page_title: Dan Gurney
section_title: Driver
hierarchical_section_title: Dan Gurney / Formula One career / Driver
caption_attribution_description: GT40/R Continuation Model racing at Road America's GT40 Reunion in July 2009. This is chassis number GT40P/2090 raced by Pathfinder Motorsports. It has a Holman Moody 289ci engine with Webers. This GT40 is registered in both the Shelby and Safir GT40 registers and has a Superformance-built chassis and won in its class the 2009 US Vintage Grand Prix at Watkins Glen, and later the 2009 New York Governor's Cup Race. For more information: www.GT40Racing.com (Photo by Kim Petersen)
context_page_description: Daniel Sexton Gurney was an American racing driver, race car constructor, and team owner who reached racing's highest levels starting in 1958.
  Gurney won races in the Formula One, Indy Car, NASCAR, Can-Am, and Trans-Am Series. Gurney is the first of three drivers to have won races in Sports Cars, Formula One, NASCAR, and Indy cars.
  In 1967, after winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans together with A. J. Foyt, Gurney spontaneously sprayed champagne while celebrating on the podium, which thereafter became a custom at many motorsports events. As owner of All American Racers, he was the first to put a simple right-angle extension on the upper trailing edge of the rear wing. This device, called a Gurney flap, increases downforce and, if well designed, imposes only a relatively small increase in aerodynamic drag. At the 1968 German Grand Prix, he became the first driver ever to use a full face helmet in Grand Prix racing.
context_section_description: Gurney's first major break occurred in the fall of 1957 when he was invited to test Frank Arciero's Arciero Special. It was powered by a 4.2-litre reworked Maserati engine with Ferrari running gear, and a Sports Car Engineering Mistral body. This ill-handling brute of a car was very fast, but even top drivers like Carroll Shelby and Ken Miles had found it difficult to handle. He finished second in the inaugural Riverside Grand Prix (behind Shelby), beating established stars like Masten Gregory, Walt Hansgen and Phil Hill. This attracted the attention of famed Ferrari North American importer Luigi Chinetti, who arranged for a factory ride for the young driver at Le Mans in 1958. Gurney, teamed with fellow Californian Bruce Kessler, had worked the car up to fifth overall and handed over to Kessler, who was then caught up in an accident. This performance and others earned him a test run in a works Ferrari, and his Formula One career began with the team in 1959. In just four races that first year, he earned two podium finishes, but the team's strict management style did not suit him.
  In 1960 he had six non-finishes in seven races behind the wheel of a factory-prepared BRM. At the Dutch Grand Prix, at Zandvoort, a brake system failure on the BRM caused the most serious accident of his career, breaking his arm, killing a young spectator and instilling in him a longstanding distrust of engineers. The accident also caused him to make a change in his driving style that later paid dividends: his tendency to use his brakes more sparingly than his rivals meant that they lasted longer, especially in endurance races. Gurney was known to give the brake pedal a reassuring tap just before hard application — a habit he himself jokingly referred to as "the chicken-shit school of braking."
  Gurney was particularly noted for an exceptionally fluid driving style. On rare occasions, as when his car fell behind with minor mechanical troubles and he felt he had nothing to lose, he would abandon his classic technique and adopt a more aggressive (and riskier) style. This circumstance produced what many observers consider the finest driving performance of his career, when a punctured tire put him nearly two laps down halfway through the 1967 Rex Mays 300 Indycar race at Riverside, California. He produced an inspired effort, made up the deficit and won the race with a dramatic last-lap pass of runner-up Bobby Unser.
  After rules changes came in effect in 1961, Gurney teamed with Jo Bonnier for the first full season of the factory Porsche team, scoring three second places. He came very close to scoring a maiden victory at Reims, France, in 1961, but his reluctance to block Ferrari driver Giancarlo Baghetti (a move Gurney regarded as dangerous and unsportsmanlike) allowed Baghetti to pass him at the finish line for the win. After Porsche introduced a better car in 1962 with an 8-cylinder engine, Gurney broke through at the French Grand Prix at Rouen-Les-Essarts with his first World Championship victory – the only GP win for Porsche as an F1 constructor. One week later, he repeated the success in a non-Championship F1 race in front of Porsche's home crowd at Stuttgart's Solitude Racetrack. Due to the high costs of racing in F1, Porsche did not continue after the 1962 season. While with Porsche, Gurney met a team public relations executive named Evi Butz, and they married several years later.
  Gurney was the first driver hired by Jack Brabham to drive with him for the Brabham Racing Organisation. Brabham scored the maiden victory for his car at the 1963 Solitude race, but Gurney took the team's first win in a championship race in 1964 at Rouen. In all, he earned two wins (in 1964) and ten podiums (including five consecutive in 1965) for Brabham before leaving to start his own team. With his victory in the Eagle-Weslake at the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix, Gurney earned a distinction as the only driver in history to score maiden Grand Prix victories for three different manufacturers: Porsche, Brabham and Anglo-American Racers.
  Due to his popularity, Car and Driv
caption: A GT40 with a Gurney Bubble
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