The death of Australia’s racing legend Peter Brock on September 8 moved me to write this piece.

Brock was killed in a racing accident at age 61. His partner survived the crash. His partner said Brock did not make a mistake. Frankly, I disagree. He made a mistake when he climbed into a 1964 racecar at age 61 in an attempt to beat the clock and other drivers one more time.

His motto was “live life.” The motto is fine. The life actually lived wasn’t.

Australians seem reconciled to this daredevil endings. The most famous exit was Harold Holt’s, who at age 59 went swimming in the shark-infested Australian surf, which was turbulent that day, and disappeared. He was Australia’s Prime Minister at the time. Today, 39 years later, he is famous for how he departed, not for how he ruled the country. While this event was of course sensational at the time, Australians seemed to take the attitude that “these things happen.” It’s part of the Australian heritage.

In America, “swimming with the sharks” refers to competing with sophisticated and sometimes ruthless investors, who will “eat you alive.” It doesn’t mean swimming with the sharks, who will eat you alive. Australia is different.

Coming in the same week as the death of the crocodile hunter Steve Irwin, Brock’s death was a blow to the country. He was Australia’s most honored race driver. He dominated racing there throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He won the Bathurst nine times — a feat no one else has come near. He was known as “Peter Perfect.”

Brock said in a radio interview on the day he died that the car was new to him. Previously, he had problems handling it. He quipped, “I’ve really got to get to grips with this car. I think by Sunday night, I might.” Famous last words.

In one if the many obituaries, published on GrandPrix.com, the author wrote: “Although he retired from racing in 1997 he could not stay away and raced whenever he could. Racing was his life.”

It was also his death.

STIRLING MOSS

Half a century ago, Stirling Moss was my only hero in the world of athletics. He was Britain’s greatest grand prix driver, but he shared the era with the dominant international driver of the time, Argentina’s Juan Manuel Fangio, a three-name athlete. Moss has been called the greatest driver who never won the grand prix championship.

I like his website. It has a section, 50 years ago, where you can see which races he was in 50 years ago.

Moss was very fast, but he was also very methodical. He paid attention to details. He recognized that racing is a life-and-death sport, unlike other major sports. Second, at 150 miles per hour or higher, a split second can make a big difference.

In 1962, he was involved in a crash. He never regained his reflexes. He retired from the Grand Prix circuit. He did not press his luck. He saw that what he had to do involved split-second timing, and that when his body no longer met his standards, he retired. However, I am told that he has on occasion and without fanfare raced lower-horsepower cars for the thrill the competition in the years after 1962. I have not verified this.

On September 17, Sir Stirling is scheduled to celebrate his 77th birthday.

For some great recent photos of Moss driving The Tonight Show’s Jay Leno around the track in the last run of Moss’s 1955 victory car, the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR #722 — vroom, vroom — click here.

His rival, Fangio, won his fourth world championship in 1957. No one won five championships until 2002, when the German driver, Michael Schumaker, did it. (Schumaker then won two more.) Fangio retired in 1958.

Why did Fangio quit at the height of his career? Because he was 47 years old. He had seen too many of his peers killed, and he decided to enjoy the rest of his life, as he said at the time. He died in 1995, at the age of 84, the Grand Old Man of grand prix racing.

TWO VIEWS OF LIFE

In the careers of Peter Brock and Stirling Moss, we see two rival views of life played out.

Brock’s view of life was “live life.” But what he meant by this was very different from Stirling Moss’s view. Both men drove very fast. Both men became legends in their time. Brock retained public popularity longer than Moss did, but Brock was not well-known outside Australia, whereas Moss was an international figure in an international sport.

Moss was a businessman in an era when athletes, especially in auto racing, were not. He demanded top payment for appearing in a race. He sought after endorsements. What we regard as normal today — star athletes making more money off the field than on — was pioneered by Moss. He lived to spend his money. He remains wealthy.

In contrast, Brock could not disengage from the sport that made him a legend. He loved life, but that life was put on the line every time he climbed behind the wheel and started the engine. So was the life of his partner.

In the United States, another driver had this same inability to quit at his peak: Paul Newman. He would say I am wrong. That is because he peaked in this sport later than anyone else in history. Newman entered his first race at age 47 — the age when Fangio quit — and proved to be a competent driver. At age 70, in 1995, he became the oldest driver ever to be on a winning team in a major sanctioned race, the 24-hour Daytona. He survived his driving career, but he took his life in his hands every time.

There is an American saying about wanting to die with your boots on. This is a very different goal from dying in bed in the arms of a 20-year-old woman at age 93 — unless you (and she) have a unique attitude toward boots. Dying with your boots on means dying while still pursuing your calling — “the most important thing you can do in which you would be most difficult to replace.” If the most important thing a 61-year-old man can do is drive a 1964 car in a race, then he has not maximized the uses to which his life might have been put.

Peter Brock will be easily replaced on the racing circuit. The racing world will not notice his absence on the track. Whether or not someone wins a race in a 1964 car is neither here nor there for most Australians. But Australia will miss his presence as a spokesman for the sport and for Australia generally.

I contend that Brock made a fatal mistake regarding what his calling was. He was addicted to participating in the sport as a driver. That was an addiction — a personal liability, not a mark of success. If there is a 12-step recovery program for aging sports car racers, he should have been in it.

He had an amazing gift: the ability to drive very fast. He had an even greater gift: the ability to drive fast under racing conditions. Moss said it well:

To race a car through a turn at maximum speed, is difficult, but to race a car at maximum speed through that same turn when there is a brick wall on one side and a precipice on the other — Ah, that’s an achievement.

SIDE EFFECTS

There are critics who think auto racing is a waste, a risk of one’s life for nothing substantial. I fully agree with respect to the personal glory of winning car races. But for the development of auto technology, racing is a useful testing program. The quest for speed leads to a quest for new technologies. First users pioneer such development in a free society. There is a trickle-down phenomenon in auto racing as in all other consumer products. The people with money to spare buy them first and test them under competitive conditions. Then they become mass-market, price-competitive items later, if they prove useful to early users.

Here we have an institution that exists to amuse one group of people which produces positive results in the lives of other, seemingly disinterested people. The side effects become positive effects, despite the fact that “side effects” usually means “effects we don’t like.”

We have a similar phenomenon in the commodity futures markets. Two men put up money on opposite sides of a price move. One says the price will rise. The other says that the price will fall. A commodity futures industry takes its share of each participant’s guess. One wins, the other loses, and the brokers take home their share.

Does society lose? No. Society gains because the transaction is based on the bearing of uncertainty. Very smart people make money by guessing the movement of prices. The best forecasters survive the competition. This makes demonstrable information — “Put your money where your mouth is” — available to the public at no cost to the public. The public becomes a free rider on the zero-sum game of commodity futures speculation.

Vroom, vroom!

The desire to get rich drives most commodity futures speculators. This is a third-rate goal in life, hardly worth pursuing. But a free society puts this natural desire to productive service. Men get rich by serving the public. The public benefits.

KNOWING WHEN TO QUIT

Peter Brock stayed too long behind the wheel. He could have remained a good spokesmen and a great legend. He could have served as a shining example of a man who performed his task magnificently, but stepped down when his body could no longer perform as it had. He lasted a long time, but he did not know when to quit.

The obituary writer who wrote, “Racing was his life,” unknowingly spoke poorly of the dead. There are other ways to be productive in racing. Newman remains part of a racing team, just not a driver. He still represents the industry — most delightfully, by doing the voice of the old Hudson Hornet in Cars, which gets my vote as the best movie of 2006.

The Preacher said 3000 years ago,

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted (Ecclesiastes 3:1—2).

(We are not sure exactly who the Preacher was. It may have been King Solomon. It was not Bob Dylan.)

More recently, someone else — also not Bob Dylan — said:

You’ve got to know when to hold’em.Know when to fold’em.Know when to walk away,Know when to run.

Knowing when to fold the cards and walk away takes either luck or wisdom. The wise man assesses what his contribution can be in the likely time remaining to him and then acts on this assessment. This takes a great deal of self-awareness, which is a commodity always in short supply, even at high prices. (Economists would say that the supply of self-awareness is inelastic, when they really mean “not price-sensitive.” For 45 years, whenever I have heard “inelastic,” I have had a mental image of a fat guy whose elastic-belt pants have fallen down.)

How a man is remembered is closely associated with what he was doing when he died. Peter Brock has fame. He will get a state-funded funeral, as will Steve Irwin. He will be remembered as a man who died with his boots on. But there comes a time in life to trade in your boots for a pair of Reeboks.

It is good to die on the job. But the job should determine your footwear. Don’t wear boots if the job requires wing tips.

Athletes have a short career expectancy. There are a few exceptions, but not many. There is a good case for making the transition beyond your peak. There was no good reason for Michael Jordan to retire until he could no longer play any better than a bench warmer. Leaving at the peak is for legend’s sake. But being a legend when you can be a better-than-average performer makes no sense unless you can convert legend into something more valuable than being very good.

I would say that race car driving is an exception to this rule.

BEING ABOVE AVERAGE

Some men work for years to be above average, and never make it. Some men begin above average and decline into it. The rule still holds: Don’t settle for average. You may not attain above-average status, but don’t settle for average.

Peter Drucker, the management guru, argued that the great advantage of starting an outsourcing firm is that it enables an above-average performer to become the best. He narrows his field. He concentrates. If the firm that’employs him is broad-based, his entrepreneurial talent in a narrow field will not be allowed to flourish. He will not get to the top. Also, he will spend his career serving the needs of only one small segment of the market: his’employer’s segment. Better to walk out and branch out.

This is the division of labor in action. It increases men’s productivity. It increases society’s wealth by increasing the consumer’s supply of choices.

Peter Brock was an average car racer when he died. His fame was not based on his recent performance. It was based on memory.

He was unwilling to rely on his legend to open doors of opportunity. He could have put his legendary status to better purposes than remaining an aging performer in a young man’s deadly sport. He confused his occupation — racecar driver — with his calling: Australia’s legend. It was time long ago to leave his occupation and put his status to productive use.

Australia is poorer for his not having made the switch.

“Racing was his life.” If so, he wasted what remained of his life. Life is a tool, not an end. So is your occupation. Life is for service. What was the higher purpose of his life on the day he died? That should define what we all leave behind. The Apostle Paul wrote:

I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7).

He offered this advice:

Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain (1 Corinthians 9:24).

What is it that you want to obtain? If it is fame, then die the way Brock died, but make sure you are a legend first.

CONCLUSION

When I think of Peter Brock and Stirling Moss, I don’t think of how fast they drove, but how wisely they lived. Star athletes are not legendary for wise living. True, they may not match George Best’s self-assessment. “I spent a lot of money on booze, birds, and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.” But they don’t seem to be able to leave the spotlight gracefully. They don’t leave much of a trace.

Leaving a trace in the spotlight is difficult and usually not necessary. But leaving a trace is necessary. It’s a responsibility.

Peter Brock should have followed the lead offered by Moss and Fangio. He should have become a Grand Old Man. Then he should have helped change lives by means of that status.

Plan your exit strategy now. Don’t wait until that last race when you crash into a tree.

And, please, don’t swim with the sharks.

September13, 2006

Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.garynorth.com. He is also the author of a free 17-volume series, An Economic Commentary on the Bible.

Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com