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Chasing immortality – exploring the mythology of motorsport’s Triple Crown

With our Replay Memory Makers programme relaunched earlier this year, aimed at encouraging school and college students to engage with sporting history and reminiscence, we were thrilled to support Glasgow-based student Charlie Gardner in her project exploring the mythology of motorsport’s ‘Triple Crown’, with the help of Sporting Memories patron Mark Blundell.

Charlie’s multimedia project saw her explore the cultural, sporting and historical importance of the ‘Triple Crown’ – which involves a driver winning the Indianapolis 500, the Monaco Grand Prix and 24-hour Le Mans race.

In the history of the sport, only one man has ever achieved this feat – Graham Hill – who completed the record by winning Le Mans in 1972, having won the Indy 500 in 1966 on top of his five victories in Monaco across the 1960s.

Exploring the Mythology

For Charlie’s project, she explored the history of the Triple Crown and how it grew in reputation and mythology as motorsport flourished in the decades after the World Wars in the twentieth century.

It was in the 1950/60s when Formula 1 (F1) drivers were free to compete in other racing formulas where the possibility of the Triple Crown came to fruition. In fact, the Triple Crown initially featured the feat of winning the F1 World Championship, rather than just the Monaco Grand Prix. But this changed throughout the decades, reflecting the change of motorsport in becoming more professional and drivers being contracted to race in a particular series.

To achieve the Triple Crown requires great skill and discipline having to master three different formulas, in F1 cars, Indy Cars and endurance racing sports cars, with Charlie citing the many attempts by some of the legends of motorsport to put themselves in the record books.

The nearest attempt at achieving the record in the modern era comes from F1 World Champion Fernando Alonso, who has won the Monaco Grand Prix and Le Mans. He has competed twice in the Indy 500, placing in 24^th and 26^th respectively in his attempts.

Insights from a Le Mans winner

We were delighted to provide Charlie with the opportunity of interviewing our Patron and Le Mans winner, Mark Blundell.

One major factor in having the chance to win one of the most illustrious races in motorsport is having the elite ability and racing speed to challenge for major victories. However, in his discussion with Charlie, Mark shared his belief that success at the highest level is earned through a team effort rather than solely the individual driver.

“Motorsport is a team sport and ultimately you are only as good as the team around you. You could argue that two hours driving on a Sunday is the results of your efforts as a driver, but arguably it is minimal in comparison to the amount of workload put into making the car perform at a grand prix.”

For her project, Charlie spoke to Mark on his triumph of winning one off the races in the Triple Crown – Le Mans.

Mark’s triumph in 1992 alongside Derek Warwick and Yannick Dalmas in the Peugeot is one of his career highs and he mentioned how months of hard effort getting the car in the best possible shape was key to his and the team’s success.

“What stands out is that we won it – so that was fantastic! The biggest thing for me during that weekend was preparation. We had a racing programme which lasted over six months before we got to Le Mans and as part of that we undertook two 36-hour tests, so we’d had a huge amount of preparation. In doing that, we had a real good insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the car, personnel and infrastructure of the team.

“Le Mans is a race of resilience – full stop. But to do it when you’re leading at the front and you get to the end of the race with a car that’s in one piece at race-winning piece, is a true testament to the engineering and human contribution.”

Charlie ended her time with Mark by asking what he felt would be the most important advice to share with any aspiring racing drivers.

“For young drivers I’ll always advise them that it’s about having self-belief and having that hunger to knock the door down to make it happen. I think they also have to understand that building relationships can go a very long way and benefit your career. You’ll extract a lot more if you build relationships in a physical and human way that what you might do through a social media post for example.

“Those relationships - bound by emotions - where you enjoy the highs and lows will serve you longer than anything else.”

A huge congratulations to Charlie for completing her project around the Triple Crown of motorsport and we thank Mark for his help with Charlie’s project.