He was mot on the list.
Dan Gurney, a leading player during one of auto racing’s
most intriguing eras and, in the judgment of many, the best driver never to
have won the Indianapolis 500, has died of complications from pneumonia. He was
86.
His wife, Evi, announced his death in a statement Sunday
distributed by All American Racers Inc.
Gurney, tall and blond and, with his sharply chiseled
features and movie star smile, the living idea of a young — albeit transplanted
— Southern Californian going places in a hurry, had multiple claims to fame:
Successful Formula One driver when few Americans even
considered the prestigious international circuit.
Facilitator of the rear-engine revolution, which changed the
face of Indy car racing forever.
Chris Pook’s liaison to the racing establishment in the
founding of the Long Beach Grand Prix and, later, instigator and founding
member of Championship Auto Racing Teams, the sanctioning body known as CART.
Car designer, builder and owner, whose talents in those
areas matched his considerable driving achievements.
In short, whatever was happening in automotive racing in the
1960s, ’70s, ’80s and into the ’90s, Gurney probably had a hand in it.
Chuck Yeager - M'friend Dan Gurney died today too young. He
was so gracious & kind to mutual friend, Russ Schleeh- took him to lunch
every Sat., kept him alive 10 yrs longer. Whenever we were in LA, V & I
were welcome & sure enjoyed it. Dan was such a kind, generous, interesting,
talented guy. https://twitter.com/RACERmag/status/952680171831574528 …
He could, and did, drive and win in everything, from F1 cars
to Indy cars to sports car prototypes and unlimited Can-Am cars, to NASCAR
stock cars and their smaller cousins, Trans-Am pony cars. Before retiring as a
driver in 1970, Gurney had raced in 312 events in 20 countries and had won 51
times.
He won seven Formula One races, four of them world
championship grand prix events; seven Indy car races; five top-tier NASCAR
races, all at Riverside International Raceway, and endurance sports car races
at LeMans, Daytona and Sebring. And, although he never won at Indianapolis as a
driver, he finished second twice and third another time, and was Bobby Unser’s
car owner-designer when Unser won in 1975. Cars built by Gurney and sold to
other teams had won twice previously, and in 1973, 21 of the 33 starting cars
were Gurney Eagles.
As a driver, Gurney commanded great respect. Scotsman Jim
Clark, two-time world champion in Formula One and an Indy 500 winner, once commented
that the two things he feared most during a race were oil on the track and Dan
Gurney in his mirrors.
Gurney posted his proudest accomplishment, though, in June
1967, when he won the Grand Prix of Belgium in an Eagle, a car he had designed
and built. It was the first time in 46 years that an American driver had won a
Formula One race in an American car, and he remains the only American ever to
have won a world championship race in a car of his own design.
“At the time, I didn’t think much about the significance
because I didn’t figure it would be the only Formula One race I’d win with the
All American Eagle, or the last one I’d ever win in any car,” Gurney told The
Times in 1992. “It wasn’t until later that I got to appreciate the significance
of it more.” In a later interview he said, “That was the moment. That was our
bragging rights.”
That victory at Spa-Francorchamps was indeed Gurney’s last
in Formula One, but it was a fitting climax to a remarkably versatile showing
by Gurney that season. The week before, he and A.J. Foyt had won the 24 Hours
of LeMans – there Gurney introduced the now-common winner’s spraying of the
celebratory champagne – and in September, he won the Rex Mays 300, the
inaugural Indy car race at Riverside, a track Gurney had “put on the racing
map,” according to promoter Les Richter, by winning the first four NASCAR races
run there.
Daniel Sexton Gurney was born April 13, 1931, in Port
Jefferson, on New York’s Long Island, the son of a Metropolitan Opera singer
father and a former art teacher mother. Dan was just out of high school when
his father moved west to become an avocado grower in Riverside. The young Dan
had already become hooked on racing – he grew up idolizing a Long Island driver
who raced under the pseudonym of Ted Tappet – and began honing his driving
talents by racing hot rods through nearby orange groves.
“The dirt roads were great,” Gurney told the St. Petersburg
(Fla.) Times in 1989. “There weren’t any people around and there weren’t any
restrictions and you could really get around on them. Those were great days.
The hot rod industry was booming and it was a great time for young men and
women to get gasoline in their veins.”
He served two years in the Army during the Korean War, then
drove his first race in 1955, wheeling a Triumph TR-2 to fourth place in a
production sports car race at Torrey Pines in La Jolla. Four years later,
thanks to a recommendation from Luigi Chinetti, a retired driver who had the
first Ferrari dealership in the U.S., Gurney was driving for the Ferrari
factory team, making $160 a month.
He took quickly to the European driving scene but remained
true to his American roots and, in 1962, drove for the first time in the
Indianapolis 500. Indy cars at the time were the long-snouted roadsters powered
by front-mounted four-cylinder Offenhauser engines. The year before, Jack
Brabham, another Formula One driver, had driven at Indy in a rear-engine car, a
vastly underpowered Cooper Climax, finishing an unimpressive ninth.
Gurney, driving a rear-engine Buick-powered car for Mickey
Thompson, finished 20th in his debut, completing only 92 of the 200 laps. Even
so, he went back to Europe convinced that the more agile rear-engine cars, the
kind being used in Formula One, were just the ticket at Indy. He persuaded
Lotus mastermind Colin Chapman to build the chassis, then talked Ford into
supplying the V-8 engines. The revolutionary Lotus-Fords, with Jim Clark and
Gurney driving, rocked the Indy establishment in ’63.
Parnelli Jones won in a conventional roadster, but Clark was
second and Gurney seventh, and the Indy roadster was already being called a
dinosaur. When Clark won the ’65 race in a Lotus-Ford, the race to the rear
became a stampede.
That same year, Gurney formed All American Racing, with Carroll
Shelby, building F1 and Indy cars, and after retiring from driving, having
bought out Shelby, turned to car designing and building full-time. Over the
years, AAR cars enjoyed great success, most notably in 1993, when prototype
Toyota-powered Eagles, driven for Gurney by Juan Fangio II and P.J. Jones,
qualified 1-2 and won all 10 GTP races they entered in the International Motor
Sports Assn.
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