Daniel John Sullivan III (born 9 March 1950), better known as Danny Sullivan), is an American former racing driver.
He earned 17 wins in the CART Indy Car World Series, including the 1985 Indianapolis 500. Sullivan won the 1988 CART Championship, and placed third in points in 1986. Sullivan also scored a victory in IROC.
In 1982, he made his début in the PPG Indycar series, and was recruited by the Tyrrell Formula One team for the 1983 season at the request of primary sponsor Benetton, who wanted an American driver. Sullivan competed in the fifteen races of the 1983 season, scoring two points with a fifth place at the Monaco Grand Prix and finishing seventeenth in the World Drivers’ Championship. He also performed strongly in the non-championship Race of Champions held at the Brands Hatch circuit in April, seeing off an early race challenge from 1980 World Champion Alan Jones, before finishing second behind reigning World Champion Keke Rosberg, finishing only half-a-second behind the Williams after 40 laps of racing.
Nevertheless, he was somewhat overshadowed by his more experienced teammate, Michele Alboreto (who won the 1983 Detroit Grand Prix for the team, its last ever F1 victory), and was not retained at the end of the season. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
The son of a building contractor from Louisville, Kentucky, Danny Sullivan attended the Kentucky Military Institute and then the University of Kentucky, though dropped out and then worked in a variety of different jobs including janitor, New York cab driver, waiter, lumberjack and a hand on a chicken ranch. Eventually, on his 21st birthday a friend presented him with a course at the Jim Russell Racing Drivers School and when he arrived in the UK, he spent his first days staying with Ken and Norah Tyrrell. After being in one of the Jim Russell school Formula Ford cars, he knew racing was what he wanted to do and during this period he helped out doing a number of jobs for the Tyrrell team, polishing wheels, running errands and transporting Jackie Stewart and François Cevert to and from airports. During this time he had a motorbike accident, breaking a vertebra in his neck, though fortunately recovered from it.
After competing in Formula Ford, he moved into F3 and despite having a limited budget he never finished lower than third in his twelve races. 1975 saw him finish joint second (with Alex Ribeiro) to Gunnar Nilsson in the British F3 Championship but after a possible F2 Chevron drive fell through he eventually raced in Formula Atlantic in New Zealand plus raced in American Formula Atlantic.
There were F2 races at Mugello, Nogaro, Misano, Estoril and Donington in 1977 but eventually, after seven years in Europe and disillusioned, he returned to Kentucky. He did construction site work during the day, then was a waiter at night, and was about to accept a job on a crab boat in Alaska until offered a Can-Am race at Riverside by Garvin Brown, heir to the Jack Daniels whisky company. Despite struggling at first, he began to make an impression after switching to a Lola T530, qualifying on the front row for his first race with it, and set a new lap record after a pitstop. 1981 saw him take podiums with the Lola before he switched to a Frisbee-Chevrolet and won at Las Vegas. Then came a move to Paul Newman’s team and, after a tough battle with Al Unser, he took victory again at Las Vegas with his March 827. During the year, there was an impressive CART debut at Atlanta with the Forsythe-Newman team, finishing third, which was a record for an Indycar rookie’s first race until Nigel Mansell won Surfers Paradise in 1993. In his first Indy 500 race, he was racing in the top six but crashed when the wind caught him and caused the nose to step out.
Then came a call from Ken Tyrrell, which led to an F1 test for the team at Paul Ricard, alongside Stefan Johansson, Beppe Gabbiani and Bruno Giacomelli. After ending the test as fastest driver, Ken Tyrrell simply told him to be in Rio next month for the tyre tests. Eventually joining the Tyrrell team, alongside Michele Alboreto, his best results were eighth at Long Beach, seventh at Kyalami plus a points scoring fifth place at Monaco. He also performed strongly in the non-championship Race of Champions at Brands Hatch, seeing off an early challenge from 1980 World Champion Alan Jones, before finishing second behind reigning Champion Keke Rosberg, and finished only half-a-second behind the Williams.
He left the team at the end of the year and returned to the United States, where he joined Doug Shierson’s Domino’s Pizza sponsored CART team and by midseason he was winning races. He won at Cleveland, followed by victory at Sanair, and then the Domino’s sponsored Pocono 500, beating Rick Mears by a nose.
This led to him signing with Roger Penske for the following season, where he started the year with third place in his Penske March 85C at Long Beach. Then came Indianapolis and his ‘Spin and Win’ victory which became one of the most enduring images in the history of the race. During the race, after passing leader Mario Andretti he spun, with the car turning around 400 degrees at 220 miles per hour. He somehow kept the Penske off the wall, stating ”It might have been the paint they used for the white line. It might have been the camber in the car. It might have been the fact that we didn’t run hardly any wing in those cars then. I don’t really know. What I do know is that the car came completely around and I went around with it.” Mario knew to aim his car at his, because by the time he got there Danny wouldn’t be there any more. “I’d jumped on the brakes as soon as I started to spin, and fortunately I was low enough that when I went back up I didn’t hit the wall, I just went on spinning down the straight. As I came round to point in the right direction, with a stalled engine, I found a gear, bam, and off I went.” After pitting to replace the flat spotted tyres, he rejoined the race but told how “I’m moving back up again. Just in front of me Tom Sneva tries to avoid Rich Vogler who’s going into the wall, and loses it. If I’d jumped on the brakes I’d have hit the wall, so I just aimed at his spinning car, I think I missed him by four inches. I said to myself, ‘Man, you’re having a good day.’ With 60 laps to go I caught Mario again, got it right this time, passed him in Turn One, and was able to pull away and win the Indy 500.” Danny later said he probably got “too much credit for the spin and win deal…I looped it, looked up, saw the suites in Turn 2 and took my foot off the brake. Aside from that, I’m not sure how much skill is involved in the few seconds that all of that took place in.” There was another victory at Miami at the end of the year.
His best year with the team was 1988 when he won the Indycar Championship, after taking victories at Portland, Michigan, Nazareth and Laguna Seca, and nine poles from the fifteen races. Frustratingly though, at the Indy 500, after qualifying second, then leading from the start, he was leading by a lap by half distance until a front wing mount broke and he went into the wall. 1989 saw victories at Pocono and Elkhart Lake but while practising for 1989’s Indy race, he went into the wall and a front wheel came back into the cockpit and hit his arm. However, after having a plate and seven screws inserted, six days later he returned to qualify fifteenth fastest though a clutch problem ended his race.
After six seasons wth Penske, he moved to Patrick Racing for 1991, who were using Alfa Romeo engines, but there were no victories and his best results were fourth at Surfer’s Paradise and fifth at Milwaukee.
1992 and 1993 saw him with Galles Racing, and though not as successful a period with them there were victories at Long Beach and Detroit, plus third each year in Toronto.
But after the relationship turned sour he then took a sabbatical from Indy racing and 1994 saw him with ABC/ESPN as a commentator plus compete at the Brickyard 400 NASCAR Winston Cup Series race. There were also drives for Alfa Romeo in the DTM and he raced a Dauer 962 LM Le Mans, finishing third overall with Thierry Boutsen and Hans-Joachim Stuck. He competed several times at Le Mans, declaring it the most fun he had in racing and drove for Tom Walkinshaw’s Silk Cut Jaguar team in 1988 then raced a McLaren F1 (with Nelson Piquet and Johnny Cecotto) in 1996.
He returned to CART for 1995 but his season with PacWest ended when he sustained a broken pelvis and other injuries in an accident at Michigan, and during his recuperation he announced his retirement from open-wheel racing. He returned to ABC-TV as a commentator plus competed in some sports car races, coming second overall and winning the GT class in 1998’s Daytona 24 Hours with Allan McNish in a Porsche 911 GT1.
Jeff Gordon recalled how, when he was younger, ”Danny Sullivan was everywhere…Every talk show and every news show, he was on there. Every magazine either had a story about him or an ad with him in it.” There were guest spots in soap operas, he played a policeman in Oliver Stone’s movie ‘The Doors’, appeared in an episode of Miami Vice, and even in a cowboy movie, ‘The Long Kill’, filmed in Spain with Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson plus there was a video arcade game produced, ’Danny Sullivan’s Indy Heat’, which eventually became available on Nintendo and Atari.
His wife has also competed in racing, driving in a number of national rallies in their 1973 Porsche 911RS, and finished thirteenth in her first big event.
He also became involved in the Red Bull Driver Search program (to find an American driver to compete in F1), with the program successfully promoting Scott Speed to the Toro Rosso team in 2006 and 2007 and has been an FIA steward for several F1 races. In 2011 Danny was inducted into the Motorsports Walk of Fame and the following year inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America.
He serves as a Senior Advisor at Tempus Jets and its parent company, Orion Air Group, LLC., plus has business relationships with Lexus, ABC/ESPN, CBS, Red Bull, Acura, and Toyota.
Danny Sullivan – The European route to American success – from 
Gallery Can-Am CART F1 F3/F2 and FA
