The late, great automotive writer and author Dean Batchelor would be proud. Named as winner of the Motor Press Guild’s prestigious Dean Batchelor Award for 2000 was Dr. János (pronounced Yanosh) L. Wimpffen for his massive work, Time and Two Seats, an amazingly complete reference and history of the world sports car championships since 1953 (reviewed in the January 2000 VRJ). Over 2,300 pages long and spread across two thick volumes, Wimpffen’s epic may in fact be the motor racing book of the decade.
Truth is, according to Wimpffen, it might never have happened if it weren’t for some well-known car collectors and vintage racers in the Seattle area.
“It helps to be living in the epicenter of renewed interest in collecting cars that ran in the series, not to mention that people of means to support such a project are here.”
Wimpffen first met vintage racer and big-time car collector Bruce McCaw in 1991. Impressed with his encyclopedic knowledge, enthusiasm and academic approach (Wimpffen has a doctorate in geography), McCaw hired him to ferret out the history and pedigree of some of his vintage racecars. You want to know about early U.S. racing, you ask Phil Harms (who does the records for Dick Wallen’s books). You want to know about Indianapolis, you ask Indy historian Donald Davidson. You want to know about international sports car racing or specifically, the cars that have contested it, you ask Dr. János Wimpffen. Two more Seattle enthusiasts also employed Wimpffen to research their cars, Ferrari collector Jon Shirley and long-time racing enthusiast Andy Evans. Eventually, McCaw, Shirley, and Evans agreed to sponsor Wimpffen’s monumental book project.
“The whole thing gelled in late 1994.”
The research behind Time and Two Seats is absolutely staggering. Imagine keeping track of every driver and every car to take part in a world championship sports car race over nearly 50 years, even those drivers and cars that were entered but did not race. They are all there, for every major race since the world championship was founded in 1953: the drivers, their nationality, the entrants, the cars (most often with chassis numbers), the class contested, qualifying times, grid and finishing positions, and in the case of DNF’s, the reason and number of laps completed. And those are just the results tables.
Wimpffen also has included insightful narratives for every race, era by era, year by year, through five decades. Together they chronicle the development of sports racing cars. The end result, of course, is a fascinating body of information that will serve as the bible for enthusiasts, writers, and importantly, vintage car collectors and racers around the world. In short, we are all the beneficiaries.
Believe me, I speak from experience, you have to truly love your subject and be, well, exhaust pipe-retentive to research this kind of all-encompassing work. And it does not happen overnight. Wimpffen’s propensity for collecting statistics began when he was a youth following baseball in Chicago in the 1960s. In 1966, however, ABC Television’s broadcast of the Ford GT40s winning at Le Mans introduced him to the sport of motor racing. Wimpffen was hooked. He even drove a Triumph in club races for awhile, but schoolwork was the first priority. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in geography from the University of Illinois-Chicago and a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, where his 1988 doctoral dissertation dealt with transportation issues on the U.S.-Canada border. All along, though, Wimpffen maintained his interest in sports car racing and in particular, international endurance racing. The idea for Time and Two Seats germinated about 20 years ago, according to Wimpffen.
“I enjoyed collecting racing data, and sports car information most of all. I noticed how Formula One was well covered by books, but no one had done a comprehensive history of the endurance branch of the sport. So I held onto the idea until a time came when I could actively pursue it. I actually worked full time on it for over four years, with another six spent in various levels of part-time activity.”
In the last decade, Wimpffen has been a fixture in the press rooms of racetracks all over the world, but often, long before other writers arrived and long after they left, he was pouring over track archives in search of accurate records for his book.
“It’s difficult to put in perspective the amount of digging it took to unearth all the records. I made two tours of the ‘big four’ of European motor racing powers, Italy, France, Germany and Britain. In addition, there were endless faxes, e-mails, and phone calls with key people looking for that last bit of data about the Coppa Consuma or the Nurburgring 1000.”
Wimpffen also traveled extensively in the U.S., scouring the archives of various individuals and organizations. There are no less than three full pages of acknowledgments in the book.
“That long list of names is no exaggeration. They all shared in the effort. Some gave me a little tidbit I needed, while others fed and sheltered me. The biggest pleasure for me was getting to know so many fine people. What began as a wheel nut and flywheel project quickly became one crowned by the human experience. I never expected that aspect and I appreciate the many new friends I’ve made.”
None more so than the three vintage racecar enthusiasts who really made Time and Two Seats happen, Bruce McCaw, Jon Shirley, and Andy Evans.
“The principal backers did far more than support me. They believed in me. The whole experience was a lesson in humility and integrity.”
As I said, Dean Batchelor would be proud that the award named in his honor went to this soft-spoken maven of international endurance racing. János Wimpffen is not only an important writer, he’s a class act.
