Dan Gurney

Biography

Daniel Sexton Gurney was born in Port Jefferson, New York, on 13 April 1931, and served two years in the US Army as an artillery mechanic during the Korean War. At 19 his car reached 222 km/h (138 mph) on the Bonneville Salt Flats. In 1957 he finished second to Carroll Shelby in the first Riverside Grand Prix. Luigi Chinetti arranged his Le Mans debut with NART in 1958, and in 1959 Gurney won the 12 Hours of Sebring for Ferrari.

He started his first Grand Prix for Ferrari in France in 1959, drove for BRM in 1960 and joined Porsche in 1961. His win at Rouen in the 1962 French Grand Prix was Porsche's only Grand Prix victory as a Formula One constructor. Driving for Brabham from 1963 to 1965, he gave that team its first championship win, again at Rouen, in 1964. With Shelby he co-founded All American Racers, which built the Eagle, and on 18 June 1967 he won the Belgian Grand Prix in an Eagle-Weslake, the first all-American Grand Prix win since 1921.

That same month Gurney and A. J. Foyt won the Le Mans 24 Hours in a Ford Mk IV, covering a record 388 laps, and on the podium he sprayed the winner's champagne, a habit that spread through motorsport. He started every Indianapolis 500 from 1962 to 1970, finishing second in 1968 and 1969 and third in 1970, and he is credited with inventing the aerodynamic Gurney flap. He retired as a driver after the Riverside Trans-Am race in October 1970. In November 1971 he and Brock Yates won the first Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea run in a Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona. Gurney died in Newport Beach, California, on 14 January 2018, aged 86.