Motor Racing
- Stock car racing –
- Marvin Panch wins the Daytona 500 in the Smokey Yunick-owned and -prepared Pontiac
- NASCAR Championship - Ned Jarrett (Chevrolet)
- USAC Racing
- 30 May – A.J. Foyt wins his first 45th running of the Indianapolis 500 in the Bowes Seal Fast Special Trevis-Offenhauser
- A.J. Foyt wins the driving championship
- Formula One – Phil Hill (United States) wins World Drivers' Champion, driving for Ferrari.
- 24 hours of Le Mans – Olivier Gendebien / Phil Hill win, sharing a Ferrari 250TR
- Rally racing - the team of Maurice Martin / Roger Bateau win the Monte Carlo Rally driving a Panhard PL17
- Drag racing
- Pete Robinson won Top Eliminator at the NHRA Nationals
- Jack Chrisman wins Top Eliminator at the first Winternats with NHRA's first sub-9 sec pass
Read more about this topic: 1961 In Sports
Famous quotes containing the words motor and/or racing:
“The motor idles.
Over the immense upland
the pulse of their blossoming
thunders through us.”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)
“Upscale people are fixated with food simply because they are now able to eat so much of it without getting fat, and the reason they don’t get fat is that they maintain a profligate level of calorie expenditure. The very same people whose evenings begin with melted goat’s cheese ... get up at dawn to run, break for a mid-morning aerobics class, and watch the evening news while racing on a stationary bicycle.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)