Ooha Imandi

Research on Transport, Chapter 5

In Chapter 4, we learned how humans measure fast. In this chapter, I want to ask a different question: why do we care?

Look at the pattern. The moment humans invent something that moves, someone says “race you.” Not after a year, and sometimes not after a day. Feet, horses, chariots, boats, bicycles and cars were all raced almost as soon as they existed. The thrill is older than any machine.

The Oldest Race Story: The Tortoise and the Hare

Long before engines, people were telling stories about races. The most famous is the tale of the tortoise and the hare, one of Aesop’s Fables, catalogued as number 226 in the Perry Index. Aesop is a semi-legendary storyteller traditionally placed in ancient Greece around the 6th century BCE.

You probably know the story. A hare boasts about his speed and laughs at a slow tortoise. Tired of the teasing, the tortoise challenges him to a race. The hare sprints ahead, is so sure of winning that he lies down for a nap, and the tortoise keeps walking, step after step, until he crosses the line first. The moral most people remember is “slow and steady wins the race.”

But look at what the fable is really about. It is the same question we met in Chapter 4: speed is not one number. The hare is faster in a burst, and the tortoise is better at not stopping, just like the runners who beat the horses in the Welsh hills. It also hints at why we love races. On the starting line, everyone begins at zero, even the slowest, and anything can happen before the finish.

That surprise is part of the thrill.

Rome Loses Its Mind

In Chapter 3, the chariot was a seat for kings. In Rome it became a show for everyone. The Circus Maximus held an estimated 150,000 to 250,000 spectators, and the racing teams had colours: the Reds, Blues, Greens and Whites. Fans were fiercely loyal to their colour, and the rivalries ran through the whole city.

The biggest star was a charioteer named Gaius Appuleius Diocles. According to his own monument inscription, he won 1,462 of 4,257 races, and his lifetime prize money came to 35,863,120 sesterces. Some historians call him the best-paid athlete of all time.

The Race on Water

Not every race happened on land. On August 22, 1851, the schooner America, built in New York and sailed across the Atlantic, raced about 15 British yachts around England’s Isle of Wight. It was a 53-mile course (85 km), and the prize was a silver cup put up by the Royal Yacht Squadron. America won, with Queen Victoria watching from her royal yacht. The story goes that, as the American boat came over the horizon, she asked, “What is second?”

The cup was later renamed the America’s Cup, after the winning boat. It is still raced for today, which makes it one of the oldest sporting trophies in the world.

Notice something about this race. It had no road. Wheels needed one, and horses needed one, but a boat needs only water, and water was already there.

Two Wheels, Zero Horses

The bicycle was raced the same way. On May 31, 1868, in Saint-Cloud Park near Paris, a 1,200-metre race is generally recognised as the first documented bicycle race. It was won by an Englishman living in Paris, James Moore, on a bicycle with solid rubber tires.

The next year, on November 7, 1869, the first city-to-city race went from Paris to Rouen, 123 kilometres. Moore won again, in about 10 hours and 40 minutes, including the time he spent walking his bicycle up the steepest hills.

The First Car Race, and the Winner Who Lost

On July 22, 1894, the Paris newspaper Le Petit Journal held a “horseless carriage” contest from Paris to Rouen, 126 kilometres. The editor, Pierre Giffard, wanted to publicise his paper and encourage the new machines.

The first car to reach Rouen was the steam car of Count Jules-Albert de Dion, after 6 hours and 48 minutes at an average of 19 km/h. But he did not win the main prize. The judges scored cars on speed, handling and safety, and his steam car needed a stoker, which was not allowed. The official honours went to Peugeot and Panhard.

Even in the very first car race, being fastest was not enough.

A Mirror and a Century of Faster

On May 30, 1911, the first Indianapolis 500 was won by Ray Harroun in a Marmon Wasp. He took 6 hours 42 minutes to cover 500 miles, an average of 74.6 mph (120 km/h). He drove without the riding mechanic who normally watched for traffic behind, so he fitted a rear-view mirror, believed to be the first used on a car. The team also planned a steady pace of about 75 mph to save tires, and it worked.

In 2021, Hélio Castroneves averaged 190.7 mph in the same race, more than two and a half times faster. A small mirror tested on a racetrack is now in every car on the road. Racing was never only about the finish line. It was a laboratory.

Formula 1: Racing Becomes a Science

The first Formula 1 World Championship began in 1950. Today it is the most precisely measured race in the world.

In September 2025, Max Verstappen won the Italian Grand Prix at Monza at an average of 250.706 km/h (155.8 mph), the fastest Grand Prix in Formula 1 history, according to Guinness World Records. He broke a record that Michael Schumacher had held since 2003 at 247.585 km/h.

The fastest speed ever recorded in an official F1 session is 378 km/h (235 mph), reached by Valtteri Bottas in a Williams on the long straight of Baku in 2016. The Williams team said in 2025 that it still stands. He had the slipstream of the car ahead and the drag-reducing flap open, so it is a peak, not an average.

The timing has changed as much as the cars. In the old days, races were timed by hand-held stopwatches, and cars that shared the same tenth of a second were considered tied. Today, transponders on every car record lap times to the thousandth of a second, and a thousandth is only a few centimetres of track at racing speed. The Greeks asked, “Who crossed the line first?” Formula 1 asks, “By how many centimetres?”

The Racing Ladder

Why Do We Race?

Maybe because moving is not enough. We want to feel it. The wind in the face, the waves of air, the dance of a body moving faster than it was ever made to move. In Chapter 1, I wrote about the freedom to move. Racing is that freedom turned up as loud as it can go.

But every road ends where the land ends. Water does not. And humans, as we know, never stop wanting to see what is on the other side.

Next chapter: Travelling by Water.

Sources consulted include World History Encyclopedia and Roman inscriptions on the Circus Maximus and Diocles; Aesop’s Fables (Perry Index 226); History.com and America’s Cup records on the 1851 race; encyclopedia and museum histories of the first bicycle and motor races; the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Guinness World Records on the first Indianapolis 500; and Guinness World Records and Williams Racing on the Formula 1 speed records. Early dates and speeds vary between sources, so some figures are approximate.