by Jake Grubb
WHY? Why does a driver strap into a racecar and drive it faster than logic will allow — competing wheel to wheel alongside other drivers within inches of disaster, all of whom fully intend to arrive first at the next corner, yet none of whom are guaranteed any such thing – and all of whom are traveling at speeds beyond what they can imagine are sustainable? And yet the driver pushes harder. And harder – until the car begins to creak and shudder and threaten that it may well not obey its next command, facing the threat that the tires will refuse to stick in the oncoming 100+ mph corner, or the engine will over-rev and expire, or that the wall ahead will not simply move out of the way, and no force of will make that wall, or fence or barrier get outta the way.
Two legendary drivers, when asked WHY in two separate interviews, years and ages apart, gave the same essential answer:
Bobby Unser, Indy 500 champion: “DESIRE.”
Dale Earnhardt, NASCAR champion: “RAW DESIRE.”
A Hundred years ago, drivers were seized with the same internal drive. Fifty years ago, they were infected with the same internal drive. Ten years ago, drivers were motivated with the same internal drive. Yesterday, today, tomorrow and twenty years from now drivers were, are, and will be obsessed with the same internal drive – to dominate the corner, achieve victory in the race, and win the day!
Rex Mays
A two-time AAA Champ/Indy Car national champion, Rex Mays was as unselfish as he was determined to win. In a Milwaukee Wisconsin race, fellow driver Duke Dinsmore was thrown from his car during an accident.
Race leader Mays, who saw Dinsmore’s body lying in the middle of the south turn on the next lap, purposely spun his car to miss Dinsmore, jumped from his racecar and dragged the unconscious driver to safety. Due to his selfless heroic action, the annual June race at the Milwaukee Mile was named the “Rex Mays Classic,” from 1950 to 1987. Mays made his Indy 500 debut in 1934 and won the pole in 1935, 1936 and again in 1940 and ‘41, finishing 2nd in both years and winning the AAA National Championship in 1940 and ‘41. Unable to race during WWII, Mays resumed racing again in 1946 and won the Indy 500 pole in 1948, leading many to speculate on what he might have accomplished had the War not taken his prime racing years. As Rex Mays swerved to miss a race accident at Del Mar Fairgrounds in 1949, Mays’ car flipped, throwing him to the track where he was hit and killed by a trailing car. Mays lost his own life while protecting another’s. A rarest of rare gesture from a superior competitor.
Dan Gurney
An archetype of American motorsport, Dan Gurney’s 50-plus-year racing career consisted of 15-years as a legendary driver, 35-years as a top race team owner/manufacturer and an entire career as an engineering innovator/inventor.
During a visit to the Malloy Foundation on one particular day, Dan Gurney asked why one of his helmets was not on display in the Malloy Foundation Collection. “It isn’t because we don’t want one,” quipped a respectful Tom Malloy. Days later he returned with an authentic, signed Dan Gurney helmet and bestowed it to the Malloy Foundation. During his driving years, Gurney was arguably the most versatile performer in American racing, logging historic successes in Indy cars, Sports cars, Stock cars, Can Am, Trans Am, varied dirt track cars and international Formula 1. Among many professional liaisons, he was a factory driver for Porsche, Brabham, Surtees, Ferrari, Shelby, Ford and many other teams. Co-driving with A.J. Foyt in a Ford GT-40 Mk IV, he won the 1966 Le Mans 24-hour from previously dominant Ferrari, one of the most significant wins in automobile racing history. To this day, he remains the only American driver to win an international Formula 1 race in a car of his own design and manufacture, at Austria’s storied Spa Francorchamps in 1967. Dan’s famous black-on-black helmet became his trademark. He was an early adopter of the “full coverage” Bell Star helmet, a precursor to the universal full coverage safety helmets of today. In 1970, after 15 years as a renowned professional driver in European and USA auto racing, Dan Gurney retired with little warning while at the top of his game to focus on AAR [All American Racers], his race team and car building company. When asked by commentator Chris Economaki at the 1971 Indy 500 about his retirement as a driver, Dan’s short answer said it all: “Poison ivy!” The itch to be on the track was nowhere near gone. But he had made a commitment to his wife, his family, his employees and himself that it was time to focus on building his racing business. Gurney and AAR went on to formidable accomplishments in USAC and Cart Indy Car, Formula 5000, IMSA GTO and GTP and as a designer/builder of racecars for paying customers. Among a great many AAR successes were the Gurney Toyota Eagle GTP cars, which dominated IMSA racing in 1991, 1992 and 1993, setting lap records that stood for 26 years.
Johnny Rutherford
Lone Star J.R.” was known as “that fast guy from Texas,” where he cut his teeth on the dirt oval tracks of the greater southwest, beginning in 1959. A man who could drive anything on four wheels atop any surface, Rutherford’s early reputation came from racing “Modifieds,” graduating to Sprint Cars in 1961 and then NASCAR in 1963.
Quickly winning his first big league Stock Car race, a 100-mile qualifying heat for the ’63 Daytona 500, he also started racing Indy cars, beginning with the ’63 Indy 500. Rutherford’s uncanny ability to jump into various types of racecars and always run fast was unmatched. “If you can drive, you can drive,” he once bantered. Lone Star J.R. won pole position at Indy three times, in 1973, 1976 and 1980, and was unofficially the first driver to achieve a 200-mph lap at Indy, where many said he was not properly recorded by official IMS track monitoring. Johnny was mad, but shook it off. Among his many accomplishments, Rutherford won the Indy 500 three times; in 1974, 1976 and 1980. And his victory in the 1986 Michigan 500 at age 48 made him the oldest-ever winner of a 500-mile Indy Car race. In addition to his exploits as a versatile race driver, Rutherford also became an accomplished pilot, ultimately competing is air races with his 2000-horsepower P-51 Mustang WWII fighter plane. Famous automotive writer Joe Scalzo documented the extraordinary story of Rutherford trading rides with a Blue Angels US Navy jet pilot, wherein the pilot put Johnny Rutherford through the high speed aerobatic rigors of Blue Angels exhibition flying, and Rutherford took the Blue Angels pilot for competition speed laps in a special two-seat Indy Car. The result? The Blue Angels pilot wanted to run more high speed laps at Indy, while Rutherford tipped his Texas hat to the jet pilot and admitted that a ride with the Blue Angel was all he could take!
