Carroll Shelby, Man At Speed; AutoWeek Honors a Lifetime of Achievement by Our Kind of Guy.(Special Report)

Byline: Pete Lyons

Many racers behave like something is hot on their tails, but Carroll Shelby's demon was real. A hereditary heart disorder that took both his parents at early ages began causing him angina when he was just 36. Being a racer, he kept right on racing. He was already a sick man in 1959 when he won Le Mans. Only later did he see a doctor.

"In 1960 I drove with a nitroglycerine pill under my tongue, just in case,'' he confirmed to AutoWeek in a 1990 interview. "You ever try nitro? It knocks the top of your head off. It dilates your arteries and veins, and gives you a headache for 30 seconds. You don't want to do it in a race car.''

He did, though. At Northern California's Laguna Seca Raceway that last year of his career, he says he took five such hits during the race.

"That's why it was not hard to give up drivin'-nitro gives you an incentive to quit. I wanted to build my car anyway...''

At the end of 1960 Shelby did finally retire from race driving-so it has been 45 years since the man who didn't think he would live very long really got going-and in so doing created something immortal.

It is for what Shelby accomplished during his time as a racer, as well as in the years following, that inspired us to name him as the inaugural recipient of the AutoWeek Lifetime Achievement Award.