Jimmy
Davies

Jimmy Davies, whose full name was James Richard Davies, was born in Glendale on 8 August 1929. The American raced Champ Cars and midgets. On 6 November 1949, aged 20, he won a 100-mile AAA Championship race at Del Mar, California. That made him the youngest winner in a major American open-wheel series, a record that stood until Marco Andretti won at Sonoma in 2006.

Between 1950 and 1955 Davies took part in five races of the Formula One World Championship. All five were the Indianapolis 500, which counted towards the drivers' championship from 1950 to 1960. He drove an Ewing in 1950, a Pawl in 1951 and a Kurtis Kraft from 1953 to 1955. He reached the podium once but never won a championship race. His best placing in the standings was 12th in 1955.

In midget racing he won the USAC National Midget Championship in 1960, 1961 and 1962, and was the second man to take three of these titles. He also won the USAC Pacific Coast Midget title in 1960 and took 46 midget feature races in total. He raced midgets in Australia and New Zealand as well, winning the Australian Speedcar Grand Prix in Sydney in 1963 and the South Australian Speedcar Championships in Adelaide in 1963 and 1964.

Davies died on 11 June 1966, aged 36, from the consequences of a crash in a midget race at Santa Fe Speedway near Chicago. He was inducted into the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame in 1984.

Source: Wikipedia, “Jimmy Davies (racing driver)”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.