NIGEL ROEBUCK’S HEROES
Nigel on Dan Gurney, the only driver who worried Jim Clark
I was invited to a private dinner attended by nine winners of the Indianapolis 500 – plus one. Although Dan Gurney’s face is not on the Borg-warner Trophy, he twice finished second, and to omit him would have been unthinkable. In the hands of others, after all, his Eagle cars several times made it to Victory Lane.
It was primarily to attend this dinner that Gurney, 84 years old, came back to Indianapolis, and earlier that day, after flying in, he suffered a heart ‘event’, and was taken to hospital. When he walked into the restaurant, smiling as always, the joy was unconfined. “They defibrillated me,” he said, “and I’m fine – no way I was going to miss this!”
Had the experience frightened him? “Hell, no,” Dan grinned. “Spa in the rain frightened me…”
When Gurney died in January 2018, there was intense grief throughout motorsport, for as well as being a great racing driver, this was a man loved even more than he was revered. Days later I was at Daytona, and there was many a damp eye when one of his Canam cars made a tribute lap. No ordinary man, this.
Although he lived almost his entire life in California, Gurney was born in Long Island, New York, where his passion for racing began. “Indianapolis was a phenomenon, sure, but I read George Monkhouse’s books about Mercedes-benz before the war – from the start I was smitten with road racing. By the time I started in 1955, with a Triumph TR2, I’d done my military service in Korea, and was already 24. After that, I raced a Porsche Speedster, then a Corvette, but my big break was to drive a 4.9 Ferrari owned by Frank Arciero.”
Instantly quick, Gurney was on his way. Back then the Maranello bush telegraph kept tabs, after each weekend, on who had done well in a Ferrari somewhere, and Dan’s success led to a drive for the
North American Racing Team at Le Mans in 1958.
Though he didn’t race much, Dan stayed in Europe a while. It pleased him to see Juan Manuel Fangio’s last grand prix at Reims, but that day was also the last time around for Luigi Musso, who was killed while chasing Mike Hawthorn. From there Gurney went to Silverstone, where Peter Collins won, and then to the Nürburgring, where Collins was killed, the second Ferrari driver to die in a month.
On a young man touching the hem of a career in grand prix racing, those weeks could have had a devastating effect. “It didn’t put me off,” Gurney said, “but it did get across to me that this was a pretty serious business I was trying to get into…”
At year’s end Dan got ‘The Call’. “I remember going to Modena for a try-out with the team – there were no other drivers, just Enzo Ferrari and a few other fellows, all with the big fedoras [hats] and the dark overcoats. I was sort of intimidated by Ferrari – there was a great aura around him, and I think he wanted it that way, but actually I never had a bit of trouble with him.
“My contract for 1959 said I would get the equivalent of $163 a month, and I also got half what they called ‘starting money’, which was never defined, and one round-trip ticket to Milan – with an offer like that, how could I refuse? In fact, I never gave money a thought – I was just thinking I was a professional road race driver, and it looked pretty good to me.”
At first Gurney raced only sportscars for Ferrari, but in July made his F1 debut at Reims. This was only the 23rd race of his life and, though he retired, a string of good results followed. Already, though,
IN 2005, A FEW DAYS BEFORE THE RACE...
he had decided to move on.
“In my great wisdom all I could see was that
Ferrari was still stuck on front-engined cars. Rear-engined cars were the future, so I went with BRM, who seemed to be on the rise. Big mistake – if I’d put up with one more year of the front-engined cars, I’d have been there for 1961, when Ferrari swept the board! In my next lifetime that’s how I’ll do it…”
The season with BRM was a disappointment, but there were compensations in 1960, notably sharing the winning ‘Birdcage’ Maserati Tipo 61 with Stirling Moss in the Nürburgring 1000km.
“Stirling was just the best, wasn’t he? We all knew it. He was the guy you had to beat, and later it was the same with Jimmy Clark. I raced against a lot of great drivers in a lot of categories, but in the end for me it comes down to Stirling and Jimmy.”
For 1961 Gurney joined Porsche, and the following year scored the company’s only grand prix victory, at Rouen, before moving for three seasons to Brabham.
This was the era of domination by Clark and Lotus, but on a given day Gurney was unsurpassed. Always one to excel at circuits like the Nürburgring and the old Spa-francorchamps, he led the 1964 Belgian GP by 40 seconds before running out of fuel on the last lap.
Albeit one with road racing in his bones, Gurney was also fascinated by Indy, first competing there in 1962. His car was not especially competitive, but Dan’s eyes were on the future, and to that end – at his own expense – he invited Colin Chapman to the race, just to ‘have a look’. The following year Lotus was at the Speedway, and, although Gurney retired, Clark finished second, going on to win two years later.
By this time Dan had decided to go into business for himself, and in 1966 the name of Eagle made its first foray into racing folklore, the company building cars for both Indy and Formula 1.
When it came to bad luck through his career, Dan was second only to Chris Amon, but in June 1967 the cards memorably fell his way. At Le Mans he shared the victorious Ford with A.J. Foyt – and started a racing tradition by spraying champagne on the podium – and seven days later won at Spa in the gorgeous Eagle-weslake V12.
Through the following year Gurney continued in F1, but the pressure of building cars for two series was too much, and at the end of 1968 Dan opted to focus chiefly on the USA. When he retired from driving a couple of years later to concentrate on running his company, an Eagle became the car of choice in Indycar racing.
Gurney never lost his affection for England, and as a student of history it was natural that Lord March’s boyhood hero should be drawn to Goodwood, where he first raced in 1959. The first Revival Meeting entranced Dan, and he and wife Evi returned many times.
“That first year I played in Charles’s cricket match, in a fabulous setting on a beautiful day – and then suddenly a Spitfire came by, banking over, flying below those big old trees. It was completely unexpected, and incredibly moving to me, thinking of all those young men, all those years ago. Jimmy was often in my mind. Knowing him, I’m not sure he would have been too enamoured of the modern racing scene, but I think he’d have loved the Revival. He was a purist, and I think I’m that way, too.”
So he was, and one oft-repeated tale of motorsport never loses its resonance: after Clark’s funeral James Clark, Jimmy’s father, took Gurney to one side: “You know, Dan, you were the only one Jim ever worried about…” Perhaps those words put Gurney’s place in the racing pantheon more clearly into perspective than anything else ever said or written about him.
YOU KNOW, DAN, YOU WERE THE ONLY ONE JIM EVER WORRIED ABOUT... JAM ES CLARK