The renowned historian pays tribute to the the racer he was proud to call a friend

Ace racing driver, race-car constructor, team owner, engineer and innovator, the late Dan Gurney was a legend of motor sport – remembered here by his friend Doug Nye ‘He was so much more than “just” a world-class driver with a God-given talent’

Some racing driverS just don’t need to have won a World Championship title, nor an Indy ‘500’, to reserve in perpetuity a place at motor sport’s top table.

Make no mistake, the late, great Dan Gurney is absolutely one of that incredibly select club. Tall, handsome, elegant Dan was the real deal. Not only did he have the Central Casting looks, he proved repeatedly his immense driving talent and capability. He was an amazingly influential and innovative lateral thinker. Intensely patriotic, he came to represent the ideal ‘quiet American’ – and through the 1960s he was absolutely amongst the world’s top two or three racing drivers.

The many obituaries published since his death on 14 January have listed his cars and his many successes. But be in no doubt, for any motor racing fan raised through the early 1960s there were only two real racing artistes: one dark-blue helmeted, the other jet-black – Jimmy Clark and Dan Gurney. These men were gods. True, they weren’t alone. They also had to fight off the totally committed, hard-working artisan drivers like Graham Hill, Jack Brabham and John Surtees – but that trio just seemed more mortal.

And what an admirable example these guys set as ferociously competitive sportsmen. Unlike today’s karting-raised racing wunderkinder, Jimmy and Dan could battle each other, no holds barred, in one weekend’s Formula 1 Grand Prix, then be driving as mutually supportive Indycar teammates the next. These were properly rounded, full-grown Sports Men.

Dan was driving for Ferrari when I first appreciated his huge potential in 1959; then for Porsche ’61-62 when he began to realise it. I got to know him during his Brabham career, 1963-65, through my photographer colleague Geoff Goddard. Geoff worked with Road & Track writer Henry Manney, who was a great Gurney fan, and friend. I was far too shy to speak to the great man, but I stood by and listened, yet – even with Henry – Dan was very sparing in what he said. The Brabham team in those days was almost Trappist in its silence. Years later, Jack and Dan told me this became a habit ‘…in case you might give something away’.

Jack had tremendous admiration for Dan. ‘He was one hell of a driver, but his problem was that he couldn’t believe that. He was always fiddling with his cars… and too often something he’d changed last minute would let him down.’ He was nicknamed ‘Fiddly Dan.’ At Donington Park in the ’70s, I asked him about that and he protested it was unfair: ‘Look – we were toe to toe, we dare leave no stone unturned, because if you didn’t think of it, and try it, the opposition might. I wasn’t the only one who fiddled last minute. If you thought of something but didn’t try it, and got beat, you’d never forgive yourself.’

I got to know Dan better through the later 1960s, at his curiously humble AAR-Eagle HQ beside Harry Weslake Research at Rye in Sussex. Once the funding dried up, he drove F1 and CanAm for McLaren, only for his Castrol sponsors to object to him campaigning Gulf-backed cars. Despite his drive to race on, he told me how he was increasingly beset by safety concerns. In 1968 he’d been the first world-class driver to wear a full-faced Bell Star crash helmet. After Jo Schlesser’s fatal fire in the 1968 French GP, Dan abandoned the ultra-light magnesium-monocoque Formula 1 Eagle which he had just begun building for ’69.

Through later years it was always a joy to see Dan and his lovely wife Evi (ex-Porsche) at numerous vintage events. I organised a series of Road & Track nostalgic test-drives for him at Donington in a BRM Type 25, the flat-eight Porsche 804 and his first prototype Eagle-Climax F1 car. Boy, that was fun – the new relaxed, talkative Dan made it so, the depth and detail of his intellect coupled with a lingering college-boy sense of mischief.

Times spent with him and Phil Hill together were a particular joy: great mates, but even into old-age still great competitors. In 1979 at Laguna Seca for the Monterey Historics, Phil won a great race in his exAmherst Villiers ‘Blower’ Bentley. He and Dan then set off together in it for the long drive back to LA. En route they thundered up behind a De Tomaso Pantera club convoy. The two veteran superstars in their James Bond pre-war Bentley just blitzed past the lot at 110-115mph, and left them for dead…

Dan and Phil later pulled into a roadside diner for lunch, and had almost finished when the Panteras arrived – really ticked-off, because in reacting to the Bentley overtake they had nearly all been nicked for speeding! Those incorrigible old racers, meanwhile, got away with it Scot-free. They figured the cop possibly saw them rip by first – but then rubbed his eyes, and didn’t believe it.

In more recent years, Dan and Evi loved our Goodwood Festival of Speed and Revival events. I taught him the rudiments of cricket at Revival one year, and – ever the competitor – he repaid me by running me out with a baseball-style tracer-bullet flat throw from 30 yards, shattering the wicket. I’ll never forgive him for that.

Another year, he had absolute hysterics when he and Evi found me sporting an enormous black-eye after being hit by the rock-hard ball in the previous day’s match. ‘Hey Doug,’ Dan guffawed. ‘You look like the guy who said no to Lord March!’

He was, in truth, so much more than ‘just’ a world-class racing driver with a God-given talent. He was a great man, and a lovely bloke. In offering a friend a job at AAR, he told him ‘I’d like you to work with me’ – not ‘for me’. That was his typically gracious style. He was a product of a wondrous golden age of motor racing in which enormous advances were made, but at tremendous cost. Thoughtful, emotional Dan was the first to appreciate that, and signed one photo sent to me ‘The Last of the Mohicans’.

Above all, Daniel Sexton Gurney was a gentleman, a true giant of our sport and the embodiment of all that’s best about America. He was, indeed, the Real Deal. It was a privilege to have known him.