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There’s something about the will to race that puts clear water between people who will risk everything for that line into the first corner and the rest of us. It’s a bit of a cliché, but for some people, life is racing, and the rest of the time just waiting to race.

We’re not sure wether or not there’s some sort of Freudian death wish amongst the greatest racers we’ve ever known, or wether the will to competitive speed is rather more life affirming than it is playing rough and tumble with the grim reaper.

Every now and then we’ve felt death’s hot breath on the back of our necks. We’ve pulled back, deciding to ease of rather than take things to their limits.

But whatever your take on the recklessness of racing drivers, this video does a good inspirational job of evoking the divine madness that is driving cars very quickly.

We’re always amazed, here at Influx towers, how creative photography can tease out unexpected perspectives for cars that we believe we know intimately.

Take the shot of the GT40 MK 11, for example, taken by the very talented Boyd Jaynes.

We never realised that the ultimate fast Ford could be rendered with so much sensitivity: and that despite its fabled speed, power and GT dominnce, that the car could look so pretty from the rear three quarters.

It seems that Caroll Shelby new a thing or two about design as well as engineering.

And if there was a purely beautiful bit of Shelby engineered racing loveliness, it had to be the Shelby Daytona (below). The Daytona was based upon the AC Cobra’s chassis, but featured an incredibly pretty and slippery looking body that took it to a number of GT class wins in the mid-to-late-sixties.

There’s something about the American attack on European GT racing at the end of the sixties that was brash, heroic and worth delving deep into the archive for…

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