Bob
Bondurant

Bob Bondurant was born in Evanston, Illinois, in 1933. As a teenager he raced an Indian motorcycle on dirt ovals, and in 1956 he moved into sports car racing with a Morgan. In a Chevrolet Corvette he won the West Coast production class B championship. From 1963 he drove for Carroll Shelby's Cobra team. In 1964 he won the GT class at the Le Mans 24 Hours with Dan Gurney in the Cobra Daytona Coupe, and in 1965 Shelby American and Ford won the FIA World Manufacturers' Championship with his involvement.

Bondurant made nine Formula One starts across 1965 and 1966. In 1965 he drove a Ferrari at the United States Grand Prix at Watkins Glen and a Lotus at the next race in Mexico. In 1966 he raced a BRM in five Grands Prix and finished fourth at Monaco. At the end of the season he drove an Eagle for Dan Gurney's Anglo American Racers in two races in North America. He finished 14th in the 1966 championship. At the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix he helped Graham Hill pull Jackie Stewart from his crashed car, an incident that prompted Stewart to campaign for greater safety in the sport. That year he also worked as a technical adviser on the film Grand Prix and taught its lead actor, James Garner, to drive single-seaters.

In 1967 Bondurant competed in Can-Am and took a Corvette to Le Mans, where he led the GT class until a mechanical failure forced him out. The same year he had a serious accident at Watkins Glen. He then developed the idea for a high-performance driving school, which opened in 1968 and later moved to Arizona. His pupils included actors such as Paul Newman and Tom Cruise. In 1969 he won the passenger car class of the Baja 500 with Tony Murphy. He also made four NASCAR starts, his best result being 18th in 1981. He was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2003. Bondurant died in Paradise Valley, Arizona, in 2021, aged 88.

Source: Wikipedia, “Bob Bondurant”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.