24 February: Today in Racing

24 February will be remembered for many a good racing reason, starting with Harlan Fengler racing to vitory in the 1924 Beverly Hills Grand Prize race, eight years before Malcolm Campbell steered his Napier Railton Blue Bird to another new 253.9 mph World Land Speed Record at Daytona Beach, Florida. 

The 1958 Cuban Sportscar Grand Prix meanwhile went ahead in front of a crowd of 200 000, but without Juan Manuel Fangio, who kidnapped the day before by Fidel Castro guerrillas.

Ray Bellm and Maurizio Sandro Sala sped to victory in the 4 Hours of Jerez driving a Gulf McLaren F1 GTR in 1995 and Robert Wickens won the 2008  Durban South African A1 Grand Prix Sprint race for Canada, before Neel Jani steered to Feature race victory for Switzerland. There were two 24 February Daytona 500s over the years, including Tiny Lund’s storybook 1963 win for Wood Brothers as substitute for the injured Marvin Panch, while Jimmie Johnson raced to 2013 victory.

In other NASCAR action, Bobby Allison won in Richmond in 1974, Darrell Waltrip in ’85 and Dale Earnhardt in ’91 and Matt Kenseth won the 2002 Subway 400, while Australian Touring Car action saw Peter Brock take 1985 Pye honours, Jim Richards win at Sandown in ’91 and and Jamie Whincup took the 2008 Clipsal 500.  

Off the racetrack, Italian magistrate Maurizio Passarini released a 500 page report in 1995, which concluded that the 1994 Imola crash that killed Ayrton Senna was most likely the result of a steering failure on his Williams. And the Indian government in 2005 bizarrely ordered Narain Karthikeyan to change the Indian flag design of his helmet ahead of his debut Formula 1 season. They colours allegedly contravened Flag Code of India rules.

On this day, German Touring Gar star Klaus Niedzwiedz was born in 1951, four time world Formula 1 Champion Alain Prost in 1955, single-seater exponent Russell Ingall in 1964, F1 racer Pedro de la Rosa in 1971 and Sports and GT racer Timo Bernhard in '81 (Photo: A1GP)