2006 FESTIVAL OF SPEED
GOODWOOD
Dan Gurney with Carlos Ghys

The popular son of an opera singer whose family moved to California after his father's retirement, Gurney began racing in West Coast sports car events before competing at Le Mans for the first time in 1958. By 1960 he had gained a place in the works Ferrari F1 team, but it was not until 1962 that he won his first F1 race for Porsche in the French Grand Prix. Between 1963 and 65, Gurney drove for Jack Brabham's F1 team, consistently proving himself a match for Clark and his Lotus whilst repeatedly let down due to trifling mechanical failures. With the advent of the 3-liter F1 regulations in 1966 he started his own team, Anglo American Racers, and won the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix at the wheel of the Eagle-Weslake. Underlining his versatility, Gurney also won Le Mans in 1967, sharing his 7-liter Ford with Indy 500 winner A.J. Foyt. The AAR teams enjoyed success in the US but struggled in F1 with the Weslake V12 engine and in the middle of 1968 the F1 team was closed down. Gurney's Eagles went on winning in America until 1981. AAR withdrew from CART in 1986 but enjoyed enormous success with Toyota in IMSA before returning to CART as Toyota's factory team in 1996. That program has now been terminated. Gurney later developed a motorcycle and in 2002 announced that he had plans to return to F1 with an all-American team. This did not become a reality.

Dan Gurney and his charming wife Evi.
Evi Gurney was a junior executive in the public relations/press department of Porsche in Stuttgart and a well-known motorsports journalist in Germany during the sixties.