Daniel Sexton Gurney

Born in Long Island, Gurney was the son of bass-baritone John R. Gurney and came from a family of engineers; his grandfather F.W. Gurney was responsible for the invention of the Gurney Ball Bearing. The family moved to Riverside, California, where the young Gurney became caught up in California hot rod culture. At age 19 he built and raced a car that reached 138 mph at the Bonneville Salt Flats. He later studied at Menlo Junior College and served in the United States Army for two years as an artillery mechanic during the Korean War.

Gurney's first major break came in autumn 1957 when he was invited to test Frank Arciero's Arciero Special, powered by a 4.2-litre reworked Maserati engine with Ferrari running gear. He finished second in the inaugural Riverside Grand Prix behind Carroll Shelby, ahead of established stars including Masten Gregory, Walt Hansgen, and Phil Hill. This performance attracted the attention of Ferrari North American importer Luigi Chinetti, who arranged a factory ride at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1958, where Gurney was partnered with Bruce Kessler. Ferrari subsequently signed Gurney for the 1959 season. He made his Formula One debut at the French Grand Prix that year, earning two podium finishes in only four races, though the team's strict management style did not suit him.

In 1960 Gurney drove for BRM, suffering six non-finishes in seven races. At the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, a brake system failure caused the most serious accident of his career: his arm was broken and a young spectator was killed. The accident instilled a lasting distrust of engineers and led him to adopt a more brake-conservative driving style that later proved advantageous in endurance racing.

After rules changes for 1961 brought Formula 2 machinery into the World Championship, Gurney joined the factory Porsche team as a works driver alongside Jo Bonnier. He finished fourth in the 1961 World Drivers' Championship, scoring three second places despite the overweight and underpowered Porsche 718. At Reims in 1961 he came very close to a maiden win but declined to block Ferrari driver Giancarlo Baghetti — regarding a block as dangerous and unsportsmanlike — allowing Baghetti to pass at the finish line in the faster Ferrari 156.

Porsche introduced the improved 804, fitted with an eight-cylinder engine, for 1962. Gurney broke through at the French Grand Prix at Rouen-Les-Essarts for his first World Championship victory, which remains Porsche's only win as a Formula One constructor and the only Grand Prix victory achieved with an air-cooled engine. One week later he repeated the success in a non-Championship race in front of Porsche's home crowd at Stuttgart's Solitude Racetrack. The high costs of Formula One led Porsche to withdraw after the 1962 season.

Gurney was the first driver hired by Jack Brabham to race for the Brabham Racing Organisation. He took the team's first championship race win in 1964 at Rouen and accumulated two wins and ten podiums, including five consecutive podiums in 1965, before leaving to start his own team. He finished fourth in the 1965 World Drivers' Championship.

In 1962 Gurney and Carroll Shelby began planning an American racing car to compete with the best European makes. Goodyear, seeking to challenge Firestone's dominance of American racing, agreed to sponsor the team. The team was formed in 1965 under the name All American Racers, suggested by Goodyear president Victor Holt. The Formula One effort, partnered with British engine maker Weslake, operated as Anglo American Racers and entered under the chassis name Eagle.

The Weslake V12 was not ready for the 1966 season, so the team used outdated four-cylinder 2.7-litre Coventry-Climax engines for their first appearance in Belgium that year, where Gurney finished seventh and was unclassified. He scored the team's first Championship points three weeks later with fifth place in the French Grand Prix at Reims.

On June 18, 1967, Gurney took a historic victory at the Belgian Grand Prix in the Eagle-Weslake. Starting mid-first row, he overcame a poor start and a high-speed misfire to take the lead on lap 21 and finish over a minute ahead of Jackie Stewart. The win was the first all-American victory in a Grand Prix since Jimmy Murphy's triumph with Duesenberg at the 1921 French Grand Prix, and one of only two wins by an American-licensed constructor in Formula One history. Gurney thus became one of only three drivers — alongside Jack Brabham and Bruce McLaren — to win a Formula One race in a car of his own construction, and the only driver to score maiden Grand Prix victories for three different manufacturers: Porsche, Brabham, and Anglo-American Racers.

The Belgian win came one week after his victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans with A.J. Foyt. Engine reliability problems continued to plague the Eagle; he led the 1967 German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring before a driveshaft failed two laps from the end with a 42-second lead. Gurney drove a McLaren-Ford at the end of the 1968 season. He returned for three Grands Prix in 1970 for McLaren following the death of Bruce McLaren, with his last Formula One race being the 1970 British Grand Prix. Across his Formula One career Gurney achieved four wins, three pole positions, six fastest laps, and 19 podiums, and also won the non-championship 1967 Race of Champions.

He became the first Formula One driver to wear a full-face helmet, doing so at the 1968 German Grand Prix.

Gurney entered ten editions of the 24 Hours of Le Mans from 1958 to 1967. His 1967 win alongside A.J. Foyt came in the Ford GT40 Mk IV; the pair established a new record of 388 laps, having driven at a disciplined pace to establish a comfortable margin over the rival Ferraris. On the podium, Gurney took the magnum of champagne and spontaneously sprayed it toward the press, beginning what has since become a podium tradition throughout global motorsport.

Earlier Le Mans appearances included a GT class win in 1964 with Bob Bondurant in the Shelby Daytona Coupe, driving fourth overall. Gurney's tall height — nearly 6 feet 4 inches — required master fabricator Phil Remington to install a roof bubble over the driver's seat of the Ford GT40 to accommodate his helmet, a modification now known as a "Gurney bubble."

Gurney raced each year in the Indianapolis 500 from 1962 to 1970. He made his Indy début in a space-frame, rear-engined car designed by John Crosthwaite and built by Mickey Thompson. He finished second in 1968 and 1969 and third in 1970. Starting a total of 28 Champ Car races, he won seven times among eighteen top-ten finishes. In 1969 he finished fourth in total championship points despite starting only half the races of most top drivers.

In NASCAR's Grand National Series, Gurney was nearly unbeatable at Riverside International Raceway. Four of his five victories came with the Wood Brothers in 1964, 1965, 1966, and 1968, all in cars numbered 121. He also drove a Holman-Moody Ford to fifth place in the 1963 Daytona 500. Gurney came out of a ten-year retirement in 1980 to drive a Rod Osterlund Chevrolet for one NASCAR race as teammate to Dale Earnhardt; he qualified seventh and ran as high as second before a transmission failure ended his race.

Gurney also took the Shelby Daytona Coupe to a class win and third overall in the 1964 RAC Tourist Trophy. In the 1970 Trans-Am Series, Gurney and protégé Swede Savage drove factory-sponsored AAR-built Plymouth Barracudas. He also raced in the Canadian-American Challenge Cup and the British Saloon Car Championship.

In November 1971, Gurney and co-driver Brock Yates won the first running of the Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash — an unofficial, unsanctioned automobile race from New York City to Redondo Beach, California — in a stock 1971 Sunoco-blue Ferrari 365GTB/4 Daytona coupe capable of 175 mph. They completed the 2,876-mile distance in 35 hours and 54 minutes, averaging approximately 80 mph and consuming 240 US gallons of gasoline.

After retiring from Formula One driving, Gurney devoted himself full-time to All American Racers as sole owner, Chairman, and CEO until his son Justin assumed the CEO title in early 2011. The team won 78 races — including the Indianapolis 500, the 12 Hours of Sebring, and the 24 Hours of Daytona — and eight championships; Eagle race car customers also won three Indianapolis 500 races and three championships.

In 1978 Gurney circulated an open memo to race car owners, now known as the "White Paper," calling for a series controlled by the owners rather than under the USAC banner. Following debate, CART was formed with Gurney alongside Roger Penske, Pat Patrick, and Bob Fletcher. CART began its first full season of competition in March 1979.

AAR withdrew from CART in 1986 but found major success with Toyota in the IMSA GTP series, where in 1992 and 1993 Toyota Eagles won 17 consecutive races, back-to-back Drivers' and Manufacturers' Championships, and victories at Daytona and Sebring. The team returned to CART as the factory Toyota team in 1996 and left again after the 1999 season.

Gurney is credited with the invention of the Gurney flap, an aerodynamic device. A 2016 academic paper ranking drivers by a mathematical model that assessed relative driver and machine influence rated Gurney the 14th-best Formula One driver of all time. Among American Formula One drivers, his 86 Grand Prix starts ranked third and his four wins were second only to Mario Andretti. Jim Clark's father told Gurney at his son's funeral in 1968 that Gurney had been the only driver Clark had ever feared on the track.

Gurney was particularly noted for an exceptionally fluid driving style. On rare occasions he would adopt a more aggressive approach; an often-cited example is the 1967 Rex Mays 300 Indycar race at Riverside, where a punctured tire put him nearly two laps down at half-distance and he recovered to win with a last-lap pass of Bobby Unser.

He was inducted into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame in 1988, the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1990, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1991, the West Coast Stock Car Hall of Fame in 2003, the USAC Hall of Fame in 2022, and the Trans-Am Series Hall of Fame in 2025.

Gurney died on January 14, 2018, from complications from pneumonia at the age of 86. He was survived by his wife Evi, six children, and eight grandchildren. As per his final wishes, his memorial service and funeral were private.

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