Danny
Ongais

Ezekiel "Danny" Ongais was born in Kahului, Hawaii. He started out in motorcycle racing and became Hawaiian motorcycle champion in 1960. In the early 1960s he took up drag racing, winning the American Hot Rod Association's AA Gas Dragster championship in 1963 and 1964 and the National Hot Rod Association's AA Dragster title in 1965. In 1969 he won the NHRA U.S. Nationals in the Funny Car class.

In the 1970s he turned to circuit racing, working his way up through SCCA road racing, regional series and Formula 5000 with the help of Ted Field. He entered Indy car racing with Interscope Racing in 1976 and took his first win in the category at Michigan in 1977. He won five more races in 1978, yet finished eighth in the USAC championship. In 1979 he shared an Interscope Porsche 935 with Field and Hurley Haywood to win the 24 Hours of Daytona.

In Formula One, Ongais contested the 1977 United States and Canadian Grands Prix for the Interscope team in a year-old Penske PC4. He crashed out on a wet track at Watkins Glen and finished seventh in Canada. In 1978 he began the year with Ensign and retired in Argentina and Brazil with brake trouble. A Shadow chassis followed, but he failed to qualify with it at Long Beach and in the Netherlands. He started four Grands Prix in total.

Ongais had a serious accident in the 1981 Indianapolis 500 and was unable to race for almost a year afterwards. In 1996 he stepped in at the Indianapolis 500 to replace Scott Brayton, who had been killed in a crash. He was the oldest driver in the field and finished seventh. He was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2000 and the Hawaii Sports Hall of Fame in 2001. Danny Ongais died on 26 February 2022.

Source: Wikipedia, “Danny Ongais”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.