On the phone, the editor said, “You gotta come back in. Mark Donohue died last night. We need an obit.” Warming up for the Austrian Grand Prix, my hero, Donohue, 38, had spun his March at 150 ...

At about the same time, Mark Donohue was at Brown University, where his car drawings were more elaborate. He was an engineer, and his dream was to make race cars go infinitely faster, with his ...