Artistic Racer

  How the colour green changed the face of motorcycle racing .  Written by Oran Scully 29.02.25 Daytona Speedway 1969 emerging from the heat haze a brightly coloured motorcycle comes into view,  a blur of lime green and white a psychedelic paint scheme at high speed its riders chin on its petrol tank, so tight that no light dared escape.  Artistically this bike, the Kawasaki A7R and its unique painted livery would change the face of motorcycle racing,  and set a course that would lead to a revolution where the hands of the engineer would be joined to the hands of artistic expression. Kawasaki A7R 1969                                                                            Author : TOKUMEIGAKARINOAOSHIMA But just a few years earlier it was a completely different story , w...

  How the 70s were the most colourful chapter in motorsport. Written by Oran Scully 10.12.24 The 1970s was the most colourful chapter in the history of motorsport . In the heat of battle you had the bright orange sponsorship of Jagermeister , the minty greens of the sponsor Vaillant , and the psychedelic colour schemes of the Martini Rossi team to name but a few. All of these colours were placed over the surface of some of the most exciting racing cars that ever existed the Porsche's 917 and the Porsche 935. But just a few years earlier it was a completely different story with the application of the colour white, the default option for the colourisation of all race cars . What caused such a turnabout! Its roots can be traced to an upset race car designer Anatole Lapine and his boss, the designer of the 917 , Ferdinand Piech.   Porsche 911 1969                                   ...

 Written by Oran Scully 11.11.24 Pink Pig reimagined on canvas  by Oran Scully  As the race car driver,  Jackie Stewart once famously said, “a race car is a breed of an animal “ and indeed a race car once fired up is quite alive. Its engine can be seen as its mechanical heart and lungs. Its frame can be seen as its skeleton, and its bodywork its skin, and its muscle. All of these components combining to protect its brain, the race car driver that sat within . So its fitting that that art inspired by the animal kingdom found its way onto flanks of race cars. The first animalistic art on a race car came in 1971 and it would be a Porsche which would provide the canvas, in the form of a wide experimental version of its new prototype race car , the 917/20 .    Inspired by its stocky muscular silhouette designers Richard Soderberg  and Anatole Lapine sprayed the car with a pink basecoat, giving the machine a flesh coloured artful second skin. ...