The hard-charger who triumphed at the Indy 500
Bobby Unser 1934–2021
Bobby Unser followed a simple philosophy on the racetrack: “Go fast, lead, win.” A self-proclaimed “charger” from a storied auto-racing family, he was a three-time champion of the Indianapolis 500 and a record 13-time victor at Colorado’s Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, an against-the-clock gravel-road race that winds through 156 turns with no guardrails overlooking drops of up to 1,000 feet. Unser had a winning mix of brains—he could draw maps of every course from memory— and utter fearlessness. Although an uncle died on the track and an older brother, Jerry Unser Jr., perished in a fiery crash while practicing for the 1959 Indy 500, Unser never thought of death when he was behind the wheel. “Is it bravery? No, I don’t think so,” he said. “That’s like saying a fish is brave to swim or asking a bird, ‘Don’t you get scared flying around way up there?’”
He was raised in Albuquerque by a schoolteacher mother and a father who “owned a garage along Route 66,” said the Associated Press. Unser “grew up tooling around in old jalopies” and at age 15 quit high school to start racing at Roswell New Mexico Speedway. After serving two years in the Air Force, he “debuted at Pikes Peak in 1955, winning his first championship there the next year,” said The Washington Post. Unser “had a slower start at the Indy 500,” completing only two laps of his 1963 debut before crashing “his turbocharged Kurtis-Novi.” The following year, Unser got “caught in a seven-car accident that killed two drivers” after his first lap. He won the Indy 500 for the first time in 1968—also becoming the first driver to top 170 mph at the race—and notched another win in 1975.
Unser triumphed again at Indianapolis in 1981, besting Mario Andretti by 5.3 seconds, said The New York Times. A day later, officials ruled that Unser had passed cars illegally while exiting the pit lane under caution and penalized him one lap, giving the victory to Andretti. “An appeals panel reinstated Unser as the winner more than four months later.” But the episode left him disillusioned, and he retired from Indy cars in 1982. Unser became a color commentator for ABC— he was in the booth in 1987 when his brother Al became the Indy 500’s second four-time winner— and kept racing, capturing his final Pikes Peak title in 1986. “I have no slow days in my life,” he said. “I was trained to go fast, and I will go fast until the day I die.”