Blog
April 6, 2026
Hope everyone had a very nice Easter like we did thanks to my gourmet chef wife. I ate too much but it was the first day in about a week I felt close to normal thanks to chemotherapy making me sick again.
So my blog this week is on friend and racer Max Papis. He continues to be in Indy Car as the chief steward along with Arie Luyendyk. Arie is another friend and an old neighbor of ours.
I can't believe that I've never done a blog on "Mad Max" or even have photos of his racing career in my website. So here we go!
Max earned the nickname "Mad Max" after the drive he did towards the end of the 1996 24 hours of Daytona. He was a lap down in his Ferrari 333SP but got the lap back and almost won the race chasing Wayne Taylor. He even did a pit stop at racing speed and that changed the following year when you could no longer drive in on racing speed. Mad Max finished 64 seconds behind to finish second.
A true racer in just about all types of racing as he has been in Formula One, Indy Car, CART, Champ Car, IMSA, NASCAR and even Stadium Trucks. He started winning in go karts as a very young driver in his native Italy and in the CART Indy Car Series he won 3 races.
I've gotten to know Max and his family through the years. Married to Tatiana Fittipaldi they have two children that are racing now of course. Matteo and Marco have a great coaches with Max. Max even helps out his cousins Pietro and Enzo Fittipaldi in their racing careers.
If that isn't enough Max and Tatiana started Max Papis Innovations in 2009. They supply racing steering wheels and many more new racing products every day. Checkout www.maxpapisinc.com to see all their products.
I've photographed Max for years in Indy Car at Road America and at the Milwaukee Mile.
Attached here are photos of Max at Road America finishing 4th in 2003 and the Milwaukee Mile where he finished seventh. I'll continue digging in the archives and add more photos of Max in the future.
Enjoy some photos from 2000 and 2003 and have a great week.
Thanks,
Rich
March 23, 2026
I'm very happy that my long time friend, Amy Madigan, won an Oscar last Sunday night for her role as Aunt Alice in the movie Weapons.
It is well deserved as she has been in film for a long time. Her first acting appearance was on the television show Hart to Hart in 1981.
After a lot of television and movies it's great to see her get an Oscar. She has done a lot of work and one of my favorite movies was Field of Dreams.
In the 1970's she was in several bands as a vocalist here in Milwaukee while she was attending Marquette University graduating with a B.S. degree in Philosophy in 1972.
By 1974 she moved to Los Angeles and began to get into acting and then marrying actor Ed Harris in 1983.
In late 1972 one of the bands she was in was Methyl Ethyl and the Ketones. She was also part of The Hound Dog Band. They too are friends and great musicians that opened for John Mayall and others.
Enjoy a look at Amy and her band Methyl Ethyl and the Ketones at the UWM Student Union.
Joe Roe=Keyboards
John Billings=Pedal Steel and guitar
Brian Perotti=Drums
Todd Galanter=Bass
Mark Kapou=Vocals and percussion
The last photo )fairly bad photo) is from the Hound Dog Band days, Amy with Fred Bliffert and Mark Saicheck.
Thanks,
Rich Zimmermann
March 9, 2026
I am taking a look back at Michel Joudain Jr. racing in Champ Car in 2003.
Michel started racing in the Mexican Formula Junior series at 12 years old and in 1996 started in the IRL racing series. From 1997 to 2004 he was racing in Champ Car with 2 wins in 2003 for Team Rahal at Milwaukee and Montreal.
The Milwaukee Mile 2003 race was a night race and cold! I remember putting on a heavy coat, hat and gloves to shoot a few photos from the spotters stand on the roof of the main grandstand.
It was a big weekend at the Milwaukee Mile for the Centennial 250 race on the tracks 100th anniversary of auto racing.
It was also a big weekend for me because I got a photo job with Fittipaldi Dingman racing and their driver Tiago Monteiro for Milwaukee and Road America. Still waiting to get paid for that and so is most of the racing team crew.
Michel Jourdain Jr. had a great race and his first win in the series at Milwaukee.
A few photos here are from Milwaukee and Road America where it was a mess of weather in 2003 with a lot of rain delays. I remember the race finishing finally at about 7 or 8pm.
He raced in NASCAR, WTCC, A1GP, Craftsman Truck Series and he now is still in the Super Copa GTM Series in Mexico for Andretti Jourdain Autosport where he was champion in 2020.
He's a nice racer and still racing in anything he can even having done the Baja 1000 in 2003 finishing sixth.
He placed second overall in a 1953 Studebaker in the La Carrera Panamericana in 2010.
Enjoy a look at some photos from Milwaukee and Road America in 2003.
Thanks,
Rich Zimmermann
