Jim
Hurtubise

Jim Hurtubise was born on 5 December 1932 in North Tonawanda, New York. In the early 1950s he raced in the Sportsman class alongside his brother Pete at tracks in south-eastern Canada and western New York. After the 1955-56 season he moved to California, where he began with modifieds and soon switched to sprint cars. There he became a champion in the IMCA and the California Racing Association.

The Indianapolis 500 counted towards the Formula 1 World Championship from 1950 to 1960. Hurtubise started the 1960 race for Christensen, finished eighteenth and scored no points. It was his only World Championship race. That same year he was named Rookie of the Year at the Indianapolis 500.

In the USAC Championship Car series he raced from 1959 to 1968 and from 1970 to 1974, winning four races: Sacramento in 1959, Langhorne in 1960, and Springfield in 1961 and 1962. He entered the Indianapolis 500 ten times between 1960 and 1974, with a best finish of thirteenth in 1962. After a serious accident at Milwaukee in 1964 he returned to racing and was given the Ralph DePalma Award for it.

With his brother he designed and built the front-engined roadster known as the Mallard. In 1968 the Mallard was the last front-engined car in the Indianapolis 500. After that he tried several times until 1981 to get it into the field, but without success. His last successful qualification for the race came in 1974 in a rear-engined car.

In NASCAR he began racing in the Cup series in 1957 and won the 1966 Atlanta 500. He was inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 1993. Jim Hurtubise died on 6 January 1989, aged 56.

Source: Wikipedia, “Jim Hurtubise”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.