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Mark Donohue |
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Edition
By Mark Donohue
With Paul Van Valkenburg
$49.95 hardcover ISBN 0-8376-007
$24.95 softcover ISBN 0-8376-0069-3 By Brion Gluck
For Mustangs Illustrated
In 1974, Mark Donohue took a year off at the
pinnacle of his driving career to write “The Unfair Advantage”, a gritty,
insider’s look at the world of sports car racing. The book tracks his rise
from amateur races in Mustangs and Corvettes to winning the Indy 500 in
Penske’s McLaren M16.
A little over a year later, Donohue was dead,
killed by injuries sustained during an accident during race day warm up at
the 1975 Austrian Grand Prix. Now, 25 years after it’s original publication,
Donahue’s sons and Bentley Publishing have created a new and improved
version of this work by perhaps the greatest American road-racer of all
time.
The new edition adds a number of photos and
historical information to the original text to produce a vivid view of what
now seems in retrospect to be a golden age of motorsports. This is not a
tale of fame and fortune; instead it describes what sports car racing and
development is really like at the broken knuckle and greasy fingernail
level. For true lovers of racing, this kind of detail is infinitely more
interesting than tales of scandalous off-track adventures.
Donohue in “The Unfair Advantage” is a Chuck
Yeager-esque character, able to drive anything well, with the engineering
skills and viewpoint of a test pilot. His ability to set up a car was
legendary, and this insight shows throughout the book. Fellow driver Sam
Posey said Donohue “… was an experimenter. Constantly. Usually there was
something new on board or something that he was thinking about. I think he
was among the first to use the lockers, and he was certainly among the first
to use a lot of caster. He understood the friction circle and all of that
before anybody else was putting it into play.”
Mustangs, Cobras and GT40s played a major role
in Donohue’s career, making him an important part of Ford’s racing history.
A ride in Jack Griffin’s Cobra resulted in his first national victory at VIR
(Virginia International Raceway early in 1964. By 1965 Donohue had class
championships in both a Formula C Lotus 20 and a B Production Shelby GT350.
"The Mustang was a transition between amateur
and professional for me. Not only that, but it really taught me a lot about
chassis setup and team organization and sponsorship,” Donohue recounts in
the book. “It all started when Dave
Lawton called me about halfway through 1965, and we started talking about
the new SCCA sedan racing series. Dave was always watching me and analyzing
my driving, and now he was about to influence my professional career. He
told me that if I wanted to establish my name in racing I'd have to get in
on the ground floor of this new series, and we both knew I was going to have
to get a ride. He felt that the Mustang was going to become a very important
car in racing. It was going to be a popular series and there would be lots
of advertising connected with the factory."
Donohue is quick to attribute much of his racing
success to many “unfair advantages” he had over his competitors, such as
more powerful engines, better tires and finding improvements not covered in
the rulebooks, but his greatest advantage was his own approach and devotion
to developing and improving the cars he raced.
“The Unfair Advantage” is a glimpse of a more
grassroots and raw period of American road racing, where Can-Am and Trans-Am
were king. The book also features profiles of some of the people Donahue
came in contact with, including Mario Andretti, Jacky Ickx, Jackie Stewart,
Peter Reveson, Roger Penske, and many others who are legends in their own
right. Over a quarter century after his death, Donohue remains an important figure in American racing history, and “The Unfair Advantage” remains an excellent way to learn about or remember his achievements and contributions. Racers today can still learn a lot from him, and that may be his greatest contribution of all. |
