Carroll Shelby
Carroll Shelby ( born January 11, 1923 in Leesburg, Texas, † 10 May, 2012 Dallas, Texas) was an American race car driver and designer of sports cars.
Life
Carroll Shelby was born as the son of Warren Hall Shelby postman in Leesburg (TX ). His mother's name was Eloise Lawrence Shelby. A congenital heart defect forced him to spend much of his childhood in bed. At 14 years, the hole had closed in the heart. He later served in the U.S. Army Air Forces in 1940 as a pilot on airplanes having two engines in the training of navigators. His flight training meant that he had a penchant for perfectionism, when it came to reliability and technology. From his attitude to speed and precision, the idea of developing their own car. He played his first race in 1952 on a borrowed gun. To everyone's surprise he succeeded soon after the overall win in this class, in which he was even able to refer the much higher assessed Jaguar XK 120S in their place.
Like many Americans of his generation pulled him the interest in sports car racing to Europe, where he played a number of races at the Scuderia Centro Sud.
His greatest success as a driver was the victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1959 on the side of Roy Salvadori driving an Aston Martin DBR1/300.
Shelby was also one of the drivers of " Felthams Formula 1 Squad". During the 1958 Formula 1 season, he scored at the race in Monza together with Masten Gregory fourth. Both were initially disqualified but later reset to this position. However, they did not get score points. Later he took during the 1959 Formula 1 season at the Grand Prix of Portugal in the city park Monsanto Lisbon in eighth position.
After his racing career he turned completely to the construction or reconstruction of sports cars.
He was many as the creator of the legendary Shelby AC Cobras, with which he successfully challenged the Gran Turismo Ferrari, the temporary management of the Ford GT40 project, which he helped to win, and remained the Shelby Mustangs in memory.
To this end, he went with the Formula 1 driver Dan Gurney a partnership and founded the Team All-American Racers, which was also supported by Goodyear. The abbreviation " AAR " was interpreted as " Anglo - American Racers ", especially as the AC Cobra was based on a British AC chassis and Gurney later used a British Weslake V12 engine in his F1 car "Eagle".
Carroll Shelby died of a serious heart condition that affected his life has developed over several decades.
He is survived by his wife Cleo, three children, six grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.