Richie in the 4.1 Ferrari at Pomona on February 1, 1959.
Story by Jim Sitz
Photos by Jim Sitz unless otherwise noted
You have already read (we hope) Allen R. Kuhn’s photo essay on Richie Ginther, which looks at a few of his racing efforts from 1956 to 1965. In this article, we asked Jim Sitz to provide a few of his Ginther photos and even more importantly, recall his friendship with Ginther. These two articles constitute a small part of Richie’s life. For a much more complete look at Richie’s life, we highly recommend “Richie Ginther, Motor Racing’s Free Thinker” by Richard Jenkins. Both Kuhn and Sitz contributed to this effort. Here, Sitz provides his recollections of his times with Richie, and is by no means meant to be a biography. Some of Jim’s thoughts below can also be found in Jenkins’s book. Ed.
My own intro to Richie was after he and Phil Hill drove in the Mexican Road Race in 1954. I introduced myself, and told him he must be very brave to ride at such high speeds through Mexico. He replied, “Oh, no. I’ve known Phil for a long time, and we did a lot of cross-country trips together.” In July of 1950, Richie had left his day job at Douglas Aircraft to join Phil at Roger Barlow’s International Motors. Seems that the pair would deliver and or collect cars. For example, they would drive a new Rolls Silver Wraith to Memphis, go on to Texas and pick up a new Simca from Bob Evans and drive that back to Barlow’s.
