PARTY CRASHER

That Duncan Hamilton even made it to the 1953 running of the 24 Hours of Le Mans is a testament to his durability. A lifelong theme of surviving calamity started with rolling his own stroller down some stairs at age two and continued with a series of shipwrecks, car rollovers, and plane crashes. Still, he became a formidable racer and landed a spot on the Jaguar factory team.

- MIKE AUSTIN

A prototypical gentleman racer, Hamilton partied as hard as he drove.

Or, as he wrote in his autobiography, Touch Wood!, “It is amazing what good cognac and the will to achieve an ambition can accomplish!”