, all through his schooling
8:27
career, and he enjoys writing.
8:28
So she called me and I was in the shop.
8:31
And it's astounding when I think back, it was literally a two minute conversation,
8:36
a very simple happenstance that changed the trajectory of my life in a way.
8:41
We were super busy.
8:42
We're open long hours.
8:44
We had typically between 12 and 15 employees.
8:47
There was a lot to do and a lot to manage.
8:49
And so she called me in and said that the editor of that magazine is on the
8:52
phone and he wants to ask you a question.
8:54
And so he said, I'm looking for somebody to write a column.
8:57
Would you be interested without thinking deeply at all?
9:01
I just said a column about a lot.
9:02
And he said, it's up to you.
9:04
Anything that you think is of interest to Corvette hobbyists.
9:07
You write about whatever you want.
9:09
Literally, in three seconds, I said, Okay, sounds like fun.
9:12
I enjoy writing.
9:13
But with one caveat, as long as you and I can agree that if you don't
9:17
like what I send you, or I don't like doing it, we can part friends
9:22
and there'll be no hard feelings.
9:23
And he said, Deal.
9:24
That's how I got started.
9:25
I started writing a column, a monthly column for that magazine, and it was
9:29
toward the end of 1991, and I think the first column was published in March of 92.
9:36
Another kind of funny part of this is, I never discussed payment with him.
9:39
I was so focused on what was going on in the shop, you know, the things
9:43
that I was responsible for, it didn't occur to me to say, does this pay?
9:47
How much does it pay?
9:49
It was a release for me.
9:50
It was a, it was recreational, believe it or not.
9:52
I enjoyed it.
9:53
Great diversion from what I was doing every day.
9:56
A few weeks later, a check arrived in the mail.
9:58
That made it even better.
9:59
So I continued doing, I wrote that column for more than 10 years.
10:04
Column quickly led to requests to write more.
10:07
I did quite a few technical articles in the beginning and car features as well.
10:12
And those required photography.
10:14
And initially for the first few photography assignments
10:18
that went to somebody else.
10:19
So I was.
10:20
Asked to write about a certain car or a certain procedure.
10:24
Somebody else was asked to do the photography and that didn't work well.
10:28
I hate to say it, but the stereotype about the difficult artists
10:31
that really grounded in reality.
10:33
So some of the time the photographer just didn't even show up.
10:37
It felt like half the time when the photographer showed up, the photos
10:40
were no good, they didn't work.
10:42
Why not?
10:42
The location.
10:43
was terrible.
10:44
The light was terrible.
10:45
The lab ruined the film.
10:47
All I could think of was, well, who chose the location?
10:50
You did.
10:51
Who chose the time of day when the light was no good?
10:54
You did.
10:54
And how many times can the lab ruin the film?
10:56
We did a lot of photography as part of the restoration business.
11:00
Every extensive restoration that we did was photo documented.
11:04
So the owner of the car, when the restoration was
11:06
completed, got a photo out.
11:08
It was something nice to do for the customers.
11:10
And it also was a way for us to document the work that we were doing.
11:13
It wasn't creative photography or art photography, but it was photography.
11:17
So we were shooting 25, 30, 35 rolls of film every week because it was
11:23
a busy shop with a lot of cars.
11:25
And I never once had the lab room in the film.
11:27
So I quickly lost patience with the photographers.
11:31
I was doing it because I enjoyed it, not because it was my
11:34
livelihood or I needed to do it.
11:36
I was doing it because I enjoyed it.
11:37
And when the photographer didn't show up with a lab room in the film, it
11:40
certainly took the fun out of it for me.
11:42
So I immediately concluded I either had to just stop doing this.
11:47
Or do the photography myself.
11:49
That's how I became a photographer.
11:51
Necessity breeds invention, right?
11:53
In this case, I guess it begets a solution.
11:57
Yes.
11:58
I didn't have any formal training.
12:00
I did have the kind assistance of my first editor.
12:03
The man I mentioned, D Randy Riggs.
12:05
He was already an established, accomplished, talented photographer.
12:09
He wasn't in the habit of taking people who didn't know what they were doing.
12:12
Under his wing, but I already had a relationship with him
12:15
and with the publisher because I was writing the column.
12:18
So he helped me in the beginning to really get a grasp of the basics.
12:23
It's not rocket engineering.
12:24
It was, of course, a little more challenging.
12:26
Back then, we're talking 1992, no digital, it was all film.
12:31
So there was obviously a disconnect between shooting the images
12:34
and then seeing the images.
12:36
So it was a little harder to learn quickly.
12:38
Today, of course, you can see your mistakes immediately.
12:41
Again, it wasn't super complicated for me, sort of a visual person, and
12:46
I can think in a 3D kind of a way.
12:49
It was pretty easy to get pretty good quickly.
12:52
Getting better and better, of course, became more and more challenging.
12:56
So if I follow your chronology correctly, and listening to other interviews you've
13:01
done, and past times that we've gotten together, part of your story involves
13:05
not just Corvette, But General Motors and the birth of Corvette Racing.
13:09
And you mentioned that you wrote this column for Vet
13:12
Magazine for nearly 10 years.
13:13
So if I do my math right, that puts us into the early 2000s.
13:17
And Corvette Racing started in 1997, thereabouts.
13:21
So how does that all come together?
13:23
Is it a result of Vet Magazine?
13:25
Was there another random phone call that got you in the door at General Motors?
13:30
That's an even stranger story.
13:32
I say it is.
13:33
It's a most unlikely sequence of unrelated events that led me to where I am today.
13:38
What happened with that was, we, my wife and I, discovered a long lost,
13:44
very well known Corvette race car.
13:46
We first encountered the car in 1988.
13:49
I was after the engine that was in it.
13:51
The engine that was in the car at the time was the original
13:54
engine for a different Corvette.
13:56
They were both 67s.
13:58
So there was a 67 Coupe here on Long Island that had been raced
14:02
since anybody could remember.
14:04
The man who owned it owned two Corvettes at the same time.
14:07
And in 1973, he took the 427, 435 horse engine out of his convertible.
14:14
It was original to the convertible and he put it in the Coupe and
14:17
went racing with the Coupe.
14:19
He sold the convertible with a different engine.
14:21
In 1988, we contacted him with the intention of buying the engine.
14:26
The tripower 427 that was in his coupe buying the convertible that
14:32
that engine was original to and reuniting we called him he was
14:36
very happy to sell us the engine.
14:38
I went to see the engine and didn't occur to me.
14:42
Maybe the car it's in is.
14:43
Something worth looking at.
14:45
When I got there, there were things about that car that were super intriguing.
14:51
It was a 67 coupe.
14:52
It had been on MSO until 1987.
14:56
The man who owned it, loaned it to somebody who raced at a
14:59
bridge Hampton, crashed it in 87.
15:02
And the man who owned it thought his.
15:04
Intense racing days were winding down, and when he fixed the crash
15:09
damage, he decided he would put the car on the street for the first time.
15:13
Put more of an interior in it, and windshield wipers, and turn signals,
15:18
and so on and so forth, and he went to a DMV office in New York in 1988 and
15:22
registered that car for the first time.
15:24
I thought, well, that's interesting.
15:25
Here's a car that was never registered.
15:28
So obviously somebody bought this car to race when it was new.
15:31
The man that owned it at the time, he bought it in 73 and he did not know
15:36
anything about its history prior to 73.
15:39
And at the time, not that I.
15:40
I examined the car and there were some really intriguing
15:44
things about the car itself.
15:45
It was a car equipped with an option called C48.
15:49
C48 was a heater defrost to delete option.
15:52
So every 67 Corvette started life with a heater and defroster
15:57
system, buyers could delete that.
15:59
Chevrolet Bill 35, no heater cars in 1967.
16:04
And I believe technically those cars were not even street legal
16:08
because I believe in 1967, every car sold for street use in America
16:12
had to have a windshield defroster.
16:14
So it was kind of a wacky option and a Corvette started in 1967.
16:19
The base price was a little over 4, 000 and you could easily get over 5,
16:23
000 with some options and a really loaded car would approach 6, 000.
16:28
So who would delete a heater system to save a few dollars?
16:32
It didn't make sense unless you were buying a car specifically
16:35
to race and only the race.
16:37
I looked at the car and I knew it was a factory, no heater car.
16:40
The most interesting thing about that is there were no rules.
16:44
Anybody could buy a no heater car.
16:45
If a buyer bought the L88 engine package, which was an all out
16:51
road racing engine package, they could not get a heater in the car.
16:55
Every L88 produced.
16:57
In 1967 was a no heater car.
17:00
They produced 20 L 80 eights.
17:02
Of the 35 no heater cars produced.
17:04
20 of them were L 80 eights, 15 were not.
17:08
I can do simple math.
17:09
If you are looking at a 67 Corvette that you believe to be a factory,
17:14
no heater, defroster car, there is better than a 50 50 chance you are
17:18
looking at a factory, a 88 car.
17:20
And there were a few other things.
17:21
The car had J 56 brakes.
17:24
which by itself is not super rare.
17:26
I think they made 236 J56 brake cars.
17:29
That's a heavy duty brake option.
17:31
Every L88 had to have a J56 brake option.
17:35
All of the pieces for the factory option were there, but there were
17:38
also some pieces in the brake system that differed from normal production
17:42
and that were not part of the J56.
17:44
production option.
17:46
So that was highly unusual and quite interesting to me.
17:49
The front chassis crossmember had an area where there was a section cut out.
17:54
Steel had been shaped, placed in there, and welded in there to create a recess.
17:58
There's normally a recess in the front crossmember to provide clearance for
18:01
the harmonic balancer on big blocks.
18:03
So starting in 65, they all had a recess for the balancer.
18:07
That car had an additional recess.
18:09
The man who had the car didn't know what it was.
18:11
He said, that was there when I bought it.
18:13
I don't know what it's for.
18:15
I knew what it was for.
18:16
It was to provide clearance for a dry sump on a big block Chevrolet engine.
18:20
So I said to myself, you know, you're looking at a car that
18:24
was never registered until 1987.
18:26
It has an unusual brake system that goes beyond the factory big brake setup.
18:31
It's a factory no heater, no defroster car.
18:34
And whoever owned this car prior to 1973 was running a dry sump big block.
18:40
If you put that in the context of racing, In the late sixties into the
18:45
early seventies, big block Corvettes raced in SCCA production, or if they
18:50
were racing an FIA sanctioned races like Lamar or Sebring or Daytona.
18:54
Modifications were allowed, but I'm not aware, and I'm not saying it
18:59
didn't happen, but I was not aware of anybody running a production based
19:05
Corvette with a dry sump big block in it in that timeframe, dry sump, big
19:09
block Chevrolet engines were found at that time in Can Am cars, for
19:13
example, not in production Corvettes, putting all the pieces together.
19:18
I said, this is a super interesting car.
19:20
Well, we ultimately ended up buying the car, still didn't know it's early history.
19:24
We were researching it.
19:25
It was a long tedious process, but we ultimately got back to the
19:29
owner before the man we bought it from and the owner before him.
19:34
And that car was in fact, a factory L88 car.
19:37
It was owned new by an oil company called the Sunray DX oil company.
19:42
They bought it specifically to go road racing from Yanko Chevrolet.
19:46
Yanko race prepared the car and it was the GT winner at the
19:49
12 hours of Sebring in 1967.
19:52
And it was the GT winner in the 24 hours of Daytona in 1968.
19:56
So it was super, super rare, highly valuable and fascinating car.
20:02
We restored it to its Sebring configuration, spent thousands of hours
20:07
researching the history of the car, traveled all over the country, did video
20:11
interviews with everybody who was still alive, who was connected to the car, it
20:15
took me from coast to coast and Believe it or not to the Eisenhower presidential
20:20
library, because man named Clyde Wheeler was the vice president at Sunray DX oil.
20:25
He later became a cabinet member in the Eisenhower administration
20:28
and all his papers ended up in the Eisenhower Memorial library in Kansas.
20:32
So anyway, my wife and I restored it.
20:36
We showed it.
20:37
We've been to trace that we adored it and we commissioned an artist.
20:41
To do a painting of that car.
20:43
It was the first and last time we've ever hired an artist to do a painting for us.
20:47
I asked some people at Chevrolet who I was friendly with, that they could
20:51
recommend a automotive fine artists.
20:53
They recommended Charles Maher in Michigan.
20:55
We hired him.
20:56
He did the painting and when it was completed, he asked us if he could
21:00
display it at an automotive fine artists society show in Detroit.
21:05
And of course we said, sure.
21:07
He displayed that painting at an AFAS show.
21:10
Coincidentally, a man named Gary Claudio went to see that show.
21:15
Corvette guy, car guy, he fell in love with the painting and wanted to buy it.
21:19
And the artist explained to him it was a commissioned work.
21:22
It's not for sale.
21:23
Somebody already owns it.
21:24
And Gary said, well, maybe whoever you did the work for would sell it to me.
21:28
And the artist said, I doubt it.
21:30
I'll pass your info along to them, but I doubt they'll sell it.
21:33
It's a couple in New York and they own the actual car that's shown.
21:36
That was in 1992.
21:37
Yeah.
21:38
Three, four years later, that same man, Gary Claudio was the marketing
21:43
manager for Chevrolet racing, a planning meeting, they were discussing
21:47
delivery for this race program.
21:50
That's coming.
21:51
He was planning the public unveil of the program, which took place at SEMA in 1998,
21:58
and he's a Corvette buff and a Corvette history enthusiast, and he thought,
22:02
wouldn't it be cool if I could put together a display with some historically
22:05
significant vintage Corvette race cars.
22:08
And he immediately thought of that painting and the Sunray DX LED8.
22:12
So he tracked down the artist and from the artist got my phone number and my name.
22:17
One day in late 1997, my phone rang and it was another astounding conversation
22:23
as was the conversation with Randy Riggs.
22:25
It was a couple of minutes long and it really did change
22:29
the trajectory of my life.
22:31
He called and asked me, and I said, this is Richard Prince.
22:34
And he said, Richard, I want to ask a big favor of you, but before I ask the
22:39
favor, I have to know if I can trust you.
22:41
I thought it was a prank.
22:42
I was living in New York at the time on Long Island.
22:45
I was working in Manhattan.
22:47
The guy on the other end of the phone had a distinct Long Island accent.
22:51
So I said, okay, this is one of my idiot friends.
22:54
And there's some kind of a joke or a prank, and I couldn't place a voice, I
22:57
didn't know who it was, in the middle of writing a story, and I was busy, and I,
23:01
he said, okay, whatever, I'll play along, so, he said, before I ask you for this big
23:05
favor, I have to know if I can trust you, and I said, buddy, you can trust me with
23:09
your life, what do you need, and I thought I was gonna get a punchline, and it was
23:13
gonna be a ha ha, and he said, my name is Gary Claudio, I'm the marketing manager
23:17
for Chevrolet Racing, And I want to borrow your 1967 L88 race car for a display.
23:23
We have a factory road race program coming and we're going to Unvalid.
23:27
And, and of course, in that instant, I knew that it wasn't a prank.
23:31
And he said, I got your name and number from Charles Maher.
23:33
I saw your painting a few years ago.
23:35
I said, yes, I'm happy to loan you the car.
23:39
And we had another historic Corvette race car and SCCA national championship
23:44
winning C1 Corvette at the time.
23:46
And I said, I have another Corvette you might be interested in and
23:49
you can borrow both of them.
23:51
And now I'd like to ask you for a favor.
23:53
And I did say the answer to my question, um, doesn't change the outcome of my
23:57
willingness to loan you these cars.
23:59
I said, at the present time, I'm writing and photographing cars
24:03
for a whole variety of magazines.
24:05
And this race program sounds really cool.
24:08
I would like to basically join the team and bed with the program and
24:12
have unlimited permission to go wherever they go and to photograph
24:16
whatever it is that they're doing.
24:18
And I'll stick with the program.
24:20
It was scheduled to be a three year program, so there was about
24:22
a year and a half of testing and then three years of racing.
24:26
I said, I'll start immediately.
24:28
I'll go where they go.
24:29
I'll stick with the testing and the three years of racing.
24:32
And when it's over, I will produce a book about it.
24:34
I wasn't asking GM to pay for it.
24:37
I was just asking for permission to do it without hesitating.
24:40
He said, you got it.
24:42
So that in a nutshell is how I became a racing photographer and to not take
24:47
us down a slightly different path.
24:49
But I have a question to ask because you're probably one of the few people
24:52
that might know where Jake came from.
24:56
Is it because of Gary Claudio?
24:58
Is it something that somebody said?
25:00
Where does that iconic?
25:01
Figure of Corvette racing come from since you were there at its inception.
25:05
Yeah.
25:05
Gary Claudio figures prominently in that story.
25:08
Then it's the sort of thing that quickly morphs into sort of an urban legend.
25:12
And over time, the details are forgotten and the key players can be
25:16
forgotten some number of years ago.
25:18
I did a deep dive into that.
25:20
And I wrote a very detailed article about Jake because I
25:23
saw all kinds of explanations around that I knew were wrong.
25:26
What happened with that is, some of the team management, specifically, most
25:31
specifically, Doug Feehan, who was the program manager for Corvette Racing
25:34
from the beginning for many years, thought that a key to the program's
25:39
success was reaching younger people.
25:40
GM is a very conservative company, and it has been for a long time.
25:45
Feehan and others thought, we need to get edgier, we need to
25:49
Find ways to reach out to, and to make friends with younger people.
25:54
So he actually hired a very small edgy marketing agency that was based in
25:59
New York city run by a guy named Eddie Jabbour to come on board and to help
26:04
figure this out, how do we develop this persona and reach a younger audience?
26:09
Eddie came to Lamar to just start to get a feel for the team and to get
26:15
an understanding sort of brainstorm and come up with some ideas.
26:19
At the same time, there was a crew member, one of the truck drivers,
26:23
and one of the pit crew members, a guy named Don Nell, who had a little
26:27
bit of a fascination with skulls.
26:29
It's just sort of something that he enjoyed.
26:31
It's like sort of a biker culture thing, you know, skulls figure prominently
26:35
in mythology and in literature.
26:38
And Don just loved these skulls.
26:40
He, um, started putting little skull stickers and little
26:43
skull pins around on the car.
26:46
And some executives at GM were highly annoyed by that.
26:49
And it became a little bit of a cat and mouse thing.
26:51
So Don would hide these little skulls.
26:53
They'd appear here, there, everywhere.
26:55
And then somebody from GM would take the sticker off the car
26:58
or these little metal pins.
27:00
Eddie took notice of that, thought, how can we sort of harness this?
27:04
This is edgy and this is kind of funny and cool.
27:07
And he literally on a napkin drew what became Jake.
27:12
He conceived the idea with Gary Claudio doing this sort of stylized
27:17
skull that incorporated key elements of the Corvette Emble.
27:21
That napkin and that drawing still exists.
27:23
That's where the skull logo came from.
27:26
The name Jake came from Gary Claudio.
27:29
Claudio, prior to Corvette, was with Pontiac racing.
27:33
One night at a, at a race, Gary and some of the crew people went
27:38
out, and they had dinner, and they had probably too much to drink.
27:41
And on the way back to the hotel, somebody stole a lawn ornament.
27:47
You know, one of the old fashioned, the little guy holding the, uh, little pail.
27:51
So they stole this lawn ornament because they thought it was funny and they
27:54
brought it back to the track the next day.
27:57
It became sort of the team mascot, this lawn ornament, dress them up
28:01
and they got a credential for him.
28:03
Gary named the lawn ornament Jake, and it was named after a recently born
28:08
baby of one of the team principals.
28:10
One of the team owners had a son born.
28:13
The son's name was Jay.
28:14
So they named the.
28:15
Team mascot after the son of the team owner.
28:17
Once the skull logo was created, Eddie Jabbour drew it out on the napkin.
28:22
Gary christened the new mascot, Jake.
28:25
So that is how that happened.
28:26
And then there was a stretch there where GM really didn't embrace it.
28:31
People at GM who thought it was the wrong image.
28:33
So there was this.
28:34
A little bit of tension and this constant back and forth with
28:37
these jakes showing up everywhere.
28:39
They started showing up everywhere.
28:41
It was showing up on t shirts.
28:43
It seemed to be coming from a website called Bad Boy Vets.
28:47
And the website was created to look like a couple of 14 or 15 year old bad boys,
28:54
bratty young teenagers created this thing.
28:57
It was really edgy, but it was actually Eddie Jabbour who created the website.
29:02
And that was pushing this Jake Skull logo.
29:05
Over time, the fans really embraced it.
29:07
Pretty soon, some designers at Chevrolet took a liking to it.
29:12
It reached sort of tidal wave proportions where the people at GM who thought it was
29:17
a bad idea, just couldn't resist anymore.
29:20
Eventually it was completely embraced by General Motors and you'll see
29:23
Jake now it's all over the C8s.
29:25
It was on the C7s, it was on C6s, it was imprinted on the under hood
29:29
insulation, and it's showing up embroidered on seats and in body graphics.
29:34
So that, that's a somewhat abridged version of the Jake logo.
29:38
As we switch gears into the next segment, one question that sort of still
29:43
lingers here from your origin story is, what about your restoration business?
29:47
Is Real Cars still around?
29:48
Is that something you're still doing now for fun?
29:50
Or did you put all that to bed?
29:52
Well, we sold that business in 1995 and stayed on in the transition period.
29:58
We sold it to a friend of ours who was already in the restoration business.
30:02
He's an interesting character.
30:04
He was actually also obsessed with Corvettes and turned a hobby into a
30:09
business long before we did, but he was always sort of flying under the radar.
30:13
He didn't have proper operating licenses and we were completely compliant, which
30:17
was a full time job in and of itself.
30:19
We had painted.
30:20
So we had permits for everything, paint storage, emissions, the spray booth.
30:25
Fire suppression system, waste management, all this, you know, it's very difficult,
30:30
especially in New York to maintain a legitimate business doing automotive
30:34
work and body work and painting.
30:36
And so he needed to sort of come out of the shadows and
30:39
it was a match made in heaven.
30:41
He bought the business and he kept his name.
30:43
So the name no longer exists, but he's still going and he's still very actively
30:47
restoring, doing beautiful work, mostly Corvettes, but other cars as well.
30:52
So we stayed on through the end of 1995 and then stayed there another, about
30:57
another five months, because we had a car of our own that was in process and it
31:02
was a part, the body was off the chassis.
31:04
And I knew at that point.
31:05
Point, we were going to move on to other things and we needed to put that
31:08
car back together because otherwise it would stay apart for a long, long time.
31:12
So we stayed there until, uh, like may or so of 1996.
31:17
And we had a target date that car went to the special collection in
31:21
Bloomington for display there in June.
31:23
So we had a good date to work to her and we finished that car after that.
31:27
It was a long time.
31:29
Before my wife and I did any restoration work again, I got super busy starting
31:35
in 1997 with the racing work.
31:38
And it was a whole new environment, a whole new world.
31:41
And the established photographers who had been shooting racing for a
31:46
long period of time, some of them at that point already 20 plus years,
31:49
they all told me the same thing.
31:51
They all had the same advice, which is this is a brutal business.
31:55
The programs come and go, the factories are in, they're out.
31:58
Don't get used to it.
31:59
Don't give up your day job.
32:01
And my day job was writing and photography for primarily editorial clients.
32:06
Working on my first book at that point in late 98 or early 99.
32:11
But I followed their advice.
32:12
I didn't give up my day job.
32:14
And the racing just got bigger and busier and busier and busier.
32:18
So I ended up with two jobs and then three jobs.
32:20
There wasn't time for the cars.
32:22
Well, Richard, let's take a pit stop here as we transition into the next segment,
32:28
and let's talk about your travels around the world, and you know, we ask folks on
32:33
the show all the time, you know, is there a bucket list track you'd like to race
32:37
at, or you'd like to attend, or if you could go back in time, you know, which
32:40
driver on which track, you know, those kinds of things, But you've been to so
32:44
many interesting places in the world and to so many locations, I kind of have to
32:48
frame it in a very simple way, which is as a photographer, what is some of the
32:52
best or maybe worst places to photograph in terms of racetracks in the world?
32:57
I am a hundred percent committed to find happiness everywhere.
33:01
So even the tracks that I enjoy less for one reason or another, or the events
33:05
that I enjoy less, I still enjoy them.
33:08
I just enjoy them less.
33:09
If I had to pick one track, one event, it would be the 24 Hours of Le Mans.
33:14
I love the long races to begin with.
33:16
I'm a history buff.
33:17
My undergraduate degree is in history.
33:19
I still read a lot about history.
33:21
The only real TV I watch is documentaries about history.
33:25
And of course, the sense of history there is unmatched.
33:29
That race began in 1923, and aside from a few years of interruption during the
33:35
Second World War, it has been held every year, and every year, the best teams, the
33:42
best drivers with the best cars come from everywhere in the world to race there.
33:47
You ask any driver in any discipline.
33:50
Multi Formula One world champions, MotoGP world champions, best top
33:55
fuel drag racers in the world.
33:57
It doesn't matter.
33:58
Every one of them wants to add a win at Le Mans to their resume.
34:02
I just adore it.
34:03
So I, I went there for the first time and, 2000 when Corvette went there, Corvette
34:08
did not go during the COVID year in 2020.
34:11
So I didn't go either this year was my 24th, and it's not the same experience.
34:17
Of course, there's no getting around that.
34:20
There's always an evolution.
34:21
The first time for anything is going to be different from the second time.
34:25
And the third time is going to be different from the second time.
34:27
And the 10th time is going to be different from the fifth time, but
34:31
I've never gotten tired of it all.
34:33
Board with it.
34:34
It's exciting for me every single year and I look forward to it every single year.
34:39
And part of the challenge there, and this is not exclusive to Le
34:42
Mans, but it applies to Le Mans.
34:44
It applies to everywhere I go.
34:45
I still go to new tracks once in a while.
34:48
I've photographed over a thousand races now.
34:51
A lot of the tracks I've been there 30, 35, 40, 50 times, but
34:55
I still go to some new ones.
34:57
One of the great challenges and thrills of going back to the same place.
35:02
For the 20th time, or the 25th time, or the 50th time, it's trying to see
35:07
it in a different way, trying to find something new, one new angle of view,
35:11
one new location, one new something to create a different photograph
35:16
that I didn't create the first 15 or the first 40 times I've been there.
35:20
It's obviously increasingly difficult.
35:22
The more times I've been to a given track, I say there's always something
35:27
new, and the challenge is to find it.
35:29
Always something new, and it's super, super gratifying to do that.
35:33
We've had the privilege of sitting down with a lot of different pro drivers
35:38
on the show, and you hear all about the war stories, and the battles, and
35:41
the things that happened on track.
35:43
And there you are on the other side of the fence, as Bill Warner
35:46
likes to say when he was here.
35:47
And you got to capture those moments, those battles, those wars that we
35:52
saw play out on television, and that we hear the big fish stories later
35:56
and all those kinds of things, but there was a point in your life.
36:00
And as you said, it's a series of unrelated events that have come together.
36:03
Where these two things converged, the story we saw on TV, the story that
36:08
you hear about, and your life, those two paths cross, and it takes us to V.
36:13
I.
36:13
R.
36:14
in 2019.
36:15
And what I'm referring to is, if anybody saw it, it's Catherine
36:18
Legge's crash in the NSX.
36:21
And unbeknownst to many of us that were watching it on TV, you're like, oh my
36:24
god, she wrecked, you know, this and that.
36:26
There's another side to the story that many people don't know.
36:30
And so I want to Open the conversation up for you to share that experience
36:34
in your own words, what that crash meant to you and how it changed
36:37
your life in an impactful way.
36:39
No pun intended.
36:40
Yes, it was impactful way because I was impacted.
36:43
You know, racing is, it's a dangerous environment anyway.
36:46
You slice it way, way safer than it's ever been, but it's
36:49
still a dangerous environment.
36:51
And credentialed photographers are allowed to go in areas that the public is not,
36:56
where it is Potentially more dangerous.
36:58
And on that fateful day at the uh, IMSA race at VIR in August of
37:03
2019, I was in one sense, in the wrong place at the wrong time.
37:08
The car crashed, it struck the steel barrier, and I was right there.
37:13
And I saw the car coming about a second before the impact.
37:17
So I didn't have a lot of time.
37:18
I had three cameras with me, three bodies, three lenses.
37:22
Actually set them down and set myself down, crouched down behind
37:26
the crash barrier, the barriers that the IR are not setting concrete.
37:30
They just set into the earth.
37:32
I wasn't raining at that moment, but it had been raining in
37:35
the days prior to the race.
37:36
So the ground was particularly soft.
37:38
The grass was wet still, which helped the car probably had a tire failure.
37:42
I, I, I, I don't think there was a definitive understanding of the crash.
37:45
What happened?
37:46
There wasn't two cars that came together.
37:48
The NSX by itself suffered a sequence of failures that left Katherine
37:54
with no steering and no brakes.
37:56
And the car made a left turn, went off the track, and went along the
37:59
grass, which was wet, which didn't help slow it down, obviously.
38:03
It struck the steel barrier going quite fast.
38:07
I was told it was going at about 156 miles an hour when it struck the barrier,
38:12
and it drove the barrier back about three feet, and one of the steel I beams
38:16
supporting it struck me in my torso.
38:20
This has changed now.
38:21
They did remedy this, but at that time, there was about a three foot
38:26
wide aisleway between the steel crash barrier and a cabled catch fence.
38:31
The cabled catch fence came about because of the condominiums
38:35
that they built trackside there.
38:36
So they built the condos and they didn't want the people who were
38:40
enjoying the condos to be able to go right up to the crash barrier.
38:43
So they built this cabled catch fence and they only put it a few feet off
38:47
the crash barrier, I guess, to maximize the front lawns of the condominiums.
38:53
So there was no escape.
38:54
I couldn't get far away from the barrier.
38:56
So I hit the ground and I was struck.
38:58
It was an interesting experience for sure.
39:00
Never lost consciousness.
39:02
I wasn't even knocked over, but it was a hard hit.
39:05
Initially.
39:05
I thought I actually might be dead because I was at a racetrack
39:09
and it was of course, noisy.
39:11
There was a race going on still.
39:13
And in the instant that I was struck, I heard the most complete silence
39:18
that I've ever experienced in my life.
39:20
I was fully conscious and was thinking to myself, is this the end?
39:25
The beginning of the journey after one's life concludes this pure silence.
39:31
I gathered my thoughts and said, I don't think you're dead.
39:33
I think I'm very much alive.
39:36
I knew I'd been injured.
39:37
I thought I probably had a, at least a couple of broken ribs.
39:40
But my breathing felt fine.
39:41
My head wasn't struck, so I wasn't worried and I really
39:45
just wanted to get out of there.
39:46
I didn't want to be part of the story.
39:48
The Corvettes were in the battle there for the lead in the class.
39:52
They were, uh, I think running second and third or second and fourth at the
39:57
point where the accident took place.
39:58
And there was about 20 minutes left in the race.
40:00
And so I knew even if they didn't pass, one of them didn't pass to take the lead,
40:04
they were going to be on the podium.
40:06
I just wanted to get out of there and shoot the podium.
40:08
But fortunately I couldn't escape because when the car hit, there were light
40:13
truck tires that were bolted together.
40:15
And the car actually, I think, dove under the tires before it hit the steel barrier.
40:20
And it pitched a whole grouping of, it was about 17 tires or
40:24
something, over the steel barrier.
40:26
And it landed between the fence.
40:28
And I was quite fortunate that didn't land on me.
40:32
I did a rough calculation later on, and that grouping of tires
40:36
weighed about 1, 600 pounds.
40:38
So had that landed on me, we wouldn't be speaking today.
40:41
But, it blocked my exit.
40:43
It was my left side that was struck, and I had temporary paralysis.
40:47
I couldn't move my left arm.
40:49
And I had As I said, three cameras and three lenses to carry, uh,
40:53
including a 300 millimeter 2.
40:55
8 and a 500 millimeter 2.
40:58
8.
40:59
So they're big and they're heavy and I have one arm, so
41:02
I couldn't get out of there.
41:03
And that turned out to be, uh, fortunate.
41:05
A friend of mine, a man named Bill Miller, who is a commercial airline
41:09
pilot, In real life, but he's also a huge racing enthusiast and
41:13
he's a professional race spotter.
41:14
So he goes to, I think, just about all the IMSA races and he acts as, uh, works as a
41:20
spotter for one or sometimes more teams.
41:23
So they place people around the track.
41:25
With a radio headset and they're helping the driver to
41:28
understand the track situation.
41:30
If there's a crash with his oil on the track where they're coming up on a
41:33
slower car, whatever the circumstances are, the spotter can help the driver.
41:36
So that's what Bill Miller was doing.
41:38
And he happened to be right nearby and he saw the whole thing and he
41:41
came running over and he was on the other side of the catch fence.
41:44
And he was screaming at me, you're getting in that ambulance.
41:48
You don't know what you're talking about.
41:50
I was saying, I got the wind knocked out of me, but I think I'm okay.
41:53
And he was screaming, you're not okay.
41:56
You're in shock.
41:57
You could be badly hurt.
41:59
You've got to go to the medical center, blah, blah, blah, blah.
42:02
And I was stubborn and foolish and resisting.
42:06
I looked okay.
42:06
I wasn't bleeding.
42:07
I had no external apparent injuries.
42:10
The emergency crews got there like a dummy.
42:13
I would have avoided the ambulance, but Bill Miller was screaming at me,
42:17
and he was screaming at the EMTs.
42:20
You've got to take this guy.
42:21
He was struck being stubborn and foolish.
42:24
I was explaining to the empties.
42:25
Yeah, I did get hit, but I think I'm okay.
42:28
I feel fine.
42:29
I need to go with you.
42:30
Bill Miller was behind that fence.
42:32
I won't repeat what he was saying because he was using some foul
42:35
language, really screaming at me and I was sort of feeling pressured there.
42:40
Then what happened was I lost the vision in my left eye.
42:43
I initially thought there was maybe some mud on my glasses.
42:46
You can see this actually on the TV coverage.
42:48
The helicopter was hovering above.
42:51
I took my glasses off to clean the mud off of them, and there wasn't a mud on them.
42:55
That was a horrifying moment because I realized that.
42:58
I lost the vision of my left eye, and I thought, you know, my optic
43:02
nerve's been severed, or my retina's disconnected, or something horrible
43:06
has happened here, and I'm now half blind, so I agreed to get the ambulance.
43:12
Bill Miller's screaming at me, and I lost the vision of my left eye.
43:15
So that's how I ended up in the ambulance.
43:17
And then there's no medical center at BIR.
43:19
There's just a medical room where there's a, a doctor and a nurse, and a
43:23
blood pressure machine, and some basics.
43:25
So we were on our way there and we got about halfway and the vision returned
43:30
in my eye and I then just wanted outta the ambulance like a moron.
43:34
And again, I felt okay.
43:36
I was in pain.
43:37
It hurt, but it wasn't excruciating pain, and my breathing was fine.
43:42
I wanted out of the ambulance, but of course, once I was
43:44
in, they couldn't let me go.
43:46
There's nothing else for liability reasons.
43:48
We got back to the medical room.
43:51
No external injuries.
43:52
I wasn't bleeding.
43:53
Nothing was obviously wrong.
43:55
Took my blood pressure.
43:56
That is the one and only time in my whole life I've got high blood pressure.
43:59
My blood pressure is normally picture perfect, exactly
44:02
where it's supposed to be.
44:03
So when I heard the numbers, I was like 156 over 119 or something.
44:10
I thought, oh boy, that's not good, but they looked at it and said, well,
44:14
you know, at your age, you've just been involved in a traumatic accident.
44:18
Your blood pressure is not bad.
44:19
It's okay.
44:20
And I'm thinking, not bad.
44:21
It's never ever been high under any circumstances.
44:25
Anyway, they said, you know, you really, you were struck in the torso.
44:28
You really need to, at least to get an x ray, you need to go to
44:31
the hospital and get an x ray.
44:32
Do you have somebody who can drive you?
44:34
I said, well, I have a lot of friends and a lot of people I know here, but
44:37
everybody I know is here working.
44:39
So yeah, I can get somebody to drive me, but it's not going
44:42
to be for a couple of hours.
44:44
I said, well, that's, that's not good.
44:45
You have to go now.
44:46
And I said, well, I'll drive myself.
44:48
And they said, well, we can't let you drive yourself because you suffered
44:52
at least some kind of an injury.
44:54
There wasn't a medevac helicopter there, but they dismissed it
44:57
because I kept saying I'm fine.
45:00
They gave the ambulance crew the bad news that they had to take me to the
45:03
hospital and the race had ended at that point and I think they were ready to go
45:06
home so they were a little disappointed and I was a little disappointed because
45:10
I really didn't want to go to the hospital, but that's where I was going
45:14
so got in the ambulance and I'm the whole time I'm saying, I'm okay, I'm fine.
45:19
So they never put the lights on and don't put the siren on we just.
45:22
Stuck in traffic over an hour because the race had ended and the BIR is in
45:26
a rural area in uh, southern Virginia, right near the North Carolina border
45:31
and there's just one country road in and one out and there were 40, 000 people
45:35
there watching the race and when the race ended it was a A giant traffic jam.
45:40
So it was a long slog to get to the, it was a little over
45:43
an hour to get to the hospital.
45:44
We went to Danville Regional Hospital, which is not the place to go to if you've
45:49
suffered a severe traumatic injury.
45:52
But I kept saying, I'm okay.
45:54
I looked okay.
45:54
So that's where we went.
45:56
And it was terrible for my wife.
45:58
It was much worse for my wife than it was for me.
46:00
I was calm.
46:01
I was at peace.
46:02
I didn't understand what my injuries were at that point, but I was, I was okay.
46:07
And once I was in the ambulance, I thought, well, I better call her.
46:10
And nothing like this had ever happened to you before.
46:12
This is the first time in all your many years.
46:14
To this day, I've never had a car accident.
46:17
I've driven over a million miles.
46:19
I've never had a car accident.
46:20
I never had a broken bone in my life.
46:23
And I did stupid things as a kid.
46:25
I was just lucky.
46:25
I fell off my bike plenty of times.
46:27
I rode motorcycles, dirt bikes, Got banged up and scraped up
46:31
and cut and so on and so forth.
46:33
I needed some stitches when I was a child here and there, but
46:36
I never had a broken bone, never had a blunt force trauma injury.
46:39
So it was all new.
46:41
I called my wife in the ambulance and she watches every race.
46:44
She's a massive race fan, much bigger race fan than I am.
46:48
She watched the race.
46:49
And I said, there was a crash at the end.
46:52
And she said, yeah, I know the Acura.
46:55
Really whack the wall.
46:56
And I said, well, I was kind of caught up in that accident.
47:00
And she immediately lost her mind, started screaming.
47:04
Don't lie to me.
47:05
I know you're lying to me.
47:06
How bad is it?
47:07
Don't sugarcoat it.
47:08
And then, uh, we lost the cell signal.
47:11
Cell phone coverage is not so great because again, it's a rural area.
47:15
And we were literally crawling along.
47:17
And I had no cell signal, she absolutely freaked out and she found some numbers
47:23
from some of my photographer friends and started making phone calls.
47:26
And none of them knew anything.
47:28
They knew I wasn't at the podium and I wasn't in the photo room
47:31
after it was over, which was a little weird, but I was out there
47:33
by myself when the crash happened.
47:36
She got no information.
47:37
It wasn't until it was about an hour and 10 minutes later,
47:40
when we got to the hospital that I was able to call her again.
47:44
So that was a very, very difficult time for her because she
47:47
intuitively knew that it was bad.
47:50
And it was bad, as it turns out.
47:52
So they called the hospital ahead of time, and it's a regional hospital.
47:55
There was, there were no specialists there.
47:57
They had to call specialists.
47:59
So they had an x ray tech and he did an x ray to start with.
48:02
You know, the loss of the vision of my left eye was the first horrifying moment.
48:06
The look on the face of the x ray technician after he did the x ray
48:11
was the second horrifying moment.
48:13
And I said that to him.
48:14
He was looking at his screen and looking at me, looking
48:17
at the screen, looking at me.
48:19
And he had a look of absolute disbelief on his face.
48:22
And I said, you were looking at me as though you find it
48:25
shocking that I'm still alive.
48:27
What do you see?
48:29
And he didn't answer me, and I said, Look, I know I at least
48:31
have a couple of broken ribs.
48:33
And he said, You have a lot more than a couple of broken ribs.
48:37
There's a surgeon on the way, and I'm going to let her explain
48:39
it to you, because I'm really not supposed to interpret the
48:42
x ray and give you my opinion.
48:44
They called her, and she had asked them to do a an upper body scan, so I went
48:48
in for the scan before she got there.
48:51
Uh, then she arrived.
48:52
Even in the midst of this, I found it humorous.
48:55
And I thought, man, I wish some of my buddies were here to laugh along with me.
48:59
But she was called in, she wasn't in hospital.
49:02
So she didn't have the doctor's outfit on.
49:04
She didn't have the stethoscope around her neck.
49:06
She just didn't look like a doctor.
49:07
She looked at the scan and she said you need a thoracotomy, a chest
49:13
tube, and I said, well, I assume that is what it sounds like, but
49:18
I've never had an injury of any sort.
49:21
I've never had a chest tube.
49:22
What does that entail?
49:23
And she described the procedure to me, and I said, well, that's barbaric.
49:28
No thanks.
49:29
Give me another option, and she said, you're an adult, you're not
49:33
inebriated, you're not even in shock.
49:36
If you refuse treatment as much as it hurts me, I have to honor that.
49:40
And I said, I'm not refusing treatment, I'm just refusing the chest tube.
49:43
Give me another option, and she looked at her watch and
49:46
she said, you have two choices.
49:48
either a chest tube, or you'll be dead in 30 minutes.
49:52
Your chest cavity is filling with blood, it's about one third full,
49:56
and when it reaches a certain point, your heart will stop.
49:59
The blood will compress the vessels in your chest, you're still bleeding,
50:04
and the only good thing I can say about it is it will be relatively
50:08
quick and relatively painless.
50:10
And I said, I'll take the chest tube.
50:12
Thank you.
50:13
The funniest part of this, it was funny.
50:15
We were heading toward the operating room, and she asked me where I'm from.
50:19
And I said, Long Island.
50:21
And she said, Oh, I go to Long Island all the time.
50:24
And I said, Naive me.
50:26
But do you have family there?
50:27
And she said, No, my psychic is all along.
50:33
That's what I thought.
50:33
Oh, damn it.
50:34
I wish somebody some friend of mine was here to hear this.
50:39
This is ridiculous.
50:41
I found it hilarious, actually, um, she described the procedure,
50:45
and I had just one question.
50:47
It entails putting a titanium tube through the torso into the pleural
50:52
cavity, and it's gotta be forced through.
50:56
I said, okay, it goes through the flesh, through the rib cage,
51:01
and through the chest cavity.
51:03
What stops it?
51:04
Because I'm not a doctor, I had a collapsed lung, and that's what
51:08
was the source of the bleeding.
51:10
And I said, you can live with one lung, but you can't live with no lung.
51:14
So, when that tube is plunged in, what stops it from piercing the other lung?
51:19
And she said, well, that's my burden.
51:22
That's where the skill of the surgeon comes in.
51:24
So, that was it.
51:26
The operation was a success.
51:27
Oh, by the way, it was painful.
51:29
That's, uh, another thing I'll mention.
51:31
I got no anesthesia.
51:32
Not even the topical.
51:33
So it starts with a scalpel, and then it's a lot of procedure.
51:38
I won't get gory, but no anesthesia.
51:41
And man, did that hurt.
51:42
I later, I had to see a pulmonologist and other specialists.
51:46
When I got back home for follow ups for a couple of years and I asked the
51:50
pulmonologist, is there some medical reason why you can't get anesthesia or at
51:55
least a local when you get a chest tube?
51:57
And he thought it was kind of funny.
51:59
He said, no, no, no reason.
52:01
Well, why didn't they give me one?
52:02
And he said, there's no such thing as you, you don't schedule a chest tube.
52:06
It's always an emergency.
52:08
It's always a life and death situation.
52:10
And the vast majority of the time, the patient is
52:13
unconscious, so it's just habit.
52:15
You just do it.
52:16
I learned my lesson.
52:17
Next time I need a chest tube, I'm asking for the anesthesia.
52:19
Anyway, that evening after my first night there, I saw an orthopedic surgeon and
52:25
a neurologist, and the neurologist said to me, you're not going to appreciate
52:28
this now, but you'll appreciate it later.
52:31
You are the single luckiest person on the face of the earth today.
52:34
Because I was walking when I saw the car coming, and I just hit the ground.
52:38
Again, it had about a second.
52:40
He said, if you had taken one step fewer, that I beam would have hit
52:43
your head, and you wouldn't be here.
52:45
You would have died essentially immediately, instantly.
52:48
And if you had taken one step more, that I beam would have struck you in your
52:52
waist, below the ribcage, and it would have caused massive internal bleeding,
52:58
you know, the force of the blow, and you would have just led to death.
53:01
Before they got to you.
53:02
He also said, this is not where you come when you have the injuries that you have.
53:06
This is a regional hospital.
53:07
You belong to a level one trauma center.
53:10
Had you been bleeding at a greater rate, and we would have fully expected
53:14
that you would have been given the extent of the injury, you should have
53:17
been bleeding out faster than you are.
53:20
You should have died in that ambulance, and even if you made it to the hospital,
53:25
if you were right on the edge, there was nobody here to save your life.
53:28
No surgeon here.
53:29
Everybody had to be called in.
53:30
So you are super, super lucky to be alive.
53:33
And that's the way I feel.
53:35
The force of that blow shattered my scapula, broke nine ribs,
53:40
tore my rotator cuff up, caused a massive edema, chest wall trauma,
53:44
collapsed lung, internal bleeding.
53:46
You felt fine.
53:47
You were good to go.
53:48
Yeah.
53:49
Double.
53:49
That's the story.
53:50
I feel super lucky and it wasn't certainly wasn't a happy story.
53:54
It was a happy story for the track or for the series or for GM and I have
54:00
to say there's no other experience like staring down the abyss and coming
54:06
face to face with your own mortality.
54:08
It's a unique experience and if you digest it and contemplate it and put
54:15
it in the right perspective, it can dramatically increase your appreciation
54:19
for life and that's what it's done for me.
54:21
It made me way more committed to enjoy every second.
54:25
But ultimately, like I said, even the races that I don't enjoy as much, even
54:30
the travel that I do, I try to find happiness in every single thing that I do.
54:34
And I try to find some happiness in everything.
54:38
And that includes this story about the crash of VIR.
54:42
And I really do.
54:42
I'm not trying to fool myself.
54:45
I find happiness in everything.
54:47
I really do.
54:48
Did you ever sit down with Catherine and talk about this experience together?
54:52
She was going quite fast.
54:55
And she did what drivers are trained to do, which is take your hands off
54:58
the steering wheel when you have no control of the car and you're about to
55:01
hit something at a very high impact.
55:03
Everybody's instinct to grab that wheel with all your might, and what happens
55:06
is when the car hits something, that wheel can be jerked suddenly one way
55:10
or the other with such force that it'll break your wrists, break your arms.
55:13
So she said that she crossed her arms, and she prayed, because she
55:18
was convinced that Given the rate of speed, she was convinced that she was
55:22
not going to come out of that okay.
55:24
And she did.
55:25
And she only learned afterwards that somebody else had been injured.
55:29
She called me the following day, the Monday when I was in the hospital.
55:33
I went to the next race, which was crazy.
55:35
Another crazy part of the story.
55:37
And we had a chat at the racetrack.
55:39
Yeah, she felt terrible, but it wasn't her fault.
55:41
The crash was not her fault.
55:43
It was either a tire failure or a mechanical failure in the car.
55:47
And you know what?
55:47
Even if it was her fault, I'm a big believer in personal responsibility.
55:51
I understand the work that I do entails some level of risk, and certain places
55:56
on certain tracks have a higher level of risk, and I chose to be there.
56:00
And so I'm, I'm responsible, even if The driver made a
56:03
mistake that led to the crash.
56:05
I'm still responsible for me being there, so I accept full responsibility for it.
56:10
Up until that point, like we said, nothing had really happened.
56:13
You know, you get up on the ladders, you're in a tree, behind the
56:15
fences, you're shooting the cars.
56:17
Life is good.
56:18
And then this happens.
56:19
And then you learn from it.
56:20
You adapt and you overcome.
56:22
As we've seen at many a track day, whether it's a professional event, or
56:26
it's an HPD, you know, there's always some sort of trackside photographer
56:29
at a lot of these events, you know, they're out there either trying to get
56:32
started to make their name, or they're still just kind of plugging away at it.
56:36
So knowing what, you know, now looking back over.
56:38
This incident and your entire career as a photographer, is there some
56:42
sort of wisdom that you can pass on?
56:44
Maybe some do's and don'ts to these photographers that are out there?
56:47
Sure.
56:47
In terms of safety, absolutely.
56:49
Because photography is a passion driven endeavor.
56:53
People who end up in racing photography typically love
56:57
racing and they love photography.
56:59
It's a very emotional, personal, passion driven activity.
57:04
In that environment, in those circumstances, it can be
57:06
very easy to take more risks.
57:10
My photographer buddies and I, we will often say anything for the shot,
57:13
facetiously, but to some extent, it does apply, where you will take risks.
57:19
It's certainly, what happened to me, is certainly a reminder that
57:22
the dangers out there are real.
57:24
And sometimes it's just not worth it.
57:27
It's just not worth the shot.
57:29
And I'll give you another example where I apply that.
57:32
Lime Rock, which is a beautiful natural terrain road course, historic
57:35
road course, can lead to the creation of very beautiful photography.
57:39
It's a wooded rural area.
57:41
It's in Connecticut.
57:42
The tick population is super high.
57:44
For many years, certain areas, certain shots that to get to those areas,
57:49
you go through the woods, you just track through the woods every year.
57:52
I tracked through the woods and I come out with ticks on me, they're just in
57:55
there and I reached a point just a few years ago where I said, you know, this
58:00
is, it's not like getting hit by a car where you're bleeding internally, but.
58:04
Ticks can lead to serious problems, debilitating diseases,
58:07
Lyme disease, this and that.
58:08
I'm super lucky.
58:10
I've been bitten many times and I don't have Lyme disease or Rocky
58:13
Mountain Spotted Fever or any of the other tick borne ailments, but
58:17
everybody's luck runs out eventually.
58:19
I just decided none of these photographs are worth the risk.
58:23
So my advice is, yeah, I understand the mentality and I'm not
58:28
suggesting anybody crawl under a rock or be overly risk averse.
58:33
As with everything else in life, there's a reasonable balance point, a sensible place
58:38
to be to extend yourself, work harder.
58:41
You're always taking some chances.
58:42
You get out of bed in the morning, you're taking a chance to advance
58:46
the art and adventure business.
58:48
Understand that there's also a line in the sand that you determine that
58:52
for yourself in many instances.
58:54
Uh, of course, to some extent it's determined for us.
58:57
We're not allowed to go certain places.
58:59
But even within the realm of the places where we are allowed to go, sometimes
59:04
it's okay to make that choice and say, you know, I just don't feel comfortable here.
59:08
And what has changed for me is there are places, and you ask any race photographer
59:13
who does a lot of racing, There are certain places and certain tracks
59:17
that just feel less safe than others.
59:19
Maybe statistically they are or they aren't, but they just feel less safe.
59:23
There are some places where I just won't go, but there are
59:26
places where I feel less safe.
59:28
I still want to get the shot.
59:30
I still want to go there.
59:31
I'll just spend less time there.
59:33
So that's how I, in my mind, mitigate the risk.
59:35
You just have to make those choices and make smart choices.
59:38
At the end of the day, we all want to go home to the ones we love, and so
59:42
you just have to make smart choices.
59:44
You said before, Richard, you keep a very, very busy schedule throughout the
59:48
year, so I have to ask, what's next?
59:51
What's next?
59:52
Uh, usually, In past years, this would be kind of a blind time for me because
59:57
racing tapers down and I do other things.
1:00:00
I'm still doing a lot of editorial work and doing a lot of new car
1:00:05
photography for Cadillac and Chevrolet and other car companies as well.
1:00:09
But the car show season is getting underway with the LA car
1:00:13
show and the chariot car show.
1:00:15
So there's typically one or two new car projects this time of the year.
1:00:19
The racing season has started.
1:00:20
Slowly, but steadily expanded in the last two weeks.
1:00:24
I've been in seven different countries.
1:00:26
What's next is, uh, let's see.
1:00:28
I'll write some stories for, um, Hemings and I have a new book out this
1:00:33
year, a new, uh, Corvette C8 book.
1:00:35
I'll do a book signing.
1:00:37
The beginning of January, I will be at home working on that 65 Corvette
1:00:41
and doing house stuff and doing some writing, spooching up my dogs.
1:00:45
My son's got a car project that I'm immersed in as well.
1:00:48
So I'll be helping him to try to get that wrapped up.
1:00:51
Speaking of wrapping up, Richard, we've reached that part of the episode where
1:00:55
I like to invite our guests to share any shout outs, promotions, or anything
1:00:59
else that we haven't covered thus far.
1:01:01
One thing I can think of is I've written five books.
1:01:04
Three of them are in print.
1:01:05
The C8 Corvette book was published this year.
1:01:09
I wrote a 70th anniversary Corvette book that was published last year
1:01:12
and a C3 Corvette restoration guidebook that was published 25
1:01:17
years ago, but it's still in print.
1:01:18
Oh, and by the way, congratulations on being inducted into
1:01:21
the Corvette Hall of Fame.
1:01:23
Oh, thank you.
1:01:23
Yeah, that is a very, very nice honor.
1:01:26
Very, uh, much appreciated.
1:01:28
I enjoyed the event.
1:01:29
It was at the end of August, very, very much.
1:01:32
It was an opportunity to say a very heartfelt thank you to a lot
1:01:37
of people in a very public way.
1:01:39
And I, that was the best part of it for me, was being able to thank all
1:01:43
of the people because I could be, you know, The most talented, best
1:01:46
photographer in the world and the hardest working photographer in the world.
1:01:50
It wouldn't matter.
1:01:51
It really does take a much, much larger community to make it all work.
1:01:55
I need the support of the people who I work for and the people
1:02:00
who I work with, the teams and the drivers and the mechanics.
1:02:03
Certainly above all else, the fans, the people who support racing, who
1:02:07
love racing and who love the cars.
1:02:09
Without them, there would be no racing and no cars.
1:02:13
Go Corvette Racing.
1:02:14
Go Cadillac Racing.
1:02:15
I hope the race fans will continue to support those particular
1:02:19
programs and as well the series that give them a venue to race in.
1:02:24
Richard Prince has been working as an automotive photographer since 1991
1:02:28
and has a wide range of experience.
1:02:30
Shooting product, motorsports events, and people.
1:02:33
His clients include many of the world's major automobile manufacturers
1:02:37
and a diverse array of companies.
1:02:39
And if you want to learn more or to check out some of his
1:02:41
work, be sure to log onto www.
1:02:44
rprincephoto.
1:02:46
com or follow Richard on Instagram at RichardPrincePhoto.
1:02:51
And with that, Richard, I can't thank you enough for coming on Break
1:02:53
Fix and sharing your story with us.
1:02:56
I have to say, you are the living example of the reason why we tell people stop
1:03:03
and listen to other people's stories, especially when you're at the racetrack.
1:03:07
You never know what's hiding behind, let's say the lens or behind that
1:03:11
ball cap or behind that t shirt.
1:03:13
All sorts of fascinating stories throughout the paddock and more
1:03:16
importantly have to congratulate you again on all of your achievements.
1:03:20
I appreciate that very much.
1:03:22
I must thank you and as well your audience, everybody listening to this
1:03:26
further to what I said about the Hall of Fame induction without the fans, without
1:03:31
the enthusiasts, without this Massive swell of support for the cars we all
1:03:36
love and for the racing that we love.
1:03:39
I would not have the blessings in this life that I have.
1:03:42
And so I really do owe it all to you.
1:03:45
Thank you very much.
1:03:46
And remember, always try to find the good in everything, right, Richard?
1:03:50
Absolutely.
1:03:51
There is good in everything and it's a state of mind and it's out there.
1:03:55
Even the things you don't really want to do, there's some
1:03:58
silver lining to everything.
1:04:00
It is a beautiful way to live.
1:04:02
I travel extensively.
1:04:03
I've been to every state in the country and I've been to 30 some odd
1:04:06
different countries and I'm still traveling constantly and I can say with
1:04:12
absolute honesty I love the journey.
1:04:16
I adore the destination and then I absolutely love coming home.
1:04:20
If you can enjoy the journey, enjoy the destination, and love coming back
1:04:25
home, you'll lead a blessed life.
1:04:26
It's a beautiful way to live.
1:04:28
Always look on the bright side of life.
1:04:36
Always look on the light side of life.
1:04:43
If life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten.
1:04:47
And that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing.
1:04:55
We hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Brake Fix Podcast brought
1:04:59
to you by Grand Touring Motorsports.
1:05:01
If you'd like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure
1:05:04
to follow us on all social media platforms at GrandTouringMotorsports.
1:05:08
And if you'd like to learn more about the content of this episode,
1:05:12
be sure to check out the follow on article at GTMotorsports.
1:05:16
org.
1:05:17
We remain a commercial free and no annual fees organization through
1:05:21
our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans,
1:05:24
families, and friends through Patreon.
1:05:27
For as little as 2.
1:05:29
50 a month, you can get access to more behind the scenes action, additional
1:05:33
Pit Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our team
1:05:38
of creators Fed on their strict diet of fig Newtons, gummy bears, and monster.
1:05:43
So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.
1:05:47
patreon.
1:05:47
com forward slash GT motorsports, and remember without you, none
1:05:52
of this would be possible.