Straight Up

Think of two famous men with 4 letter first names and 7 letter last names.

These two cross "town" rivals competed in a race in which the time difference between first and second place was 23 days.  Who are these men?

A:

The race as noted in the comments was the space race (escape car, first in space) and the participants are cleverly hidden in which 'rig sprang ahead'.

Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard