Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Beard

An extremely important topic is under discussion today on the Midweek Motorsport podcast: have there ever been any major motorsport champions who had beards at the time of achieving their championships?

It appears that the answer is no, making me wonder whether having extensive sideburns is causing me to be slower at trackdays than I otherwise would be.

4 comments:

Jimmy said...

Surely you've seen pictures of Jackie Stewart's sideys in the 70's? He won 3 F1 titles with sideburns nearly as big as he was. I don't think you can put your trackday travails down to the sideburn effect.

Can't think of any beardie champions, though. Closest thing has to be Nigel Mansell's ginormous 'tache.

Kropotkin said...

Egbert Streuer, World Sidecar champion with his passenger Bernd Schnieder, from 1984 to 1986. And full-on beardy.

picture here

Mind you, he came from Assen and grew up in the 1970s. Both factors which led to a beard being almost inevitable.

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Pee Wee said...

Good post.

If Jimmy's going to mention the Nige's lip spinach then surely we have to mention Graham Hill's untended 'stache in the '60's. Some great comments by him in his autobiography about "needing a trim, what?"

Double AA Aaron Yates has won some AMA Superbike and Superstock races with some facial hair.....