Pete Brock, stylist for the Corvette Sting Ray, designer of the Cobra Daytona Coupe, founder of BRE and a multi-disciplined Renaissance Man in his spare time, was honored by the Road Racing Drivers Club with its Phil Hill Award at the organization’s annual banquet in Daytona Beach prior to the Rolex 24. Brock is the 21st recipient of the award, named for America’s first World Champion driver, that recognizes the driver, entrant or official who the club feels has rendered outstanding service to road racing.
RRDC President Bobby Rahal, presenting Brock (pictured above) with the pewter rendering of Hill’s 1961 World Championship-winning Ferrari 156 Sharknose, said, “Phil Hill represented everything that was great about the American spirit internationally. He was the first U.S. F1 champion and multi-time winner of Le Mans. He was a gentleman in the finest sense of the word. Tonight’s recipient is a big Phil Hill fan, and I can’t think of a greater recipient than Peter Brock for the Phil Hill Award.”
“It’s an incredible honor to receive this award because of the people who have received it before. I really feel humbled,” said Brock. “Phil Hill was such a dear friend, and my hero from the very beginning because I saw him win in 1951 at Pebble Beach when I first got interested in racing, and followed his career right to the end. So, this award is a very personal thing. It’s going to be treasured in my house.”
At the same dinner, Miles C. Collier, (pictured below) artist, investor, philanthropist and noted authority on historic automobiles, was named recipient of the 2012 Bob Akin Award. Conceived in 2003 to honor the memory of the longtime RRDC member and past president who lost his life in a racing accident at Road Atlanta, the distinctive trophy by Steuben Glass in Corning, N.Y., is given to the person who best exemplifies the qualities and characteristics that Akin represented, including a passion for motorsports and automobiles, a high level of sportsmanship and fair play.
A retired business executive, Collier is the founder of the Revs Institute for Automotive Research in Naples, Florida, which includes the Collier Collection, housing more than 100 important historic cars and bicycles from around the world. He is a practicing artist as well as the founding supporter of the Stanford-Revs initiative. For the last decade, Collier has conducted a biennial symposium on Connoisseurship and the Collectible Automobile that brings together automobile collectors and faculty from around the world to discuss critical industry issues.
“We’re pleased to present this award to Miles Collier,” said co-presenter Archie Urcioli. “Everyone who has had the pleasure of visiting his museum in Southwest Florida, as I have on several occasions, will be awe-inspired by the great machinery there.”
“I’m obviously gobsmacked by this,” offered Collier. “I would view it as a validation that fooling around with cars and the history of cars and the interrelationship between cars and modernity is not a completely fraudulent activity. And to receive this award in Bob Akin’s name is a very poignant kind of thing. He certainly was the avatar of the ‘car guy cum businessman/philanthropist/good guy,’ and we all aspire to that kind of thing.”
