Book Title: Racers in the Sun, Volume One
Author: Richard Golardi
Available now at Amazon.com
Purchase paperback or eBook at: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4WVN4TC
Ever wonder why there’s never been a book published that had pavement sprint car racing or the Little 500 as its main subject? Journalist and author Richard Golardi wondered about the same thing. He has been writing about pavement sprint car racing since 2006 and decided to write a book, now available (Racers in the Sun, Volume One), after covering countless Florida pavement sprint car races and the Little 500 race in Anderson, Indiana. After interviewing 92 persons and gathering over 95 hours of recorded interviews, he spent the next five years writing a book about sprint car racing with added stories about NASCAR and Indy car racing. But the book is not only about pavement racing. The story of Florida’s most celebrated dirt sprint car driver, a wild dirt track ride filled with lots of emotional highs and lows, is also included. It is the story of “The Master of Dirt,” Pete Folse, who raced in the Little 500 in the ’60s.
Richard currently writes a column on Florida sprint car and open wheel racing for Hoseheads.com titled “Florida Open Wheel,” which he has done for the past 14 years. Sprint car drivers and teams from Florida have been regular participants in the Little 500 since the 1970s, and Richard makes the trek north each year to get the continuing story of these Florida racers. Previously, he reported on the IndyCar Series for OpenWheelRacers.com and was a feature reporter for Flat Out Magazine. The racing videos on his YouTube channel, Florida Open Wheel, have been viewed over one million times. He has reported from both superspeedways and short tracks all over Florida and the Midwest. He was inducted into The Villages Motor Racing Fan Club Hall of Fame in 2014.
Richard was initially motivated to write this book after attending the first Golden Gate Speedway Reunion in Tampa, Florida, on October 13, 2013. He had the desire to be an author for many years, and after the reunion, he had an idea for a book. It would be a collective biography, and it would present a tableau of the lives of Florida’s sprint car racing legends, many of whom were regular starters at the Little 500.
Most of the book’s chapters are authorized biographies, based on the author’s interviews with the legends themselves. Two biographies of National Sprint Car Hall of Fame inductees are included: Pete Folse and Frank Riddle; along with six Little 500 Hall of Fame inductees: Wayne Reutimann, Dave Scarborough, Jack Nowling, George Rudolph, Robert Smith, and Frank Riddle. All those Hall of Fame inductees raced at Anderson Speedway in the Little 500 either as a car owner or driver, and their biographies have numerous untold stories from the Little 500.
Additional biographies are included for Johnny Hicks, Pancho Alvarez, Cush Revette (profiled in an incredible untold story that took place in Havana in 1951 titled “American Sprint Car Drivers in Cuba”), Larry Brazil, and Dick Byerly. Tampa’s auto racing history and the story of Golden Gate Speedway are included along with countless exciting, pedal-to-the-floor Little 500, sprint car racing, late model stock car, Northeast dirt modified, NASCAR, and Indy car racing stories in the first book from award-winning writer Richard Golardi. The book is currently ranked as the number one New Release in Motor Sports on Amazon.com.
