In the earliest days of motorsport, the 1910s and ‘20s, cars and motorcycles weren’t raced on asphalt or dirt tracks.
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In the early days of motorsport, the 1910s and ‘20s, cars and motorcycles weren’t just raced on asphalt or dirt tracks. They were raced in “motordromes”: racetracks that featured steeply banked walls and were surfaced by wooden boards. A motordrome was a scaled-up version of the velodromes where bicycle races were held.
Motordromes were cheap to build and operate, which was pretty much the only good thing about them. Racers whose vehicles already had no safety features also had the prospect of taking a flying chunk of wood to the face, or falling on one of those steep banked turns.
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Here’s a video on the subject, if you prefer that sort of thing. It focuses on board-track motorcycle racing, the most dangerous (and therefore glamorous) variant.
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@jalefkowit Those hats!
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@slothrop There used to be a day every spring where men were expected to put away their winter hats and start wearing straw hats.
