Motorports trivia/quiz

The first automobile races could only take place on two possibles venues, open roads and horse tracks. The latter were ovals since the time of the romans. In the EU we had lots of paved roads, in the US they had few because of the long distances but almost any small town had a local fairground and horse track. It is also not to be neglected that the easiest and cheapest way to create a race track is to do an oval, which is also what uses less real state and allows the public to watch the whole action instead of a single corner.
When automobiles started having the driver on the left side (except in the UK) it was a no-brainer that turning left kept them away from the wall, so they stuck to that  

Thanks Alberto   

Who was the first F1 driver who had the nickname "The flying finn"?   

Can only think of Mika Hakkinen   

Leo Kinnunen

Could that be Keke Rosberg

Richard Coxon wrote:

Leo Kinnunen

   Great sports car driver, and as an interesting fact, last F1 driver ever to race with an open-face helmet, in 1974, years after the other drivers had changed to full-face helmets.

Ok let me think..... Which F1 driver went on to become a successful mountain climber.

Wasn't that Katayama? I recall him being rescued from a mountain climb some years ago so maybe he was not that succesful   

Correct   he has reached the summit of 5 of the 7 summits, so not that bad, And the one you mentioned was while climbing Mount Fuji with 2 friends who unfortunately died while he survived.

Was pure luck, had it not been for that incident I would have never known   

Here's a trap-question   : What name used Nelson Piquet Sr. as cover when he started racing and didn't want his parents to find out?

I believe I know, but it will let someone else have a guess.

Alberto Ibañez wrote:

Was pure luck, had it not been for that incident I would have never known   

Here's a trap-question   : What name used Nelson Piquet Sr. as cover when he started racing and didn't want his parents to find out?

Isn't it that he just used his mothers surname, Piquet, instead of his fathers surname?

Correct   

His real name is Nelson Soutomajor, not Piquet -which is his mother's name. When he came to europe to race he found out that his name was difficult to say by english speaking natives so he stuck to Piquet and it remained like that.

He also misspelt it on purpose too, was spelt as Piket.

Senna also did the same thing, He didn't use his fathers name as Da Silva was a very common surname in Brazil. So he used his mothers.

Piket is in french (phonetic piquette) a cheap bad wine.   

All the rest of the world is always suffering from those anglosaxons incapable of pronnouncing properly the beautiful languages of Rabelais, Eça de Queirós or Cervantes  

How dare you!    

Yu chud lern from as tu spik foreijn lenguages    

You should learn from us to speak foreign languages.   

Que Tal?

Qué (with accent on the "e") tal (No capital letter for the first one)?

Not bad   

On the iPad so it doesn't have the e with flick above it, I know a little as did spanish at school.   

Richard Coxon wrote:

On the iPad so it doesn't have the e with flick above it, I know a little as did spanish at school.   

Press and hold down on a letter, it should bring up accented letters.


Which Grand Prix offered half points for the first time?

Argentina 59, because many drivers shared cars?

Richard Coxon wrote:

Argentina 59, because many drivers shared cars?

I wasn't thinking that deeply about it, because I suppose most GP in the 50s offered half-points for shared drives.

I was thinking more about entire top 6 receiving half points due to <75% race distance completed.