Dan Gurney 1931-2018

Dan Gurney 1931-2018

- Paul Fearnley

Car and Driver’s‘Dan Gurneyfor President’campaign of1964, though tongue in cheek, caught the collective imagination. That’s because everybody admired this 6ft 3in, handsome, enthusiastic – and fast – racer, who died from complications related to pneumonia last Sunday, aged 86.

Born on April 13 1931 and raised on Long Island, Daniel Sexton Gurney wedded East Coast civilities – father John was a prominent opera singer at the Met – with theWest’s sure-cando spirit once the family relocated to Riverside in South California, the hotbed of hot-rodding, in ’48. By the early ’60s his astronaut aura and crew cut had charmed Europe, while his hands-on NASCARmusclings – he had a linebacker’s shoulders – had swayed the Jim Crow South. A fluid driver who was easy on the brakes – he could chuck it in on a charge when roused – he was the first to win in Formula 1, Indycars, international sportscars and NASCAR; only Mario Andretti and Juan Pablo Montoya have matched his feat. He also scored victories in Can-Am, Trans-Am and the British Saloon Car Championship. Dan was the man.

Jim Clark certainly thought so.Moving anecdotal evidence – an aside from Jim’s father at his son’s funeral – suggests that Gurney and not Graham Hill, nor John Surtees, nor even young Jackie Stewart, was the rival the 1960s benchmark feared most. It was when under pressure from Gurney’s Brabham at the ’65 Race of Champions that Clark made a rare error and trashed his Lotus against the bank on the outside of Brands Hatch’s Bottom Bend.