Post by mikael on Jan 24, 2018 5:07:47 GMT
Superstition in motorsport
This suggestion to a new thread was inspired by a link to a story about Dan Gurney’s short-lived use of a blue helmet, which Lucio gave in the Dan Gurney-thread:
“Dan was better known for his black crash helmets, but changed to blue when drivers were requested to wear a helmet that reflected their national colours. He wore this very piece throughout his seasons with Ferrari and BRM. It was only following his big crash at Zandvoort in 1960 that he switched back to black in a superstitious effort to transform his luck.”
It seems that motorsport is abundant with such stories about superstitious drivers – and racing drivers are, apparently, particularly prone to becoming superstitious.
It is said that Sebastian Vettel always races with a certain “lucky coin” in his boot. And in MotoGP, Valentino Rossi always follows a certain, rather involved procedure for getting on his bike. (And he has a certain way of getting off the bike again too).
On a more humble (and mainly national) level, my own father had some successful years in motocross, starting in the mid-1950’s. At that time everybody raced in common shirts. My father always used a certain checked flannel shirt and basically, it always went well. At some time this shirt was torn so he put it aside and used another shirt – but then things started to go wrong. “It must be due to the shirt”, he though and had the old, torn “lucky shirt” repaired. And sure enough, wearing that shirt again, he won the next race – everything was back to normal. And it had been proved that the shirt was responsible for good luck!
Again, motorsport lore must be abundant with similar superstition-stories (as reflected also in Frankenheimer’s “Grand Prix”, where Scott Stoddard tells that his brother was killed on a day where he, most atypically, hadn’t walked the track before the race.)
It would be particularly interesting to read about the great drivers and riders (like Gurney, Vettel, and Rossi) and their superstitious habits and lucky items – or any other motorsport-related superstition-story, if you know one and wish to share it here
This suggestion to a new thread was inspired by a link to a story about Dan Gurney’s short-lived use of a blue helmet, which Lucio gave in the Dan Gurney-thread:
“Dan was better known for his black crash helmets, but changed to blue when drivers were requested to wear a helmet that reflected their national colours. He wore this very piece throughout his seasons with Ferrari and BRM. It was only following his big crash at Zandvoort in 1960 that he switched back to black in a superstitious effort to transform his luck.”
It seems that motorsport is abundant with such stories about superstitious drivers – and racing drivers are, apparently, particularly prone to becoming superstitious.
It is said that Sebastian Vettel always races with a certain “lucky coin” in his boot. And in MotoGP, Valentino Rossi always follows a certain, rather involved procedure for getting on his bike. (And he has a certain way of getting off the bike again too).
On a more humble (and mainly national) level, my own father had some successful years in motocross, starting in the mid-1950’s. At that time everybody raced in common shirts. My father always used a certain checked flannel shirt and basically, it always went well. At some time this shirt was torn so he put it aside and used another shirt – but then things started to go wrong. “It must be due to the shirt”, he though and had the old, torn “lucky shirt” repaired. And sure enough, wearing that shirt again, he won the next race – everything was back to normal. And it had been proved that the shirt was responsible for good luck!
Again, motorsport lore must be abundant with similar superstition-stories (as reflected also in Frankenheimer’s “Grand Prix”, where Scott Stoddard tells that his brother was killed on a day where he, most atypically, hadn’t walked the track before the race.)
It would be particularly interesting to read about the great drivers and riders (like Gurney, Vettel, and Rossi) and their superstitious habits and lucky items – or any other motorsport-related superstition-story, if you know one and wish to share it here
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