To be fair, scarcely any HN readers (and a vanishing amount of the general population) remembers when racing hadn't gone down the rabbit-hole of infinite cost a

To be fair, scarcely any HN readers (and a vanishing amount of the general population) remembers when racing hadn't gone down the rabbit-hole of infinite cost and technology. The post-war period of extremely common amateur racing morphed into pro racing some time ago. Most organized series became impossible for the dozen-guys-in-a-garage to compete probably sometime in the 1980s. We'll never see the likes of the Herb Adams 'Grey Ghost', Smokey Yunick small block Chevrolet Indy car, or (I suppose) Hesketh ever again. Like most endeavors in the era of mass media consumption and mass production/distribution, you end up with a handful of utterly dominant players with everyone else simply a consumer.