One Victory Made Him a Celebrity

To most people, asked to drive it, the Indianapolis Motor Speedway looks like what it is, one of the most blood-stained stretches of road in the world, a hairy, 2 1/2-mile dice with death.

To Daniel John Sullivan III, when he strapped himself in to drive it, it looked like a day in the country, no more dangerous than canoeing in the moonlight.

For one thing, no one in the back seat would pull a knife on him. No one would force him to drive down a dark alley before removing his wallet, jewelry and maybe his clothes or life. There were no potholes in the road and traffic wasn’t heavy. No one was honking at him. The tires were new and the dispatcher wasn’t screaming at him in a tone of voice somewhere between a screech owl and the noise a cat makes with its tail caught in the door.

You see, Danny Sullivan knew some really dangerous places to be behind the wheel. In a cab in midtown Manhattan, for instance. A spot where you really needed some driving luck and skill. At least at Indy, none of the other motorists were drunk, there were no pedestrians and you didn’t have to have a sign “Driver carries only $5 in change” in the window.

People who drive race cars don’t usually start out in New York taxis. Motorcycles, maybe. Cars with cages on them.

But people who drive race cars don’t usually start out in military school, either. And very few people who win Indy’s 500 start out waiting tables in society restaurants or have numbered names like Super Bowls and Popes.

Daniel John wasn’t exactly the black sheep of the Sullivan family but neither did he look like the one who would make Cardinal, either. He was well on his way to a career as a midnight cowboy in New York till a family friend intervened and packed him off to England to learn to drive something without a meter in it.

People thought Danny would become one of those dilettante drivers who drove wearing a white scarf and carrying a rose in his teeth, and was driving only because his polo ponies were sick. But Danny Sullivan found it a profession as exciting as picking up a fare in Hell’s Kitchen at 4 in the morning.

The only trouble was, his friends thought he had run away to the south seas.

“It’s a funny thing, but when you tell people you’re a race driver and you won Bridgehampton, they say ‘Oh, sure,’ and try not to yawn,” he recalled. “Then, you say you drove at Indy and their eyes light up and you can almost seem them thinking ‘Oh, you’re a real race driver!’ ”

Sullivan was a real race driver, all right. So real, he won Indianapolis in only his third try at it last May.

You would have thought Tyrone Power had won it, not just an ex-cabbie. People Magazine was on the phone. Johnny Carson. “The Today Show”. “Good Morning America”. Playgirl magazine. Playboy magazine.

He was almost “Hollywood” Sullivan. Broadway Danny. Everyone’s wild Irish rose. Sponsors lined up. Producers wanted to do lunch. He did photo layouts, talk shows, autograph sessions. He was the automotive hunk.

The Unser brothers had won six Indy 500’s between them. A.J. Foyt had won four. Johnny Rutherford, a collar ad, Robert Redford look-alike himself, had won three, Rick Mears, two. They were great drivers. Danny Sullivan was a celebrity.

His secretary called Spago, a top drawer movietown restaurant, one night. Could they make a reservation for 15 that night?

Impossible, the maitre d’ told the caller frostily. Perhaps another night? Who’s calling, please?

Danny Sullivan, he was told. There was a pause.

“The Danny Sullivan? The race driver?” the maitre d’ wanted to know.

“Yes,” was the response.

“Come right over,” was the advice.

Life went from rental cars and taxis to limos and helicopters.

“Four and a half hours sleep a night became the norm,” Sullivan said. “That’s all right, provided you don’t have to drive a Grand Prix through an airport in Cleveland or a casino parking lot in Vegas the next day.”

He may be the first auto racer who ever outranked in notoriety a tennis player or football player on the slopes of Aspen, or he may be the first who stopped traffic on a New York street where he used to pick up fares.

“Tennis players get their faces on television for hours with all their grimaces and grins and agonies,” he pointed out. “Everyone knows what Kareem Abdul-Jabbar or Larry Bird look like. I’m in a helmet and a face bubble. It’s harder for people to relate.”

Nevertheless, they manage. Foyt, Tom Sneva, another generation of Andrettis and Unsers, as well as the originals, Rutherford and Mears are all at the Michigan International Speedway for the Michigan 500 this weekend. As far as the public is concerned, they are the supporting cast. The cameras pop the brightest around the Penske pit of the taxi driver.

But the most legitimate accolade of all, Sullivan said, might have come from the hack driver who picked him up at the heliport in New York late one night and, a chatty type, launched into a litany of complaint of his hard life.

“How tough is it, you ask? Well, you seen where that fellow that won the Indianapolis 500, that Danny Sullivan, he says driving a cab in New York is more dangerous than winning the 500. I mean, there’s a guy you could relate to, Mister!”

Did Sullivan tell him who he was?

Sullivan shook his head.

“But I did leave him a big tip,” he said. “That’s more than anyone did for me when I was driving one.”