Dan
Gurney

Dan Gurney was born on 13 April 1931 in Port Jefferson. He moved with his family to Riverside, California, as a teenager and soon became involved in the hot rod scene there. At 19 he built a car that reached 222 km/h (138 mph) on the Bonneville Salt Flats. He raced drag cars and sports cars as an amateur and spent two years in the US Army as an artillery mechanic during the Korean War. In 1957 he finished second to Carroll Shelby in the first Riverside Grand Prix. This caught the eye of Luigi Chinetti, who arranged a start for him at the 1958 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Gurney made his Formula One debut with Ferrari in 1959, taking two podiums in four races and finishing seventh in the championship. In 1960 he drove for BRM and was not classified in the championship. With Porsche he finished fourth in 1961. The following year he won the French Grand Prix at Rouen, which remains Porsche's only Grand Prix victory as a constructor. Porsche then withdrew from Formula One.

Gurney joined Brabham in 1963 and stayed until 1965. He won two races in 1964 and again finished fourth in the championship in 1965. Together with Carroll Shelby he founded the team All American Racers. From 1966 he competed in Formula One in the Eagle. On 18 June 1967 Gurney won the Belgian Grand Prix in an Eagle powered by a Weslake V12. With that he had scored a first Grand Prix victory for each of three different manufacturers: Porsche, Brabham and Eagle. A week earlier he had won the 24 Hours of Le Mans with A. J. Foyt and sprayed champagne on the podium, which became an established custom in motorsport. In 1968 he drove for Brabham, Eagle and McLaren. He did not race in Formula One in 1969, and in 1970 he contested three races for McLaren after the death of Bruce McLaren. The last of them was the British Grand Prix.

In total Gurney started 86 World Championship races, with four wins, three pole positions and 19 podiums. At the 1968 German Grand Prix he became the first Formula One driver to wear a full-face helmet. Outside Formula One he finished second in the Indianapolis 500 in both 1968 and 1969 and won the NASCAR race at Riverside five times. From 1970 he ran All American Racers full time, and the team won 78 races, including the Indianapolis 500. He was also the inventor of the Gurney flap. He was inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1990. Gurney died on 14 January 2018, aged 86.

Source: Wikipedia, “Dan Gurney”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.