DAN GURNEY

By H.A. Branham

In a career that spanned several decades as a driver, creator, innovator and team owner, Dan Gurney achieved countless accolades. But perhaps it was his IMSA success that stood as the highest peak the “Big Eagle” soared to on both the driving and team owning fronts.

Gurney won the three-hour Daytona Continental at the Daytona International Speedway in 1962, the precursor to the race that eventually evolved into the Rolex 24 At Daytona. Some 31 years later, Gurney headed to DIS Victory Lane again as the Rolex 24-winning car owner for the Toyota Eagle MkIII, the most dominant car in the history of the IMSA GTP class.

As a team owner, Gurney brought his All American Racers team to IMSA in the late 1980s, with Toyota Celicas in the production-based GTU and GTO classes. Of note, AAR was founded in 1965 by Gurney and another legend, Carroll Shelby. In 1987, AAR captured driver and manufacturer championships in GTO. From 1989-1991, AAR ran the Eagle HF89 – known also as the MkII. Four victories in ’91 foreshadowed the hammer about to fall.

Several manufacturers fielded GTP c ars but the Eagles took everything to the next level over the subsequent years. It included the driver lineup, which featured Juan Manuel Fangio II, P.J. Jones, Andy Wallace and Rocky Moran among others in the longer endurance races.

Fangio and Jones, Gurney’s two primary drivers in the Nos. 99 and 98 Eagles, came from strong bloodlines; Fangio is the nephew and namesake of the late, five-time Formula 1 World Champion while Jones is the son of 1963 Indianapolis 500 winner Parnelli, who like Gurney was as renowned for his technical prowess and driving ability as his team leadership.

The car was a beast. With its carbon-fiber monocoque chassis, from 1991-93, the team’s two Eagles won a total of 21 races including the Rolex 24 in ’93 and Mobil 1 Twelve Hours of Sebring in ’92-93. In total, a 17-race win streak across the 1992 and ’93 seasons powered AAR to a sweep of the driver (Fangio), team and manufacturer titles.

Of All American Racers’ 158 Eagle racing cars built between 1965 and 2012, 13 were IMSA GTP Eagles along with three GTU and three GTO Toyota Celicas apiece. AAR’s presence also included building Can-Am “McLEagles,” a Lola Can-Am car and the exotic DeltaWing, which raced in IMSA competition from 2012 through 2016.

Perhaps paradoxically, Gurney’s AAR operation was so successful that it coincided with the demise of the IMSA Camel GT Series and obviously contributed. The era of the fire-breathing GTP cars ran to the early 1990s before the fallow period and the ultimate sports car resurgence that has followed since the mid-2010s. The upside, of course, was witnessing one of motorsports’ true champions and ambassadors on the scene, in Victory Lane, repeatedly. Gurney was class, personified.

His Daytona Beach bookends from 1962 to 1993 stand out, of course. While Gurney was so impactful on IMSA, like so many legendary competitors, Gurney’s rep is worldwide, involving a variety of racing disciplines.

Pre-IMSA sports cars, that Daytona victory and a 1959 win at Sebring was followed by a 24 Hours of Le Mans victory alongside A.J. Foyt in ’67. He won five NASCAR races, seven IndyCar races and four Formula One races; he was the first driver to win in sports cars (1958), Formula 1 (1962), NASCAR (1963) and Indy cars (1967).

The great Dan Gurney died in 2018. He was 86.

“With one last smile on his handsome face, Dan drove off into the unknown,” his wife Evi said in a statement after his passing.