Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / Lucy O'Reilly Schell: The Forgotten Force Behind French Motorsports

Transcript

Lucy O'Reilly Schell: The Forgotten Force Behind French Motorsports · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

0:00
Brake Fix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
0:04
by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
0:07
Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
0:11
Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
0:16
Lucy O'Reilly Schell, innovator of French motorsports.
0:20
Lauren Goodman has received her MFA in screenwriting from the College of Motion
0:25
Pictures Arts at Florida State University.
0:27
While volunteering at the Revs Institute in Naples, Florida, she encountered
0:31
one of two Maseratis entered by Lucy Schell in the 1940 Indy 500.
0:36
Ms.
0:36
Goodman's research into Lucy's time in France as team owner and principal has
0:40
been presented at the Revs Institute.
0:42
Her writing draws heavily on history and the lives of women whose
0:46
achievements have been overlooked.
0:47
Presently, she is developing Lucy's story into a feature length project.
0:51
Ms.
0:51
Goodman's presentation will highlight Lucy's role in motor racing and
0:55
her contributions to the sport.
0:57
All right, folks.
0:59
Next up is Lauren Goodman from Lucy Riley Schill.
1:04
Well, good afternoon, everyone.
1:05
I'm so pleased to see so many faces here and online.
1:09
Hello out there in TV land.
1:12
So, a brief background about me, in case we haven't met before.
1:17
My name's Lauren Goodman and my background is not history, but in
1:20
creative writing and filmmaking.
1:22
My first love is storytelling.
1:25
But during the pandemic, like a lot of us, I developed a new
1:28
interest and specifically in cars that go really, really fast.
1:33
And I started volunteering at the REVS Institute down in Naples, Florida.
1:38
But it was while I was there, I encountered this beautiful
1:42
8 cylinder Maserati that was entered in the 1940 Indy 500.
1:47
Now, you can see on this car, the French flag, the American flag.
1:52
And then very curiously, this name painted on the side, the L O R Shell Special.
1:59
And when I learned that the L there stands for Lucy, I had to know more.
2:04
And it became kind of a passion for me, and I'm looking forward
2:08
to sharing her story with you.
2:11
Today's presentation, I'm going to give you a brief overview of
2:14
her life and accomplishments.
2:16
She was an established rally driver in her own right, but her real
2:20
legacy was putting a little car company named Delahaye on the map.
2:26
In talking about Lucy's work, we're also going to touch on her portrayal in
2:29
the media at the time, and then later how she got ignored in some secondary
2:33
sources about the history of motorsport.
2:36
And finally, I'll sum up just a few little thoughts about her identity.
2:40
Lucie Marie Jean O'Reilly was born in Paris, October 1896.
2:45
Her father, Francis, was an American businessman, whose own father had
2:50
emigrated from Ireland, and the O'Reilly money came from building the railroads
2:54
that were the lifeblood of the Gilded Age.
2:57
Francis was already in his late 40s when he decided to settle down in
3:00
Paris with a young French widow, and when he died in 1937, he left
3:05
Lucie her own personal fortune.
3:08
Now, Frances frequently traveled between Paris and Pennsylvania to
3:12
attend business, but Lucy was 18 before she made her first trip to the U.
3:17
S., where, in fact, in Reading, her arrival was news in the town paper.
3:22
And you can see here, she's bringing news to the people of the town
3:25
about her work as a nurse at the military hospital in Val de Grasse.
3:29
in Paris.
3:30
Really, when she was a teenager, she saw young men returning from
3:34
the front, suffering and sometimes dying from the wounds they received.
3:38
And later in life, Lucy would again find herself locked in
3:42
a battle with the Germans.
3:43
Another important character in the story is her husband, Laurie, whom
3:47
she met around 1912, and they were married outside of Paris in 1917.
3:52
Selim Lawrence Schell, who was known always as Laurie, was born in
3:56
Geneva to an American businessman.
3:58
And a family connection gave them first employment at Butter Rossi.
4:03
Some of you classic car lovers may know the name Butter Rossi.
4:06
In addition to war goods, they also constructed a few cars of
4:09
their own, which were terrible.
4:11
But he ended up also working for some coachworks around Paris.
4:15
And he would provide a lot of the coachwork for Lucy's cars during her life.
4:19
Here are the shells.
4:20
They were a study in contrast.
4:22
Lucy was gregarious, assertive, Laurie was soft spoken and diplomatic, but
4:28
their egalitarian marriage made them a powerful team both on and off the track.
4:32
Lucy and Laurie ran the Monte Carlo Rally together numerous times, sharing both
4:37
navigational and driving responsibilities.
4:39
And here, they actually had a reporter come along with them one year, and he
4:43
wrote a wonderful series of articles about his adventure with the shells.
4:46
As Rene Dreyfus, who became very close to the couple later in life, wrote in
4:50
his autobiography, there was no question but that she was absolutely an equal
4:55
partner to Laurie in their marriage.
4:57
There was no subservience, no unswerving obeisance, no pipe and slippers.
5:02
Indeed, she was the driving force of the family.
5:06
Lucy and Laurie had two sons, Harry and Philip.
5:09
Harry seems to have inherited the racing gene from both sides of the family.
5:12
And the Shell family resided both outside of Paris, at Brnoy, and in Monaco.
5:17
Lucy was already a mother and wife when she began to race seriously.
5:22
Her first race results show up in the French press in 1927, which would
5:26
have made her about 31 years old.
5:28
Auto journalist Maurice Philippe called her a decisive driver.
5:32
And we can see she liked serious cars, serious French cars.
5:37
That Talbot would have been branded as a Durac if sold in Britain.
5:41
At her very first hill climb in 1928, Lucy came first in her class.
5:45
The reporter was surprised to see a woman that entered the race, but he
5:48
said, if this little lady keeps at it, she's gonna see some good results.
5:52
Good results she did indeed have.
5:54
Here's just a selection of things I was able to pull from papers at the time.
5:59
Now, Lucy's specialty And the Monte Carlo was her white whale.
6:04
Lucy, with Laurie as co driver, placed as high as P2 overall at the
6:09
1936 rally and lost out to a couple of Romanians in the strip down
6:14
Ford by mere fractions of a point.
6:16
It was her search for the right mix of performance, power, and
6:20
reliability that led her to call on the factory offices at Delahaye.
6:25
At this point in time, Delahaye was a stuffy firm with a background in
6:29
long wearing, sturdy truck engines.
6:31
The general director of Delahaye's factory, Charles Weissenbach, Known
6:35
to everyone always as Monsieur Charles had grand plans to lead
6:38
this company into a new era.
6:40
Key to this plan were his engineer Jean Francois and a plan to break
6:44
into the market for high end, high performance sports cars.
6:47
Delahaye unveiled two new Superlux models at the 1933 Perry Auto Salon.
6:53
The 12 Cheveau and the 18 Cheveau.
6:56
These two Superlux models were really just older models with updated suspension.
7:01
But the stir in the press was enough that it caught Lucy's attention.
7:04
She appeared with Laurie in tow at the offices of Monsieur
7:08
Charles to order a special.
7:09
She wanted the bigger engine of the 18 Cheveau put into the
7:13
smaller chassis of the 12 Cheveau.
7:15
Mr.
7:16
Charles said, no, no, no, it's not possible.
7:18
The reason he said it wasn't possible, it was because his engineer, Jean
7:22
Francois, was trying to figure out how to, uh, do just that, so Delahaye
7:26
could start its own factory works team.
7:29
However, I will point out here that, when Mr.
7:32
Charles went to test his factory works team specials, Lucy still managed to
7:37
outperform them in her regular car.
7:40
So he decided, you know what, maybe she is, after all, the best
7:43
owner for one of my specials.
7:45
You'll also note here that Delahaye wanted to further prove the merit of
7:50
their new cars by showcasing one of their specials in a few world record attempts.
7:55
They were actually able to set a few world records at Mallory, one for the 10,
7:59
000 kilometers and one for the 48 hours.
8:02
It was going really, really well, beating records previously held by Renault.
8:06
And this was enough buzz.
8:08
That before Jean Francois could finish constructing Delahaye's
8:12
first real sports car, the 135, Lucie had already ordered six.
8:17
And she called on six of her wealthiest friends to order some as well.
8:21
And that ready cash enabled Delahaye to build a works team.
8:25
So by way of thanks, they built Lucie a compétition spéciale of the
8:30
135, the 135 CS, which would become one of the most important race
8:35
cars ever to come out of France.
8:37
Lucy was a determined, gregarious, and well connected person.
8:40
She was already becoming a team owner in all but name.
8:44
So for this little fleet of 135 CSs, she decided it was going to be her
8:48
own team, which she dubbed Blue Buzz.
8:50
And it premiered at the 1936 Paris Nice rally.
8:54
Writer Neil Bascom, in his fabulous book, Faster, asserts that her dismal
8:58
performance during the hill climb portion of the Paris Nice gave Lucy pause about
9:03
her own driving career, and inspired her to focus solely on team management.
9:07
She recruited René Dreyfus as lead driver.
9:10
And René is one of the great talents ever to come out of France.
9:13
Dreyfus had a proven track record as a Grand Prix winner, having
9:17
driven for Bugatti and Maserati.
9:19
and even having an offer from Ferrari.
9:21
But then, Mussolini decided he didn't want a Frenchman in his Italian car.
9:27
And the only other serious team in Grand Prix racing at that time were the Germans.
9:31
And the Germans didn't want a Jewish guy in their car.
9:35
But Lucy surprised Rene and said, Hello, how would you like to join me?
9:40
It's going to be totally professional.
9:41
Don't worry.
9:42
And Rene has a wonderful observation about this meeting, how she just kind of would
9:46
ensorcel people and get them on her side.
9:49
So, I'll say at this point a note about the Delhaix.
9:52
Really, even though the 135 was a sports car, it was essentially
9:56
using a modified truck engine.
9:58
And this might have been laughable, except it gave the car incredible reliability.
10:04
Jean Francois just focused on, listen, I'm going to make the car
10:07
as light as possible to increase the torque and take it from there.
10:11
You'll see here, I have some results for the 135 CS.
10:15
You'll note that it's both under the team name Blue Buzz, and sometimes it was run
10:20
under her later team name, A'Kiri Bleu.
10:22
But in rallies, and in speed races, and in endurance races,
10:27
this car was really marvelous.
10:30
That was going well, but the outlook for French victory and the grandes épreuves
10:35
of the European calendar was grim indeed.
10:38
Of the Championship Grand Prix run in 1936, No French
10:42
car finished in the top five.
10:44
For a country that had once produced Delage and more,
10:48
this was hugely embarrassing.
10:50
The anxiety that the Germans felt about national pride
10:54
also was happening in France.
10:55
The ACF, which was the governing body for motorsport in France, and the French
11:00
press got together and made a plan.
11:03
They enlisted the government's help to raise money for the cause
11:06
of French glory on the track.
11:08
A tax on every new driver's license went into the Fonds de Course.
11:12
A new Grand Prix formula was set to begin in 1937, and the ACF was
11:16
giving French automakers an incentive to create a costly new race car.
11:20
A prize of one million francs.
11:22
to the constructor who could post the fastest time on the track at Montgomery.
11:26
At this point, I want to point out, Delahaye had already closed
11:29
down its factory works team.
11:30
There were a couple bad wrecks at the Grand Prix de Marne, and Monsieur
11:34
Charle kind of lost his stomach for it.
11:35
But after the announcement of the million franc prize, Lucie paid another visit
11:39
to the offices of Monsieur Charle.
11:41
She had decided to create her own Grand Prix team, and she would
11:45
pay Delahaye to build her a car for the million franc contest.
11:49
Jean Francois busied himself building a brand new car with a brand new engine from
11:54
the ground up, when Lucy busied herself running the 135 CS in various events.
12:00
And finally, when this new Delahaye was ready to test and was unveiled,
12:03
they kept it a quiet affair.
12:05
Per Peter Stevenson, the car was ugly, but boy, could it go.
12:10
It only took Dreyfus a few laps to decide this ugly car was instead truly beautiful.
12:15
And in it, he managed to drive it and outperform Bugatti to
12:19
win the million franc prize.
12:21
With this creation of this new Grand Prix car, the 145, as well as all the
12:25
victories already under Lucie's belt with the 135 CS, Delahaye was celebrated as
12:30
the return of French glory to the track.
12:32
And here you can see Monsieur Charles giving René Dreyfus a big kiss, and later
12:36
being made an officer in the Legion of Honor in recognition for those efforts.
12:40
But the big test was yet to come.
12:43
You see, adoption of the new formula for the Grand Prix was pushed back
12:46
to 38, and Delahaye still had to prove itself against German teams.
12:51
At the 1938 season opener at Poe, it was the little David of Delahaye,
12:57
with its Jewish driver and American money, against the Goliath of Mercedes,
13:02
with lots of money from Hitler.
13:03
I can only imagine how René Dreyfus felt when he crossed that line in first place.
13:08
He then went on to win at Cork, and this would be a pinnacle for this
13:13
new Grand Prix team, Le Carible.
13:15
Now, if you're wondering where Lucie was at Pau, she wasn't.
13:18
At that time, Major Concours and the Nice Salon were happening on the Côte d'Azur.
13:23
Sources report that at least four of the V12 engines went into
13:26
touring cars, carrossé by the likes of Fagoni and Charpent.
13:30
Car manufacturing is a business, after all.
13:33
Lucie's wins, both on the track and at the Concours, show that Delahaye is
13:37
at the peak of performance and style.
13:39
And here she is, modeling her winning cars, along with her English bulldog.
13:44
Who was also award winning.
13:45
These Grand Prix victories, as well as other finishes with the 145 equipped as
13:49
a sports car, eventually made Dreyfus the champion of France for 1938.
13:54
Unfortunately, Mercedes and Auto Union dominated from mid season on, and the
13:59
ACF decided, well, we need another distribution from the Fond du Cours.
14:03
To jumpstart more innovation.
14:05
They decided this time to award the funds to the constructor showing the
14:08
most promising plans for a future car.
14:10
They ended up awarding those funds to Talbot Lago.
14:13
To say that Lucie was enraged would be an understatement.
14:17
In protest, Lucie withdrew her team, the Curie Bleue, from the French Grand
14:21
Prix as it was hosted by the ACF.
14:23
This caused an uproar in the papers.
14:26
Without Delahaye, surely the deck is stacked against French
14:29
constructors at our home race.
14:31
The sentiments were roughly, how could this lady do this to us?
14:35
How fickle is the press, lauding her just a few months earlier as a hero for France?
14:40
Now, the ACF then tried to strong arm Lucy and Le Curie Bleu back into the
14:45
Grand Prix by stipulating that withdrawal would also mean they were disqualified
14:50
from the Constructors Championship.
14:51
Lucy wrote an open letter to them in the press, and what's truly incredible
14:56
here is we have her own words about her ownership and leadership of the team.
15:01
She is the interested party.
15:03
She makes the decisions.
15:05
It's her call.
15:06
Now Lucy eventually changed her team name to Le Curie Lucy O'Reilly Shell.
15:11
She was clearly irritated with the ACF and wanted to remind them who exactly
15:15
had made those victories happen.
15:17
1939 was a tough year for her.
15:19
The next iteration of the Delahaye car, the 155, never fully materialized.
15:24
And in 1939, Lucy had to run the previous season's 145s against a
15:29
Mercedes with an updated engine.
15:31
By the time the team arrived in Switzerland for the Grand Prix, Lucy
15:35
switched her team to Maserati's.
15:37
I think it's very telling she didn't choose another French mark.
15:41
At home, tragedy struck, Laurie was killed in a car accident
15:44
that also badly injured Lucy.
15:46
Rene Dreyfus stood by her sons at the funeral because she was still
15:49
in hospital during Laurie's funeral.
15:51
And then he had packed up and reported back to base, because
15:53
after all, France was at war.
15:55
But it didn't keep her down long.
15:56
Within a month, she contacted Dreyfus because she had a new plan.
15:59
She was going to send a French team to compete in the Indianapolis
16:03
500, bringing more attention to the French cause, to the isolationist U.
16:07
S.
16:08
Now, I'm going to use this moment to plug for the REVS Institute down in Florida.
16:12
Not only is the collection incredible, but we have an app and a website with
16:16
lots of stories and pictures and videos.
16:19
So if you want to know what happened to her team at the Indy
16:21
500, I'm afraid you're going to have to go to REVS Institute.
16:26
Now, Lucy wasn't well enough to make the Atlantic Crossing by the time it
16:30
happened, but that's perhaps fortunate, because no women were allowed in the pits.
16:34
Dreyfus later recalled how his teammate's timekeeper, who also happened to be
16:38
his wife, was built a special tower so she might watch the driver without
16:42
setting foot in the forbidden zone.
16:44
That wouldn't have been good enough for Madame Shell, Rene later wrote.
16:48
She would have been picketing Gasoline Alley.
16:50
As Icarus Shell battled rain on the speedway, Paris.
16:55
After the 500, Lucy instructed the team to sell the Maseratis and she
16:59
herself decamped her home in Monaco.
17:01
She did not return to motorsports after the war, at least not officially.
17:05
By 1947, her son Harry was making a name for himself on the
17:09
European sports car circuits.
17:11
Harry would go on to be the first American in the newly organized
17:14
Formula One championship.
17:16
He later would enter cars sometimes under the name Le Kiriblo, keeping
17:20
his mom's team alive in motor racing.
17:23
Looking at that Maserati she sent to Indy, which was an Italian car with
17:26
Franco American livery and her Irish name on the side, you might wonder
17:31
how Lucy felt about her nationality.
17:33
And any contemporary would have been forgiven for thinking the Shells were
17:36
French nationals, speaking fluently.
17:38
Yet the Shells and their sons considered themselves American Indians.
17:41
through and through.
17:43
They are listed as American in every race entry and result.
17:47
And here we even have her own quote.
17:49
I'm an American, I love automobiles, and I love France.
17:52
And I'd wanted to contribute to the rise of French prestige.
17:56
I think also briefly interesting was I saw how Lucy really intended that the O'Reilly
18:01
name, her name, would be carried on.
18:03
On his birth record at the U.
18:04
S.
18:04
consulate, Harry's last name is capitalized as O'Reilly Shell.
18:08
And Harry himself often used O'Reilly and was listed under O alphabetically.
18:14
And, uh, that's his draft card.
18:15
It kind of reminds me of his delivery on his mom's car.
18:18
And in fact, during Lucy and Laurie's lifetime, the International Herald
18:22
Tribune referred to them as Mr.
18:24
and Mrs.
18:24
O'Reilly Shell.
18:25
When, of course, Laurie was not an O'Reilly.
18:28
I thought that was pretty interesting.
18:30
I know we didn't get a chance to go too in depth, but I just want to
18:32
thank you so much for having me here today and I just hope I've piqued your
18:36
interest about Lucy and her life and believe me there's a lot more there
18:39
to discover and I hope I've left, yes, time for any questions if there are any.
18:50
I read the book faster.
18:52
Uh huh.
18:52
And fascinating book, everyone should read it.
18:54
I thought I knew a lot about that period of erasing, but never heard
18:57
of Lucio O'Neill Schell until I read the book, and then you also expounded
19:01
on some of her other accomplishments that the book didn't mention.
19:04
Other women got their due during that time period.
19:07
Do you have any theories why Historians have pretty much forgotten about her.
19:11
I think it's interesting.
19:12
I elided a little bit for time some of the mentions of her in the press.
19:18
In a press clipping that I had up, and I can bring up again, basically the
19:21
reporter mentioned everything about the creation of her new Grand Prix
19:25
team and talked to everyone, Monsieur Charles, René Dreyfus, and her husband,
19:30
and never actually mentioned her.
19:32
Even when in the article.
19:34
Monsieur Charles said, this team isn't mine.
19:37
The woman, the madame, she created it.
19:39
And the reporter still never bothered to talk to her.
19:41
I found, too, later that in some secondary sources, they might
19:45
mention Laurie as being running the team, when that just wasn't true
19:49
from the primary sources we have.
19:51
It was kind of incredible to me, and I couldn't, honestly,
19:53
I can't make sense of it.
19:55
Because to me, it's like trying to tell the history of Mercedes F1.
19:58
and not mentioning Total Wolf.
20:00
It's like trying to talk about Red Bull Racing and making only
20:03
a passing reference to a Mr.
20:05
Ginger Spice, is how I feel about that.
20:07
So, I think there was some intentional and I think also sometimes people
20:10
just received common wisdom.
20:13
How much do you think Lucy's family fortune played a role
20:17
in her life in motorsports?
20:19
It was everything.
20:20
It was everything.
20:21
Do you think she would have had the same role in motor sports without it?
20:25
No.
20:26
Or any?
20:27
Not any.
20:28
Why?
20:28
Because money created access.
20:30
Women didn't have access.
20:32
Now, there were a lot of women driving at that time.
20:34
Women ownership, it really was her money creating it.
20:36
I think she inherited about, in that day's money, about 9
20:40
million bucks when her dad died.
20:41
And that's in, you know, 1930's money.
20:43
So you can only imagine maybe 150 million today.
20:46
that she had to spend.
20:47
I was just wondering, that car, the Indy car, that's in the museum?
20:51
Yeah, it's there at REVS.
20:52
Was it damaged, the museum, from the hurricane?
20:55
Oh no, everything at REVS is great.
20:57
So, please come on down.
20:58
In fact, they're having a conference there next weekend.
21:01
Yep, yep.
21:02
Just a couple of statements.
21:03
I believe that she sold the two cars to Lou Moore after the The
21:08
race at Indy, is that correct?
21:10
Harry, her son, was killed practicing at Grand Prix in 1955?
21:15
He was.
21:15
He was driving for, I believe it was, uh, the Yeoman Credit Union.
21:18
It was Sterling Moss outfit, yes, during pre practice.
21:21
Now, when she got Dreyfus out of, uh, He was already in the French Army
21:26
and I understand that they let him go because he was going to Indianapolis.
21:31
How much of that was a plan to get a Jewish driver out of France
21:36
before the Germans caught him?
21:38
That's a really interesting question.
21:40
And it's something I haven't found yet, but it doesn't
21:43
mean the answer is not there.
21:44
There's in fact stacks of her letters that just have never been digitized.
21:48
We know for sure that, Dreyfus himself says, My friends told
21:52
me not to come back after Indy.
21:54
He didn't say which friends though.
21:56
She was a confirmed anti fascist at the point that there were certain
22:00
French who were pro fascists.
22:02
Yeah, absolutely.
22:03
I love so much the little news clipping about her work as a nurse and talking
22:07
about the French battle against the Germans and really the arrival of
22:11
the French drivers for the Indy 500 was a media spectacle and Dreyfus
22:15
actually gave out, signed headshots of him in his military uniform.
22:18
So it really was.
22:20
Sort of the, there was public pressure against the Minister of Information to
22:24
release these two drivers, René Dreyfus and the other man I didn't mention,
22:27
René Lebesgue, as sort of promotion for France and for the French war effort.
22:31
And it was important.
22:33
Thank you.
22:33
First, thanks for filling in this blank.
22:35
And my personal knowledge about who Harry Shell was, where he came from.
22:39
Yeah.
22:40
I always wondered about that.
22:41
I was just picking up the last comments.
22:43
You didn't mention that Rennie Griffiths, when he ended up here in the USA It
22:47
became well known in the fifties for his restaurant, La Chante Claire in New York.
22:54
I had the privilege of dining there once.
22:56
Yeah.
22:56
His autobiography is honestly, it's terrific.
22:59
I highly recommend it.
23:00
So when are you making a movie of the story?
23:03
This is what I'm hoping.
23:04
I'm hoping.
23:05
The more people get excited about it, the more there's a
23:07
groundswell, and I think there's a real hunger for stories like this.
23:12
To me, one of the things I learned when I learned about Lucy is, yeah, she was
23:16
rather unique in terms of being a team owner and principal of a Grand Prix team.
23:21
But in terms of being a driver, every time I went to the French papers to look for
23:25
results, any time a woman was allowed to race, there are madames and mademoiselles
23:29
scattered through the results.
23:31
They're all there.
23:32
And, um, I, I had no idea.
23:35
Just another comment.
23:36
When Wilbur Shaw persuaded his car owner to buy the HCTF the year before, Cotton
23:43
Hennings, their mechanic, changed the firing order on that car to smooth it out.
23:50
And it was more successful in Indianapolis, to say the least.
23:55
Now the car that it revs now belonged to Dean Butler at one
23:58
time, and he got his restorer.
24:02
to change the firing order also, and I was at Milwaukee when Emil
24:07
Andrews, who I believe came in second in that car at Indianapolis, drove
24:12
it again, and he came in and said how great it was if it had been that
24:15
good, and indeed it won the race.
24:18
That's amazing.
24:19
That's amazing.
24:20
I want to say too, not only did Lucy get Rene Dreyfus into America out
24:24
of France, but also Luigi Canetti.
24:26
Who is the reserve driver on that team?
24:28
And he stayed in America, of course, founded North American Racing Team.
24:32
Thank you, Lauren.
24:36
This episode is brought to you in part by the International
24:38
Motor Racing Research Center.
24:40
Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history
24:43
of motorsports, spanning continents, eras, and race series.
24:46
The center's collection embodies the speed, drama, and camaraderie
24:50
of amateur and professional motor racing throughout the world.
24:53
The Center welcomes serious researchers and casual fans alike to share stories of
24:57
race drivers, race series, and race cars captured on their shelves and walls and
25:02
brought to life through a regular calendar of public lectures and special events.
25:06
To learn more about the Center, visit www.
25:09
racingarchives.
25:10
org.
25:11
This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians.
25:15
They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history.
25:18
The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers.
25:22
Organizational records, print ephemera and images to safeguard as well as to broaden
25:27
and deepen the understanding of motorized wheeled land transportation through
25:31
the modern age and into the future.
25:33
For more information about the SAH, visit www.
25:37
autohistory.
25:38
org.
25:43
If you like what you've heard and want to learn more about GTM,
25:45
be sure to check us out on www.
25:49
gtmotorsports.
25:49
org.
25:50
You can also find us on Instagram at GrandTouringMotorsports.
25:53
Also, if you want to get involved or have suggestions for future shows, You can call
25:58
or text us at 202 630 1770, or send us an email at crewchief at gtmotorsports.
26:05
org.
26:05
We'd love to hear from you.
26:07
Hey everybody, Crew Chief Eric here.
26:10
We really hope you enjoyed this episode of Break Fix, and we wanted
26:13
to remind you that GTM remains a no annual fees organization.
26:18
And our goal is to continue to bring you quality episodes
26:21
like this one at no charge.
26:24
As a loyal listener, please consider subscribing to our Patreon for
26:27
bonus and behind the scenes content, extra goodies, and GTM swag.
26:32
For as little as 2.
26:33
50 a month, you can keep our developers, writers, editors, casters, and other
26:38
volunteers fed on their strict diet of fig newtons, gummy bears, and monster.
26:43
Consider signing up for Patreon today at www.
26:47
patreon.
26:48
com forward slash GT Motorsports.
26:51
And remember, without fans, supporters, and members like you,
26:55
none of this would be possible.