Peter Ryan

Feature on Peter Ryan from the November 26, 1960 Vancouver Sun Weekend Magazine – by Clarke Wallace

­THE ATTRACTIVE BLONDE gripped the picket fence; I so lightly her knuckles turned white. Blue-tinted sunglasses hid her worried eyes, but her pursed mouth showed her anxiety.
A loudspeaker on the other side of the track was blaring. ”A car just flipped . . . hold your places . . . it may be car number …”

The voice was abruptly drowned by the high-pitched whine of a ‘ low-slung, silver sports racing car. It swept by a competitor braked for the “S” bend edged with hay bales and oil drums and slipped through the twist easily. Then it jumped for the stretch.
As it sped by, its aluminum body bright in the autumn sun, the woman in the blue-tinted glasses looked at the number and relaxed her grip. She smiled and whispered, ‘Please . . . don’t let it happen to him.
To spectators lining the one-time airstrip at the Connor Circuit, St. Eugene, Ont., 70 miles west of Montreal, where the Montreal MG Car Club’s final championship races of the season were being run off. this was no more than the last and most exciting event of the racing season. But to Mrs. Joseph B. Ryan, of Mont Tremblant, Que., it was one more session with fear. Her son. Peter, was driv­ing the fastest car in the race and as he lapped the tricky 1.3-milc course 25 times, his speed often topped the 100-m.p.h. mark.
Mrs. Ryan’s fear gave way to joy when her son broke the cir­cuit’s lap record and drove his car over the finish line in first place.
But Mrs. Ryan and all the other Canadian sports car aficionados – now numbering 100,000 and growing fast-knew that it wasn’t the high-powered car that did all the work. Peter Ryan, the rugged 20-year-old behind its wheel, is cock-sure of his ability, lightning-fast at the controls, and has a reckless ambition to get to the finish line-first.
He entered his first race in May, 1959. By October, I960, he was considered to be Canada’s most likely contender in interna­tional racing. This phenomenal achievement, reached before the end of his second season, prompted Tom Gilmour, president of the Canadian Racing Drivers’ Association, to say: “He shows, without qualification, the greatest potential of attaining international status of anyone we’ve ever seen in Canada.”
Peter’s activity last month seems to justify this claim. He cap­tured the second annual O’Keefe six-hour sundown Grand Prix at Harewood Acres, 75 miles west of Toronto, Oct. 1; competed in New York Stale’s Watkins Glen formula lib- clas­sic Oct. 8; drove night and day with his mechanic, Joe Wiedemann, to compete in the Riverside Grand Prix, Riverside, Calif- Oct. 16, the Pacific Grand Prix. Monterey, Calif., Oct. 23; and at Westwood Circuit, Vancouver, B.C., Oct. 30.
One of his best competitive days was his Mont­real club’s last meet of the season at St. Eugene in mid-September. Racing before his friends, Peter was more than ever determined to do well.
A hot autumn sun penetrated the powder-dry soil around the airstrip that Sunday, and a breeze sent swirls of dust scuttling across the open track. Color­fully-clad enthusiasts, lining the outside ring of the track, waited impatiently for the starting race. A long queue of cars, crammed with more spectators, snaked down the dirt road from the highway.
From the inner circle came the cacophonous, high-pitched screams of revving motorcycles, which were racing in their own events, the incessant drone of tuned-up sports cars and the shouts of anxious offi­cials. Eager mechanics clucked around their mach­ines making last-minute adjustments. A strong smell of grease and spilled oil penetrated the country air.
Peter Ryan, a fair-haired young man wearing oil-streaked white coveralls, leaned over the glinting body of a Porsche RS 60. As he worked, he looked like a happy-go-lucky boy shining his car for a date, rather than a man preparing for a race in which lie might be killed.
Only after he had pushed the car toward the start­ing grid and slid into the cockpit did anticipation show on his face — and then it was mere eagerness to begin the race.
As the starting flag came down, the cars sprang forward with a roar, spitting dust and gravel from beneath their wheels. Peter led by inches as he darted down the stretch leading to the chicane (S-bend). His Porsche streaked through the bends, gradually widening its lead on Boris Janda’s Miss Whizz, a British Lola Climax, Dick Hamilton’s HWS special, Vic Yachuk’s special and Ludwig Heimrath in an­other Porsche.
After 14 laps – and unchallenged by now — Peter sped across the finish line several seconds ahead of his nearest rival, Janda.
He had 45 minutes before his next race. He strolled across the track to the place where hismother watches all his races. He found her perched on her car roof, her feet resting on the hood.
“About time you got here,” she said. “I hope you’re hungry, because I’ve brought a big picnic.”
Mrs. Ryan didn’t need to worry. Next to racing, Peter loves eating. He polished off a sizable por­tion of southern fried chicken, several sandwiches and a piece of cake.
Still munching, Peter left his mother to return to the inner circle to prepare for the 25-lap invitational race for the Montreal MG Car Club’s de Portago trophy. It was the last race of the afternoon and the Ryan repeated his first-race triumph. He piloted the car around the track at breakneck speed. His handling showed perfect liming as he swooped through the chicane 25 times and bolted for the open track without screeching a tire. He reduced his own lap record of 1:03 to 1:00.4, and failed by fractions of a second to break the one-minute barrier and thus win the 100 silver dollars set aside for the first driver to do so.
The young driver was never really pushed by his competitors in this race, and when it was over, he said, “It was a bit of a disappointment because I’d rather have tough competition.”

This may sound egotistical, but Peter’s record – proves he is at his best when competitors are crowding his elbow.
He was in competition up to his helmet during an earlier meet at St. Eugene. His chief challenger was Toronto’s Francis Bradley, who dueled with Peter during the entire season whenever they met at tracks in Ontario, Quebec and in Michigan.
The duel was in the third race. Bradley, in an identical Porsche, found himself crowded by the hard-driving Ryan. But Peter’s inexperience tripped him up as they came to the chicane. The younger driver swung brashly into the first portion and re­calls, “I left my braking too late. 1 found I had a choice of smashing into Bradley or skidding into the bales.”
He took to the bales, smashing hay and dust all over the area. When the hay settled ted, a check showed little damage to Peter’s car. He went back into the race, but now had no chance to win.
In the next event, Ryan took first place, nosing out Bradley by inches. This set the stage for the invitational race, to determine the over-all day’s champion. They exchanged the lead twice during the first 20 laps of the 25-lap race. Only inches separated them until suddenly Bradley’? car did a crazy little dance.
“At first 1 thought 1 had a flat.” said Bradley later, “but when 1 started to bounce I knew it must be a shock absorber.”
Ryan took the lead then, and although Bradley hung on as best as he could. Ryan finished first by half a lap.
The rubber match between them was the six-hour sundown Grand Prix at Harewood Acres. Ryan streaked across the finish just 46 seconds ahead of Bradley.
This was his coming of age as a racer. Teamed with Roger Penske, of Villanova, Pa., be leaped into the lead and set a blistering pace. Heimrath, Bradley’s co-driver, came charging through the pack from a slow start to take the lead in the sixth lap.
By 7 P.M. two hours after the starling flag went down, darkness came and the two teams waged an all-out battle, some­times averaging 85 m.p.h. around the tricky two-mile course.
Heimrath held the lead until almost the half-way mark in the 276-lap race, when he spun out after a collision with a Cor­vette. A pit stop came minutes later to repair a loose wire and change drivers and Bradley look over.
But Ryan held on to the lead thus gained and finished ahead of Bradley with less than a minute to spare. During the final laps he set the fastest lap time. 1:20.8.
Peter moved into big-time competition in the Watkins Glen formula libre race in mid-October. Here he came up against such top drivers as Stirling Moss, Jack Brabham and Roy Salvador! for the first time driving a Sadler Special, he was in fifth place, holding the lead over all but the Grand Prix cars, driven by Moss and company, for more than half the blistering 230-mile road race. Then his motor gave out. and Bradley went on to win fifth place.
Now 20, Peter takes another step into the world of big international races when he competes in the seventh Interna­tional Nassau Trophy Road Race Dec. 4 in the Bahama) islands. He will drive his Porsche RS 60. with a capacity of 1,600 c.c.s, against cars whose capacity is twice that. However, there will be many entries in the same category as his Porsche — and death, as always, will lurk, inches away.
A look at the records reveals that death has claimed some of the most brilliant racing drivers in the business. Here is » list showing those killed since Ryan first whipped hit cat around a circuit in competition in May, 1959:

June, 1959. Fausto Meyrat, Swiss, at West Germany’s Nürburgring.
June, 1959, two Italian drivers, Monza race. Monza, Italy.
August. 1959, Jean Behra. Avus track Berlin.
May, I960, Harry Schell. practicing for race at England’* Silverstone track.
June. I960. Jimmy Bryan, Langhorne. Pa., He won the Indianapolis 500 in 1958.

June 1960, two English racers, Chris Bristol and Alan Stacey, Belgian Grand Prix. Stirling Moss broke both legs and sustained other fractures during a practice run.
But speed has always been a part of Peter Ryan’s life-he has been skiing since he was three. Although born in Philadelphia, he has spent most of his life in the Laurentians’ Mont Tremblant area, going to school in Ste. Agathe, where his father, the late Joe Ryan, ‘Emperor Joe’, had built a fine ski resort.
Joe Ryan Sr. had been prospecting in northern Quebec, staking gold claims, when he landed at Mont Tremblant in February 1938 on his way home to Philadelphia. He joined a skiing party on the 3,150-foot Mont Tremblant. Emperor Joe stood at the summit, gazing down the side of the mountain, at a spot where the ‘Flying Mile’ now slashes through the trees and said “This is my home.”  Then he set out to build a ski domain unmatched in Canada’s East, a job which involved everything from road building to mountain shaping.
The first problem facing Ryan was that the territory he wanted was crown land and provincial park property. The fact that he would stop at nothing short of buying a mountain amazed provincial government official. By October 1938 he had come to these terms with the Province of Quebec: he would buy at least $50,000 worth of land, spend at least $90,000 in the Provincial Park and sink $500,000 into his own property.
Within a year after climbing to the summit he opened Mot Tremblant Lodge, with a 4,500-foot chair lift to the skiing public.
Over the next 10 years he weathered snow famines and lack of clientele to create an entire French Canadian ski village consisting of 95 buildings, including the lodge, an inn, a church, various shops, family size cottages, a tea chalet, warming chalets along mountain trails and a stable for horses and sleighs. Today there are miles of roads winding through the mountains, innumerable bridges and causeways, dozens of trails served by chair lifts and ’T’ bars and another complete lodge on the north slopes as part of the 6,000-acre ski empire.
Joe Ryan Sr., fell or jumped to his death from the 22nd floor of New York’s Warwick Hotel, Sept. 12 1950. Friends say he had been despondent after a snow famine the year before had left the slopes bare.
By this time, his son Peter showed signs of his father’s enthusiasm for adventure. By the time he was 16 he had captured the U.S. junior downhill ski championship and a host of other donors in eastern competition. He just missed a spot on the U.S. Olympic team destined for the 1960 Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley. During the trials held the previous winter he placed 14th on the proposed 16-man team. Unfortunately, the team was later cut to 13, leaving him in the cold.
This was a great disappointment to Peter, and another was in store. “I wrote to Canadian ski officials to see if there was a chance of making their team but I never heard from them” he says.
Ironically enough, it was a member of the Canadian ski team who introduced Ryan to sports cars-by letting Peter drive his.
“I go the bug all at once” Peter says, “and decided I’d like to race one. But I had never driven anything faster than the family car. I went out and bought a Porsche Spyder 550.”
He planned to race it at St. Eugene in the coming season, three months away, and in preparation he laid out a course on the back roads at Mont Tremblant. For three months he pushed the car up and down the hilly roads until he was black and blue.
By May 30 he and his Spyder were well acquainted and he took the car to Goderich, Ont., for the first race of the season at Green Acres. This proved that he and the car were not as well acquainted as he had thought, for he blew up the motor when he accidentally shifted into second gear instead of the car’s top fourth gear, at about 100 mph.
But by the time the season was over he was an accomplished driver. Officials of Porsche obviously thought so, for they offered to sell him their new Porsche RS 60. This is an honour in itself, for large companies in this class pick and choose who will buy their cars. There were only two allotted to Canada that year, and Peter got one.  He will buy the only Porsche RS 61 coming to Canada early next year.
In it he hopes to win more races and set more records.
“Speed doesn’t bother me,” he said as he stood with his Mother between races at St. Eugene. “The only worry I have is reaching the finish line-ahead of everybody else.”

­Many thansk to Stephen Latham with his help and you let me know if some mistakes – I did this using OCR software
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