Ronnie Bucknum (5 April 1936 – 23 April 1992) was an American racecar driver, born in Alhambra, California.
Bucknum participated in 11 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix, debuting on August 2, 1964. He scored a total of two championship points. At the 1964 German Grand Prix, he became the first person to drive a Honda-engined car in Formula One. Info from Wiki
Bio by Stephen Latham
Born in Alhambra, California, in 1936, Ronnie Bucknum was training as a construction surveyor but became involved in racing after a friend took him to a local race meeting. He first raced a Porsche 356 in 1956 and between 1957-1960 went on take wins with it at Hourglass Field, Paramount Ranch, Pomona, Santa Barbara, Del Mar and Laguna Seca. In 1960 he raced an AC Ace and scored well against the Porsches and Corvettes, winning at Vaca Valley, Santa Barbara, Laguna Seca, San Luis Obispo and Riverside.
He would go on to take more results with Hollywood Sports Car’s MGB and Austin Healey plus Max Balchowsky’s Ol’ Yaller. The background to ‘Ol Yaller’ is an interesting one. Max Balchowsky was a self-taught race car builder who learned his trade racing hot rods on the dry lakes of El Mirage, Bonneville and the streets of Southern California before taking up road racing against imported sports cars from Europe and England.
He went on to operate one of the most active R&D shops for road racing in America and in 1957 designed, built and raced a limited number of ‘specials’. These were painted pale yellow and named ‘old Yeller’ (Yaller) after the Labrador Retriever from the Disney movie and the parts were sourced from many places, mostly junkyard parts, and equipped with powerful V8 engines. He went on to build several variants of the car and besides Ronnie, the cars would also be raced by drivers including Bob Bondurant, Dan Gurney, Chuck Daigh and Carroll Shelby. Although the cars were the ‘underdogs’, the Ol’ Yallers often outpaced the more expensive cars. Ronnie won eight of 13 starts for Max Balchowsky in 1963 and 1964, beating Cooper Monacos and Lotus 19s in the Pacific Coast championship series. He was dominant in regional SCCA events on the West Coast during 1962 and 1963 and during this time he won Sports Car Club of America titles in 1959, 1960, 1962 and 1964, scoring 44 wins in 48 races.
Soon after racing for Carroll Shelby, he was approached in 1964 by a Honda representative and flew to Tokyo to climb behind the wheel of the first Formula One car, indeed the first single seater car, he had ever sat in. “It was the most frightening experience I’ve ever had and personally I thought I was pretty bad.” However, despite his self doubt, Honda signed him to lead their Grand Prix challenge. Ronnie had won a Japan GT race in a Honda S600 and Honda’s engineers had seen him racing a Porsche 904 at Sebring and reasoned his lack of international racing had its attractions since he could test and race the car without raising undue attention or expectations. The team’s base was set up in Holland, with the testing done at Zandvoort and their white RA271 made its debut at 1964’s German GP. This was also his first time competing in a single-seater race but unfortunately it would be disappointing, plus a frightening experience, when his car suffered steering failure at the Karussell, while running eleventh. At the following round at Monza he was ninth fastest in qualifying and at one point was running fifth in the race until his brakes failed. His third and final race that season came in the US GP at Watkins Glen though he retired with engine problems after 50 laps. Racing for Carrol Shelby that year, his best result was a fourth place with the King Cobra in the 200 Mile Laguna Seca race.
Honda undertook winter testing at Suzuka before the 1965 season but during one test he again suffered a steering failure and broke his leg in the resultant crash. This set him back when the season began and though that season’s RA272 showed speed on fast circuits it suffered from reliability issues. There were retirements from Monaco, Belgium, France and the USA but he finished thirteenth at Monza. However, his development work came good in the season ending Mexican GP, but it was Richie Ginther who took the start-to-finish win, scoring a first GP victory for Honda, with Ronnie taking the flag in fifth place. Honda retained R.Ginther for the following season and John Surtees joined the team though Ronnie was recalled to race the RA273 for the final two Grands Prix of the season, retiring from the US GP and finishing eighth in Mexico. Away from F1 that year, he was invited to join the Ford team at Le Mans and went on to finish third with Dick Hutcherson.
After more sports car racing in 1967, taking podiums in Trans Am with a Ford Mustang at Continental Divide, Las Vegas and Kent, he competed in Can-Am and USAC races the following year. In only his second oval race, he finished second at the Michigan 500 with an Eagle and went on to contest 23 USAC Champ Car races between 1967 and 1970 (including the Indy 500 in 1968, 1969 and 1970) and finished in the top ten 10 times. 1969 would see wins with a Lola T70 at the 24 Hour Daytona race plus wins and podiums with a Penske Chevrolet Camaro at Mid-Ohio, Bridgehampton, Kent and Riverside. He teamed up with Sam Posey in the NART Ferrari in long-distance events in the early seventies and his best results with NART during this time would be fourth in 1970 at Le Mans and second at Daytona (with Tony Adamowicz) in 1971.
Ronnie passed away in 1992 in San Luis Obispo, California, following complications from diabetes. His son Jeff would follow in his footsteps, becoming a race driver and he went on to compete in IndyCar and the ALMS.
