As an older gentleman, I now look back and consider myself lucky that most of my adult life has been spent either in, or associated with, the professional auto racing industry. But, as a young man, I was only a racing fan who wanted to be a photographer. After my tour in the US Navy, I worked in the Douglas Aircraft photo department nights while I got a two year degree in photography on the GI Bill. During that time, I started developing relationships in racing based on my photographic abilities. As luck would have it, a professional racing driver I did photo work for advised me to take a course from the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving if I wanted to actually drive race cars. I successfully negotiated a trade with Bob Bondurant to use photo work to cover half the price of the 3 day racing course. After finishing the course, I continued to do work for Bob, and an offer of a full time position with the school soon followed. We were a small, tight team and I wore several hats: PR, sales, and instructor. PR was great fun because racing schools were a wild new thing and we got many TV opportunities, safe driving videos and lots of print media. My video role was as "the student" while Bob was "BOB". We were also fortunate that we were located at the brand new, 25 million dollar, Ontario Motor Speedway. OMS attracted the top auto racing teams and talent, as well as a wide variety of racing fans. That was a great period for me as I got to meet lots of professional media people and started doing side work as a motorsport photo-journalist (see https://www.photobyjimshane.com/p591398841}
But all good things eventually end. The Ontario Motor Speedway became a major local political issue, got closed, and we got evicted. The school moved north but I accepted the position of director of engineering/racing for Interpart Corporation, one of the school's sponsors, and stayed in Los Angeles. Interpart was involved in auto racing as the marketing arm for the Championship winning BRE Datsun Team, motorcycle racing as a sponsor of several pro riders and 0ff-road racing sponsoring Parnelli Jones. While working for Interpart I spent time interacting with, and eventually joining, Chickering/Howell advertising, Interpart's agency. While at C&H I got a valuable education in communications from a top management team AND greatly increased my time as a racing photo journalist. Pete Halsmer, a racing driver I worked with at Interpart, was driving for the Arciero Indy Car team and arranged for me to meet the team owner. Mr. Frank Arciero was the last of the self-supporting Indy Car team owners and I was hired to find sponsorship money to help fund the team. I was not successful. When Frank had to finally shut the team down, I moved to Dearborn, Michigan to take responsibility for finding additional funding for Ford Motor Company sponsored racing teams. I joined Campbell and Company, a promotions agency that worked on special projects exclusively for Ford. When Ford cancelled the contract for racing sponsorship development I moved to Connecticut where I became the General Manager at Lime Rock Park Race Track. Yes, that is Paul Newman in several of the photos. Lime Rock was his "Home Track" and he, his team, and many of his friends visited regularly. Lime Rock Park was also the home track to the Skip Barber Racing School and Skip Barber was the primary owner of the track. I eventually opted out of the Lime Rock position to take on the responsibility of managing the racing school's expansion to the west coast. And Yes , that is Olympic Gymnastic Gold medalists Bart Conners and Nadia Comaneci Conners at Sears Point Raceway in California.
