Robert “Bob” Bondurant (born 27 April 1933 in Evanston, Illinois – died 12 November 2021 November in Paradise Valley ) is an American former racecar driver who raced for the Shelby American, Ferrari and Eagle teams. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Bob Bondurant initially raced an Indian motorcycle on dirt ovals but he switched to sports car racing with a Morgan in 1956.
He would later go on to win the West Coast B production Championship, taking 18 out of 20 races in a Corvette. Some of the best Corvette racing duels during the early 1960s were between him and David McDonald and between 1961 and 1963 Bob won 30 out of 32 races.
Joining Carroll Shelby’s Ford Cobra team in 1963, he won his first race at the Continental Divide Raceway in Colorado, followed by an overall win at the LA Times Grand Prix GT race at Riverside.
Racing in Europe the following year would see him at the Targa Florio, Spa and Nurburgring and there was a fourth place finish in the GT class at Le Mans with Dan Gurney. The Targa Florio was the first race Bob had driven in Europe so to learn it he went two weeks early and spent hours driving it every day and for the Nurburgring race, he also enrolled in a race school there to learn the circuit.
In 1965 he raced a Ford GT40 Roadster (with John Whitmore) in the Targa Florio, entered Le Mans (with Umberto Maglioli) and he and Richie Ginther drove the Ford GT40 to 3rd overall at Daytona.
1966 saw him race a Porsche 906E with Paul Hawkins at Nurburgring, taking 4th overall and 1st in GT, while at the 24 Hours of Daytona he and Jochen Rindt would finish 9th in a NART Ferrari. With Jo Schlesser at Sebring, they won their class and finished fourth overall in the race and Bob said he and Schlesser always drove well together. After tough battles with the Ferrari 250 GTOs, victory in seven out of 10 races saw him win the FIA Manufacturers’ World Championship for Shelby American and Ford.
During 1965 and 1966 there would also be a number of F1 drives, for Ferrari, Reg Parnell, Team Chamaco Collect and Dan Gurney’s Anglo American Racers. He drove the Ferrari at the US GP, finishing 9th, followed by a drive in Reg Parnell’s Lotus 33 at Mexico. Racing BRMs for Team Chamaco Collect, he finished fourth at Monaco, 9th in Britain and 7th in Italy and finished with two races in an Anglo American Racers Eagle, in America and Mexico.
During this time he had a race in a BMW in the Tasman Series alongside Graham Hill and Jackie Stewart and was also a technical consultant for the movie ‘Grand Prix’ and instructed James Garner on driving in the race sequences.
In 1967 he (and Dick Guldstrand) raced a Corvette at Le Mans though a mechanical issue forced them to retire. He also raced a McLaren in the Can-Am Series but unfortunately suffered a major accident at Watkins Glen. The car flipped 8 times and was so high he remembers seeing treetops as he came down. He sustained serious rib, leg, foot and back injuries but despite being told he might never walk again he overcame his injuries through courage and perseverance.
Besides F1, Can-Am and Endurance racing, he also raced a Cobra up the Freiburg Schuansland Hill Climb, finishing 4th overall and 1st in GT. In 1969 he (and Tony Murphy) drove an SC/Rambler for James Garner’s ‘American International Racers’ in the gruelling Baja 500 race, and they finished first in the passenger car class plus there were also some NASCAR starts, with a highest finish of 18th in 1981.
While he had been recovering from his 1967 Watkins Glen accident, he began to form the idea for a race school and this eventually led to the formation of The Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving at Orange County International Raceway in California. It would later move to Ontario, then Sonoma and in 1990 a purpose-built training facility was opened in Phoenix, Arizona. It is the largest purpose-built driving school in the world, featuring a 1.6-mile road course, an eight-acre asphalt pad for advanced training and more than 200 race-prepared vehicles, sedans, and open-wheel cars.
Bob was inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 2003.
Gallery Other Can-Am and SC F1
