Emotional photography captures the essence of classic F1 racing

Around the Autoblog office, we know Dick Kelley from his days on the public relations teams for Toyota and Mitsubishi, but more recently, he's been showing us a little of his past. Before working the PR machine, Kelley had a photography career that spanned three decades from the early '70s to the late '90s – the first half of which was spent documenting Formula One races on film.

Other than a display at the 2012 Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance, Kelley says his images are "never-before seen," but that has all changed with a new website showing a vast number of timeless, emotional shots mostly of drivers. Motorsports photography is hard enough just when you're trying capture the cars, but catching the drivers and/or teams in candid images is an art form – and almost unseen these days.

Head over to his website or Facebook page to check out a selection of images including the 1978 shot of Gilles Villeneuve winning in Canada shown above as well as other shots of racing greats like Emerson Fittipaldi, Bobby Rahal, Mario Andretti and Nigel Mansell.

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