Robert Daley, 85, is a journalist and writer, a former publicity director for the New York Giants American football team and a one-time deputy police commissioner in New York City. He is the son of a New York Times sports columnist, Arthur Daley, and for six years, from the late 1950s to the early 1960s, he worked as a correspondent for The New York Times in France and covered Formula One. He wrote a seminal nonfiction book about the series, “The Cruel Sport” (1963), for which he also took the photographs. Daley has written 30 books, including the novels “Prince of the City“ and “Year of the Dragon.” As part of a series about famous and unusual Formula One fans, Daley spoke recently in Nice, France, with Brad Spurgeon of the International New York Times.

Q. How did you get started covering Formula One?

A. I wasn’t interested in valves and camshafts and stuff, and never put anything about that stuff in the articles. I was just stunned with all of these guys getting killed. My introduction to car racing was meeting Alfonso de Portago at the Winter Olympics and becoming interested in Portago, and getting a commission from a ratty little magazine, a no-account magazine called Cavalier that no one had ever heard of, and I go and I meet him at Sebring. He was very nice and polite and so on. I wrote my article, handed it in on Friday. He got killed on Sunday and the article got rejected on Monday. My career was over; it hadn’t even started. But at Sebring, which is as boring a place as can be, I was enthralled. It gave me a headache, but I was enthralled.

I wanted to be a writer, and every place I tried I got shot down. I was a publicity director of the Giants, from the age of 23. That was my first job. No one was interested in pro football. In the off-season they would just as soon I took a leave of absence and left, because it reduced their payroll.