Legends: Peter Revson

Born heir to the Revlon cosmetics fortune in 1939, Peter Revson shunned family wealth and instead chose to make his mark as a race-car driver. After some amateur racing, passion took him to Europe in 1963. Unaided by his family’s fortune, Revson lived out of the transport truck that carried his car. An opportunity to compete in Formula One led to a string of successes, including victory in the 1963 Monaco Formula 3 Grand Prix. Returning to the United States later that season, Revson spent the next seven years building a reputation against some of America’s greatest drivers in the CanAm series. In 1972, he once again returned to the F1 scene as a member of the Yardley Mclaren team, winning the British and Canadian Grand Prix events in 1973. McLaren team manager Ted Mayer considered Revson to be one of the world’s top F1 drivers at the time. When Emerson Fittipaldi joined McLaren, Revson made the fateful decision to leave and sign with the promising Shadow team. It was a road that was paved with tragedy. On March 22, 1974, Revson was killed while testing the Shadow DN3 (upper right).