One of the most highly respected and well liked racing drivers, Dave MacDonald was born in El Monte, California. As a driver during the glory days of Corvette racing, MacDonald had a better win percentage than any other Corvette racer. He was a fierce competitor which earned him the respect of everyone who drove against him. At the start of the 1963 season, Carroll Shelby hired MacDonald away from Chevrolet to drive his Cobra Roadster. His first outing for Shelby American was at Riverside International Raceway where he drove a Cobra roadster in back-to-back victories. In the fall of 1963, MacDonald rose to national prominence after driving a Shelby King Cobra to win the two biggest and richest road races in the world, The Los Angeles Times Grand Prix and the Monterey Pacific Grand Prix. Those were the first wins for the Shelby King Cobra. On May 10, 1964, MacDonald won the United States Road Racing Championship in Kent, Washington in a King Cobra. The victory put him in a tie atop the USRRC Drivers' Championship standings with Jim Hall. This would be MacDonald's last race before his death three weeks later in the 1964 Indianapolis 500. The author Phil Henny Phil was born in 1943, in the village of Montagny près d’Yverdon in the French speaking region of Switzerland. In 1966, he joined the Shelby American racing team as a mechanic, in time to work on the 1967 Le Mans winning Ford MK IV driven by Dan Gurney and A.J. Foyt. His stories of the American racing scene and particularly the Shelby era are fascinating. There are scant few memoirs out there written by the men who turned the wrenches, and a number of these frankly have little of substance to say- not so with Phil Henny's book. With unparalleled access to the world of the great Carroll Shelby, Phil presents an engaging look at an incredible era in racing. To his credit, he doesn't gloss over any aspect of what he saw, either within or outside of Shelby's organization. His comments about drivers are particularly insightful. Fascinating and strongly recommended. They are hard-to-find books not generally available in the conventional book trade. Phil lives in Portland Oregon U.S.A.
