Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / The Last Lap - The Mysterious Death of Peter Kreis

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The Last Lap - The Mysterious Death of Peter Kreis · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

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  Breakfix's History of Motorsports series is brought to you in part
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  by the International Motor Racing Research Center, as well as the
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  Society of Automotive Historians, the Watkins Glen Area Chamber of
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  Commerce, and the Argettsinger family.
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  Suicide on the Track, the case of Peter Kreis by William Walker.
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  A longtime fan of open wheel racing, William T.
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  Walker Jr.
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  was introduced to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indy 500
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  by broadcasts of Sid Collins.
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  He grew fascinated by the careers of his cousins Peter Kreis and
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  Rex Mays, both Indy drivers.
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  The possibility of drivers dying by suicide on track has long
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  been acknowledged, sometimes alleged, but seldom proven.
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  It remains a forbidden topic because drivers are unwilling to admit any
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  weakness, much less depression.
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  The case of Peter Kreiss, however, offers an opportunity to examine a case
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  which resulted in two purposeful deaths at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
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  Peter raced at Indy from 1925 to 1934, when he and his
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  riding mechanic died in Turn 1.
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  Indy drivers, track officials, and other experts could not identify any obvious
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  cause for the accident, calling it the strangest death in all of racing history.
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  After 50 years of research, William reached the conclusion
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  that Peter took his own life.
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  The results of his investigation were published in The Last Lap, The
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  Mysterious Demise of Peter Kreis in the Indianapolis 500 by Octane Press in 2023.
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  Please note that the following episode is based on relevance and
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  contains depictions of suicide.
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  If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or a
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  crisis, please reach out immediately to the Suicide Prevention Lifeline at
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  802 7 3 talk 8 2 5 5 or text home to the crisis text line at 7 4 1 7 4 1.
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  These services are free and confidential.
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  The following episode is intended for mature audiences.
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  Please note that listener discretion is advised.
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  Mr.
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  Walker is going to talk to us about Suicide on the Track,
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  the case of Peter Christ.
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  He also has a book that's come out, The Last Laugh and the Mysterious Demise
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  of Peter Christ in the Annapolis 500.
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  I'm here to talk about my cousin, who is Pete Criss.
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  Pete raced from 1925 at Indy to 1934.
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  Nine years.
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  Pete was the son of a wealthy man, John Criss.
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  who was a multi millionaire, he built railroads, and he had marble quarries on
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  his land, and many stones from that marble quarry were used to build the buildings
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  on the National Mall in Washington, D.
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  C.
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  And by the way, I should say, we were the poor side of the family.
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  These people are extremely wealthy.
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  They're still extremely wealthy.
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  And my side of the family did not inherit any of that wealth, unfortunately.
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  Like a lot of fathers, and especially like, if you know Joseph Kennedy,
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  who fathered John and Robert and Teddy, he wanted to build a dynasty.
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  And he pushed his three sons, John Jr.
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  Pete, who is the race driver, and Harmon, and he pushed these kids very hard.
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  He wanted them to be risk takers, he wanted them to be daring.
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  To give you a sense of what Pete was like, they had the biggest
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  house in Knoxville, still beautiful.
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  His sister lives there, and by the way, his sister, who has now
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  departed, helped me tremendously.
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  Her name was Hazel.
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  And she gave me all of his papers, would answer all my questions.
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  Always had the best cars, Auburns, whatever it was, he had it.
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  Very handsome fella, not terribly attracted to the women, but he was
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  always making jokes, he always dressed.
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  in a three piece suit, and he would come to the track in that
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  three piece suit, and go into the shed and change into his overalls.
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  Generally, he would leave his tie on.
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  Pete began driving on the back roads of Knoxville.
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  He learned how to drive using his father's 1920 Marmon, which he souped
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  up and drove around the back roads.
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  There was one race course in Knoxville, and he drove on it.
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  One day, however, as he was just approaching twenty four, a friend
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  asked to be driven to Knoxville from this rural area where they lived,
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  and Pete looked at him and joked.
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  Pete was a very gregarious kind of person and had great fun.
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  And he said to this kid, I'll have you in Knoxville or in hell.
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  in ten minutes.
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  It was a very cold night.
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  They hit some black ice.
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  The Marmon flipped over.
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  The boy was killed and Pete was knocked unconscious.
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  He apparently had a traumatic brain injury.
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  He began suffering from flashbacks and things of that sort.
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  But he kept driving.
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  And his father Knew his son was depressed and he knew only one way
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  to go, and that was to keep charging.
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  He and Pete took the train to Indiana and he bought his son a top of the
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  line Duesenberg Roadster to buy that car, which was 10, 000 by the way.
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  And the average salary, I think, was about 600 a year then.
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  So you can imagine what kind of wealth they had.
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  But he had to become a member of the Duesenberg team.
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  Fred and Augie took him out to the track, tried him out, and they
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  knew that my cousin had speed.
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  This man could travel.
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  Pete got off to a fast start.
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  In his first race, which was at one of the board tracks in Culver City, California,
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  he couldn't get the car started.
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  When the flag dropped, he started dead last and finished second.
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  Going through the field, this man knew how to achieve speed.
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  He was eighth in his rookie year at Indy.
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  The Duesenberg brothers and Peter DiPaolo, by the way, whom I talked with during the
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  course of my research, tried to get him to slow down a bit because he was impetuous.
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  So he did finish 8th at the Indy in 1925.
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  Tommy Milton, a very famous driver, elected to take Pete to Monza to race
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  against Formula One or Grand Prix cars.
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  And Pete started off on the front row, and the second sweep around, you know the
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  Parabolica curve, which is steeply banked.
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  He came out of that curve in first place.
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  and set fast lap.
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  Now he thought, because of the difference in language, he
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  thought he had set a track record.
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  The third lap, transmission gave out, and he spun into a
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  curve called the Portalesmo.
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  It's claimed a lot of cars.
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  It's still there.
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  When you watch Monza, you will see it.
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  When he set the track record, or set fast lap at Monza, he went downtown
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  that night, and he was always trying to please his father, of course.
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  He sent him a, a one line telegram.
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  Broke track record and car.
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  Love, Pete.
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  And that's sort of the way he conducted himself, with self deprecating humor.
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  He gave up his car, he sold his cars, and he would race at Indianapolis.
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  And everybody loved to see him coming.
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  He was just so admired by people.
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  He had driven a couple of the front wheel drive Millers, and he liked them.
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  He liked bored tracks.
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  So he switched to Miller.
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  And he had purchased a brand new Miller 91 for the 1926 race, a 91 cubic
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  inch engine, a dual overhead cams, supercharged and front wheel drive.
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  Miller.
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  I don't know whether you know it, but it is a terrific, it is the epitome of
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  racing in the twenties and thirties.
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  He was expected to finish high in the 1926 race.
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  Unfortunately, something happened to him, which happened to a lot
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  of us a couple of years ago.
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  He caught the flu.
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  He was hospitalized, and Tommy Milton brought several
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  drivers for him to interview.
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  The one he chose was a man, a little known man from California named Frank Lockhart.
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  Lockhart took his car and won the race his rookie year.
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  And that event sort of really put the skids to Pete.
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  He never was quite the same after that.
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  Pete never finished another 500.
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  He was running fifth in 1932 in one of those Studebaker junk formulas.
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  Crashed into turn one at 475 miles.
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  Now there was no doubt about the kind of professional driver Pete was.
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  You see a picture here of Pete shaking hands with Henry Ford.
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  This was taken in 1932.
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  Ford was standing in turn one.
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  In the infield, Pete came down and did a 360.
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  A Danny Sullivan move.
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  And Ford said, that guy can really drive, I want to meet him.
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  They ushered Pete up and he met Henry Ford.
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  So Henry Ford, who was a pretty good driver himself in the old
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  days, Barney Oldfield days, realized that Pete could handle cars.
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  And he was well known.
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  for being extremely good at recovering from spins.
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  Another uncle of mine, who's now deceased, he was very famous in
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  Knoxville, and people would say, Peter, you're going to win it this year.
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  He had a series of DNFs and crashes.
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  Is this going to be the year?
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  In 1934, Pete said to him, I'm either going to win it, or
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  I'm coming home in a pine box.
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  And my uncle swore that he was not kidding.
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  The day of Pete's death, he saw an accident on the way to practice,
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  in which two people were killed.
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  He stopped the taxi that he was taking to the track, tried to save
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  the lives of these people, and unfortunately, they both died.
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  When he got to Indy, his old friends, very famous drivers, Fred Frame.
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  People like that who were car owners wouldn't give him a car.
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  They had heard about all of these accidents.
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  He was very disgusted.
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  Fred Frame finally assigned a car to him with only two days left to qualify.
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  Pete qualified the car.
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  It was a good car.
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  It was a Miller 91.
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  And the crash in 1934 resulted in his death and the death of a riding
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  mechanic, which is one of the more perplexing problems of this story.
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  When Pete crashed, it was a national story.
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  Subtitle here says, Death of Pete Kriss, a mystery, drivers say.
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  And then car wrecked while apparently under control.
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  That caught my attention.
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  Here's what happened.
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  He was going at a relatively slow speed, about a hundred, and
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  these cars could blast along on the straights up to about 160.
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  He went into turn one and then got on top of the retaining wall and
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  slid perfectly balanced for 75 yards.
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  A state patrolman saw this and swore to this.
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  He said, I could not believe that he was balanced right on top of this.
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  The way he got up on top, look at this element that the track had
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  installed in a few years earlier.
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  This is a firm.
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  And I think that this berm was put in, in hopes that it would push the cars
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  away from the wall and save crashes, because as you know, turn one in India
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  is the most dangerous curve in racing.
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  At any rate, he rode up that berm.
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  got on top of the retaining wall and sat there for that 75 yards.
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  It was a spectacular crash.
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  They spun off after about 75 yards, hit a tree that was in the
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  backyard of one of those houses on the south end of the track.
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  They hit, unfortunately, right at the cockpit.
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  It killed both Pete and the riding mechanic.
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  It nearly severed.
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  Pete's legs from his body.
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  The mechanic lived very briefly.
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  Pete was killed instantly.
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  In doing this, I became attracted to this story when I was a little kid.
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  So I wanted to solve the mystery.
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  A bunch of drivers and officials, winner of the Indy 500, concluded In one of the
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  print stories, they said, This is the strangest death in all racing history.
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  And I was determined to solve that mystery.
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  I did some research on suicide.
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  The article had given me some evidence to think that there
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  might have been suicide involved.
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  Freud, of course, started his research on the death wish.
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  That's notorious.
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  We know that it's spurious to some degree.
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  But he said that people who go through a trauma, as Pete did when he killed the
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  young man, have one of two reactions.
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  The first reaction is people flee away from the danger.
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  And you know that's notorious about what happened to World War I veterans.
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  They would hear a car backfire and they would hit the ground,
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  thinking that it was shell fire.
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  The second reaction, however, and this is a rare reaction, is that people, if
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  they've gone through this trauma, try to do it again to prove that they can conquer
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  the fear that this trauma induced in them.
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  So we know more about PTSD now, and I think Pete had a case of PTSD.
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  A medical doctor at Harvard has done a lot of research into suicide, and he found
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  that potential Victims of suicide engage in a series of near death accidents to
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  practice subconsciously their final act.
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  Their psychological pressure closes them off from other people.
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  They lose friends.
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  There is often a slight precipitating factor that may be
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  very tiny, but it kicks them off.
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  And then in some cases, and this is of course the key to proving suicide, there's
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  an announcement in a note or gesture.
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  Pete began to practice suicide.
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  One of my uncles knew him well.
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  Pete decided to buy an airplane.
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  Eddie Rickenbacker had talked him into it.
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  Peter DiPaolo told him it was a great idea.
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  And Pete bought a Waco biplane.
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  And one day he was taking off from an airport in Knoxville.
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  And the engine cut out.
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  They couldn't turn around.
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  It flopped into the Tennessee River upside down.
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  Pete got out very quickly.
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  His co pilot was trapped.
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  But Pete went back down into the water and freed this guy from the seatbelt.
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  Lost part of a finger.
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  Had bones.
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  As you can see, damaged his eye, and as we go through this, you're going
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  to see that more and more Pete began to have what we would call accidents,
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  but they're not really accidents.
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  Three personal wrecks in 1932.
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  He saw five deaths at Indy in 1933.
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  Plane crash was 32.
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  Then, I found this interesting item.
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  Dave Lewis, a driver who had been an Indian, raced several years, had
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  retired and moved to California.
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  Dave, one day, shot himself.
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  And I found an article in the Indianapolis newspaper that said
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  there was a lot of talk about suicide at the track the other day.
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  He said, many people don't believe that Dave Lewis committed suicide.
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  And then a driver is quoted as saying, Dave would not have done it with a pistol.
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  If he had wanted to kill himself, he would have just lifted his hands when
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  he was going into one of the turns at Indy and crashed through the wall.
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  As much as we would like to believe that suicide is not something that's considered
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  in racing circles, this proves that it was a pretty hot topic from time to time.
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  I want to show you those two slides.
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  This is the same man over nine years.
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  Look at the change from this optimistic young man.
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  In 1925 to this old man in 1934, that's hard to account for nine years.
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  He looks like he's aged 30 years and I think this gives us a clue in 1935.
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  At Daytona Beach, Malcolm Campbell was trying out the Bluebird, the AP
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  reporter for Racing, got together a group of Indianapolis experts.
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  Pop Myers was there, if you know him, he was vice president, Eddie Rickenbacker's
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  brother was there, Bill Cummings.
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  who had won the 1934 race, and they had drinks in a bar at the
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  Clarendon Hotel right on the beach.
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  They went through what I call an inquest, coroner's jury, into
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  what happened to Pete Criss.
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  And they noted these things, that it was practice, there were no
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  other cars on the track, he was driving at a relatively slow speed.
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  They had examined the car.
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  There were no mechanical defects.
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  There were no impediments on the track.
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  No skid marks.
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  He hadn't tried to brake.
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  He hadn't tried to steer out of the thing.
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  As the reporter said, it appears that his car was under control
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  when he went up on the wall.
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  And then this phrase appears, and Pete was apparently in good health and spirits.
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  If you know anything, that's an invitation to draw a
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  conclusion that this was suicide.
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  But they didn't draw that conclusion.
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  They said they finally decided they just couldn't reach a conclusion.
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  They called it the strangest death in all racing history.
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  Questions remain.
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  If this is suicide, could he have taken a riding mechanic along with him?
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  That's the biggest objection.
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  The researchers that I've read point to the fact that when someone is
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  on the verge of suicide, he's got a psychic vision that just closes down
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  and he doesn't consider other things.
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  There was, of course, a precipitating event.
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  We know that suicide can be an impulsive act.
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  He could, however, and this is my alternative, had been having a flashback.
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  He mentioned these flashbacks.
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  He talked about them, and he said, Every now and then I lose
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  my nerve, but I get it back.
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  It may have been that he was having those flashbacks.
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  But the biggest thing, of course, is there was no note or gesture.
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  I told you about Pete's sister, Hazel.
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  Hazel Bill was quite old when I met her.
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  A wonderful lady, just a wonderful person.
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  Strong, energetic.
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  All three of her brothers died and she took over the family, ran the outfit.
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  Called me one day and said, Bill, I need you to come down,
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  we need to have one of our talks.
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  And when I got to her home, this big Italian villa, She said, Bill,
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  I have something I haven't told you.
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  And I could see she was getting old and she knew she was
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  headed for the last round up.
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  And I said, well, Hazel, what is it?
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  And she said, Pete knew he was going to die that day.
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  I said, well, Hazel, how do you know that?
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  How do you know that he, he knew?
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  She said, he had a premonition.
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  We'd been talking for years, and she hadn't told me this story.
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  I said, well, how do you know this?
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  She said, Pete had a diamond ring.
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  And I used to tease him about that diamond ring.
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  Every time I would see him, I'd say, Pete, when are you going to give me that ring?
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  I want that ring.
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  He would tease her back, they were very close, and he'd say, No, no, Hazel, it's
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  not time for you to get the diamond yet.
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  Right before the practice run, right before Pete went out for his last
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  run, he took the ring off, gave it to the pit captain, and said, If
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  anything happens to me, make sure that my sister gets this ring.
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  Now, Hazel saw this as a premonition that it was God's will that Pete was going to
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  die, and he knew it, and he accepted it.
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  I see it as a gesture announcing that he had decided to commit suicide.
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  And that's the final, near the closing chapter of the book.
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  That's what has convinced me, I don't know of any other way to interpret this.
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  I don't believe in premonitions of this sort.
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  His tombstone is in my family cemetery in Knoxville, Tennessee.
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  Now, when Pete was killed in 1934, his father hired an Italian
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  sculptor to make that tombstone.
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  As you can see, it's probably 5 feet tall, 18 feet long.
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  It's huge.
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  They had to put a concrete foundation 6 feet deep underneath it to keep it level.
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  And it has on it an exact replica of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
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  Down to the bricks.
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  Thousands of little carved bricks.
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  The other remarkable thing is that car goes off right where Pete
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  went off the track and was killed.
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  You can see it in the lower right.
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  When I saw that first, when I was four or five years old, In those days, we
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  would go to the cemetery to clean the graves and that sort of thing, and I
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  would always take a a little racing car and bump it around the track.
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  And by the way, you can see that the motto on it is the last lap, and that's where
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  the title of the book I was captivated.
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  It was over for me.
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  I had to know more about this guy.
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  And I have spent off and on through my life learning about Pete, Chris,
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  now the end of the Chris Dynasty.
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  Pete's father was overjoyed because the tombstone was named the best tombstone
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  of the year 1935 by the New York Times.
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  I guess that's a runner up prize, but, uh, at any rate, you can see here the car.
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  Pete's brother, John, died in a car crash that he caused.
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  He was encouraging a man to go faster.
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  One of the old throttles on the steering wheel, he jammed the
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  throttle forward, crashed into an abutment, and it killed him.
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  His brother Harmon had been gassed in World War I, and he
• 23:28
  died of alcoholism a year later.
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  They all died within three years.
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  Three self destructive deaths.
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  None of the boys reached 40.
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  It's just like the Kennedy story.
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  Three sons dying of violence.
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  His wife, John's wife, died of heart attack.
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  And then, if you're writing a novel, you could put this in.
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  The state condemned their beautiful farm and converted it.
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  And I have said that that makes an ironic statement about
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  what kind of family it was.
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  I believe that the father was one of these hard driving patriarchs
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  who drove his sons to death.
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  And then John, shortly after World War II, died in a fall from the barn.
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  The Chris line ended, no male heirs, and the dynasty dissolved into thin air.
• 24:19
  There are no Chrises left.
• 24:22
  The family continues to have some unbelievably either bad luck
• 24:27
  or self destructive tendencies.
• 24:30
  This is all that's left.
• 24:32
  There's the tombstone.
• 24:34
  That is the story of Pete Criss.
• 24:37
  And let me thank you for your attention, but let me also say, I am particularly
• 24:43
  eager for you to ask me any question that might offer another alternative
• 24:48
  to the story of Pete's demise.
• 24:51
  I had to reach the conclusion I reached, and it's not a happy conclusion, but if
• 24:56
  you have other ideas, you won't offend me.
• 24:59
  I've been questioned by CNN, New York Times, and you won't offend
• 25:02
  me by any questions you may have.
• 25:04
  So, thank you very much.
• 25:06
  Well, thank you.
• 25:07
  This
• 25:14
  Please, go ahead.
• 25:15
  Can you please read the line on the tombstone, on the bottom, the very bottom?
• 25:20
  This guy is weighing five, and it says the last lap was speedway.
• 25:29
  This is a portrait of me, but I really inflated his son's reputation.
• 25:35
  The
• 25:40
  last lap indicates, suggests, I think, that there was a victory involved.
• 25:46
  The black and white checkered flag suggests that someone misleading,
• 25:52
  and some of the people in Knoxville remarked on that when it came up.
• 25:56
  Did Pete's brothers have any children?
• 26:01
  The sad part about this family is there's a history of suicide in this family and
• 26:06
  to be honest with you I had promised Hazel that I would write this biography
• 26:12
  and I did not include the notion about the other people committing suicide.
• 26:17
  There was one son of John, the older brother.
• 26:21
  He wanted to be an opera singer, and they had the money to make that happen.
• 26:26
  And John was trying out to be an opera singer.
• 26:29
  One day he had been put down by a music director and was told he just did not
• 26:35
  have the voice to be an opera singer.
• 26:37
  He went home and chiseled out a part of the floor, a wooden floor, and he took
• 26:43
  a butcher knife, and jammed the handle of that butcher knife into the floor and
• 26:51
  then fell on the knife and killed himself.
• 26:54
  And this is the way this family has lived.
• 26:58
  Very sad business.
• 27:00
  And I could tell you, you would know them.
• 27:02
  This family owned all of the Ruby Tuesday restaurants in the United States.
• 27:08
  That's what they did with their money following the sad event.
• 27:12
  But it's a family that is filled with tragedy after tragedy and still going on.
• 27:18
  I wonder if today it would be possible to do a computer simulation of that
• 27:23
  situation and see the circumstances under which a car could leap up over that wall.
• 27:30
  It is an amazing situation.
• 27:33
  I wondered about that, and then I came across this picture of the berm.
• 27:38
  And I think if it were going fast enough, and a hundred would certainly
• 27:42
  be fast enough, that it would go up that berm, get a bump off that berm,
• 27:46
  and then be propelled along the wall.
• 27:49
  I found this in a book by the official track historian, and it
• 27:54
  just said these berms were intended to direct cars back onto the track.
• 27:59
  If they were headed into the turn wrong, they tended to get cars
• 28:04
  airborne, and they were done away with two or three years after that.
• 28:07
  I wish I knew more.
• 28:09
  If you've ever tried to research things at Indianapolis, it's difficult.
• 28:14
  You know, you need to go through Really do a deep dive into
• 28:19
  archival stuff to find that out.
• 28:21
  But I think it was that berm.
• 28:23
  And there were berms at each of the corners.
• 28:25
  What was his relationship with this riding mechanic?
• 28:28
  Because he was killed, right, in a wreck.
• 28:31
  I mean, it seems like he tried to save people.
• 28:33
  He would do that and take the life of somebody and stuff.
• 28:35
  You know, that's the one, to me.
• 28:38
  That's the one flaw in my argument.
• 28:42
  Could he really have decided to do himself in at a time that he
• 28:47
  had another person in the car?
• 28:49
  I must admit, I gave in to psychological theorizing.
• 28:54
  And what I said was that it might have reminded him of the young man he had
• 29:01
  in his car when he had the accident.
• 29:03
  In Knoxville, that he had a passenger in the right front seat, and that's the
• 29:08
  only thing I have, and I, and I must say, I thought long and hard, and if
• 29:13
  you read the book, you will see my sort of agonizing over this interpretation,
• 29:18
  but the diamond ring story.
• 29:20
  is such powerful evidence that I have to believe that that's what he did.
• 29:27
  And what about his brother and his father?
• 29:29
  Was, was that a suicide too, or?
• 29:32
  Uh, no, I don't think he did.
• 29:34
  He was, uh, this man, Never gave up.
• 29:38
  Never gave up.
• 29:40
  He was the son of a Civil War hero.
• 29:43
  They did foolish things to test their luck.
• 29:46
  Foolish, foolish things.
• 29:48
  And he taught his sons to do foolish things.
• 29:51
  So it was a difficult thing.
• 29:53
  I see we're reaching the end and I've enjoyed this.
• 29:57
  Can I tell you one more story?
• 29:58
  This combines a lot of the elements of this weekend for me.
• 30:03
  Some years ago I had written part of this book, and I've written this
• 30:07
  book a hundred times, different ways.
• 30:10
  Uh, I decided that the quickest way to get the story out would be to get
• 30:15
  Paul Newman to do a movie about it.
• 30:19
  I thought about how to do that.
• 30:21
  And I knew a man that probably many of you have met, Reeves Calloway.
• 30:27
  Reeves set up his cars, Paul Newman's cars.
• 30:30
  And I gave Reeves a call, very welcoming sort of fellow, really nice guy.
• 30:36
  And I said, I need 15 minutes of your time to tell you a story.
• 30:40
  And he said, sure, come on up.
• 30:42
  And my wife and I drove up to Connecticut, and I had a picture
• 30:46
  book then, and I gave him this, this whole thing that you've just seen.
• 30:50
  And he said, that's a very interesting story.
• 30:53
  How do I fit in?
• 30:54
  And I said, I want you to give this to Paul Newman and see
• 30:58
  if he'll do a movie of it.
• 30:59
  And he said, Paul will love this story.
• 31:02
  And he took the books and took them to Paul Newman.
• 31:06
  And Paul decided he could not do it because he was too old to play the lead.
• 31:11
  And so now I have a very nice letter from Paul Newman on my wall.
• 31:16
  And that's the end of my near miss, let's say.
• 31:20
  Thank you very much.
• 31:25
  very much.
• 31:28
  We can all help prevent suicide.
• 31:29
  The 988 Lifeline provides 24 7 free and confidential support for
• 31:34
  people in distress, prevention, and crisis resources for you or your
• 31:37
  loved ones, and best practices for professionals in the United States.
• 31:40
  If you or someone you know is experiencing suicidal thoughts or a
• 31:43
  crisis, please reach out immediately to the Suicide Prevention Lifeline
• 31:46
  at 800 273 TALK, 8255, or text HOME to the Crisis Text Line at 741741.
• 31:54
  These services are free and confidential.
• 31:57
  This episode is brought to you in part by the International
• 31:59
  Motor Racing Research Center.
• 32:01
  Its charter is to collect, share, and preserve the history
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  of motorsports, spanning continents, eras, and race series.
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