All American Racers emerged from Gurney's experience in the 1965 Indianapolis 500, where AAR had entered a Goodyear-backed Lotus 38. Impressed by the possibilities of running their own chassis, Gurney hired former Lotus designer Len Terry to develop a purpose-built car. The resulting Indianapolis racer, the Eagle T2G, was co-developed alongside the Eagle T1G Formula One car, making the Eagle project a twin-track programme from the outset. The F1 operation was strategically positioned next to Harry Weslake's engine development plant in East Sussex.
The Eagle T1G debuted at the 1966 Belgian Grand Prix, powered initially by an obsolete Coventry Climax engine. Despite the ageing power unit, the car scored its first World Championship points with a fifth place at the 1966 French Grand Prix just weeks later. For the 1967 season, veteran driver Richie Ginther was signed as a second driver alongside Gurney, and the underpowered Climax engine was replaced by a new 3-litre Weslake V12 unit designed by Aubrey Woods and built in Britain by Weslake.
The 1967 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps produced Eagle's defining moment. Dan Gurney won the race outright, making it the first all-American victory — American driver in an American car — at a World Championship Grand Prix since Jimmy Murphy won the 1921 French Grand Prix in a Duesenberg. Excluding the Indianapolis 500, the Eagle's win stands as the only Formula One Grand Prix victory for a United States-built car. Eagle shares with Penske — whose driver won the 1976 Austrian Grand Prix — the distinction of being one of only two American-licensed constructors ever to win a Formula One World Championship race.
The team entered a total of 34 cars across 25 Grands Prix before withdrawing from Formula One after the 1968 season, choosing to concentrate resources on American single-seater racing.
After the F1 departure, All American Racers redirected its energies to domestic American open-wheel competition, and the Eagle chassis proved considerably more successful in that arena. Eagles won 51 Champ Car races across two decades. Bobby Unser won the Indianapolis 500 in an Eagle in 1968 and again in 1975, while Gordon Johncock took the 1973 Indy 500 in an Eagle. Unser drove Eagle machinery for the bulk of his career, accumulating 22 wins and 52 podiums with the cars, and AAR became synonymous with Indianapolis competitiveness through the 1970s.
The team's fortunes in IndyCar gradually waned after Unser's departure for Team Penske. A hiatus from single-seaters ran from 1987 to 1995. When AAR returned in 1996, it did so with new Eagle-designed chassis powered by Toyota engines, but the combination never produced a race win and the programme ended after the 1999 CART season.
In the 1980s, All American Racers partnered with Toyota to compete in the IMSA GT Championship, beginning with modified Toyota Celica road cars. In 1988 the team moved up to the GTP prototype category. The Eagle MkIII, introduced in 1991 and powered by a turbocharged 2.1-litre Toyota inline-four developing up to 800 horsepower, became one of the most dominant sports prototypes in American racing history. It won 21 of the 27 races it entered, a rate of dominance so overwhelming that it has been cited as a contributing factor to the collapse of the GTP series.
Dan Gurney's Eagle remains one of the most romantically significant constructors in the history of Formula One. That a small American team could build its own car, develop its own engine supplier, travel to Europe, and defeat the established European constructors at their own game — in an era dominated by British teams and European technology — gave the Eagle project an enduring place in motorsport folklore. The 1967 Belgian Grand Prix win stands as a landmark result not only in American motorsport history but in the broader narrative of constructors challenging the established order of Formula One.