Kenny Bräck Racing Driver
It was really nice to have received the assignment from TT Nyhetsbyrån to photograph the portraits of Swedish Racing Driver Kenny Bräck to illustrate an article that he was celebrating his 50th birthday today. It was some fifteen years ago I last met Kenny.
Kenny Bräck is Sweden’s most successful racing driver who’s career included winning the 1998 Indy Racing League (IRL) Championship and winning the 1999 Indianapolis 500. Kenny is currently a development driver with McLaren Automotive in England.
I photographed Kenny regularly early in his career at the Nürburgring, Hockenheimring and Spa-Francorchamps circuits during the years 1994 – 1996 when he was driving in the International F3000 series. The races were held on a Saturday and I then photographed the F1 races held on the Sunday – great weekends.
Another memorable occasion was when I photographed Kenny driving a Porsche during a car test for the Swedish motoring magazine Auto Motor & Sport on the old F1 Nürburgring. The editor sat in front and I was cramped in the extremely small space behind them whilst Kenny drove very fast the 13 mile track with its some 73 bends – not recommended for the faint-hearted and this was not even near his race pace.
After those fun years I photographed Kenny twice more: 1998 in Orlando, Florida at the first race of the Indy Racing League driving for the A.J. Foyt team it was the year he won the IRL Championship – he gave me a spin around the circuit in his family car! And lastly whilst driving for Team Rahal in the CART Championship 2001 in Rockinham, Northamptonshire when for the first time a CART race was held in Europe.
I wanted to illustrate this post with some early photographs from Kenny’s career with images from his F3000 days … unfortunately when I looked for these at the picture agency where they are kept they are not in their online archive … most digital picture archives start from around 1998 and all images prior to this are harder to get hold of.
Read also the stories about:
Marcus Ericsson F1 Driver
Tom Blomqvist Racing Driver
