Gurney Has New Project in Long Beach

When Chris Pook, then a Long Beach travel agent, dreamed 22 years ago of holding a motor race on the streets of downtown Long Beach, the first person he called was Dan Gurney.

Gurney, who had left Riverside in 1958 to race for 10 years in European sports cars, contacted Formula One officials for Pook and sounded them out about a U.S. West Grand Prix, in addition to the annual F1 race in Watkins Glen, N.Y. And Gurney told old friends that racing in the shadow of the Queen Mary would be as glamorous as racing by the bay at Monte Carlo.

“The thing I remember most about getting the Long Beach race started was going up to San Francisco with Pook and asking for permission from the Coastal Commission to hold the race,” Gurney said while relaxing in his All American Racers facility in Santa Ana. “It was just one of the hurdles, but I’ve always felt if we didn’t pass that one, there never would have been a race.”

Gurney even had a car in the inaugural Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach, a Formula 5000 Eagle driven by Vern Schuppan, who finished second to Brian Redman of England.

This week, Gurney--still a director of the Grand Prix Assn.--will be back in Long Beach, working to get another project going. He is developing Toyota’s first Indy car, which will run in the 22nd annual street race Sunday.

It is a daunting task, melding a new engine and new chassis to compete with the Reynards, Penskes and Lolas of today. It has been 10 years since Gurney built his last Indy car Eagle, at one time one of the most successful in U.S. racing.

Racing’s all-American boy, who once inspired a magazine to launch a “Dan Gurney for President” campaign, will be 65 on Saturday.

Gurney was honored Wednesday when Pook announced at the LBGP luncheon that media headquarters for the race would be named the Dan Gurney Media Center.

His career as a driver, engineer and team owner has been marked with peaks that no other American has reached and depths from which he always seems to emerge. His defining characteristic is his resiliency.

Consider his turnaround the last three years.

In 1993, a team of Toyota Eagles designed and built in Gurney’s AAR shop in Santa Ana won all 10 International Motor Sports Assn. GTP races they entered. His drivers qualified one-two in each. Juan Manuel Fangio II won seven races and PJ Jones won three as Toyota won its second consecutive GTP manufacturer’s championship.

Gurney accepted a new challenge in 1994: to build an Indy car Eagle MK-V from scratch that would help Toyota achieve stature in the fiercely competitive PPG Indy Car World Series. Not only was Gurney and his team of engineers going to create a new chassis, it would be done with an engine from Toyota Racing Development, U.S.A., in Costa Mesa.

It would be the only American-built chassis in Indy car racing. That is not a new position for Gurney, whose victory in his own Eagle in the 1967 Belgian Grand Prix remains the only Formula One race won by an American driver in an American car.

But to date, the newest Eagle is slower than expected. In three races this season, Fangio has qualified 26th, 24th and 23rd and has finished 21-17-15.

“We’re behind, there’s no denying it, but it seems like it’s always that way in racing when you’re trying something new,” Gurney said while displaying his red, white and green carbon fiber monocoque that Fangio will qualify Friday and Saturday and race Sunday.

“When you’re on top, like we were a couple of years ago, it’s easy to forget how much it took to get there. We’ve struggled before, you know. This project is more difficult because we’re trying to blend a new engine with a new chassis. We’re hoping for an improvement at Long Beach, some more at the U.S. 500 [May 26] and even more later in the year when we will have two cars.”

A car for Jones should be completed in a couple of weeks, and he is expected to make his first 1996 start June 9 in Detroit.

“The engine has proven more reliable than predicted. It’s down a little on horsepower, but the people over at TRD are working on that. What we have to do is analyze what needs to be done with the chassis, make a few changes here and there and then go through the same process again and again until we get to the podium.

“The glass is always half full if you see it that way, and that’s the way we’re trying to see it. We’ve finished a race. Now we want a podium [top-three] finish, then a race win and then the championship. That’s not asking too much, is it?”

The nicest birthday present Gurney could hope for would be a high finish by Fangio.

The Argentine driver, whose late uncle of the same name remains the standard for Formula One drivers, has won on the street circuit before. In the pro division of the celebrity race in 1987, he beat, among others, teammate PJ Jones’ father, 1963 Indianapolis 500 winner Parnelli Jones.

“I think the Toyota Grand Prix will be almost like being at home because the home base for AAR is very close to the race track,” Fangio said. “Long Beach has a lot of meaning in every sense because it is Toyota’s race and the way everything is set up makes it really enjoyable to race. Hopefully, we will see a lot more progress in comparison to the first three races.”

Even though Gurney and Toyota have been partners for years, the Indy car project did not materialize until early 1994, when the team began testing 1993 Lolas with Judd engines.

“We spent most of ’94 just treading water,” Gurney said. “We lost a lot of time when CART changed the rules for the ’96 chassis. Testing the Lola-Judd kept Juan and PJ busy, but it didn’t tell us a whole lot.”

The first time the Eagle chassis and the Toyota engine ran together was Oct. 31, 1995, when Fangio made a few shakedown laps at Willow Springs Raceway in Rosamond. Gurney likened it to “being in the delivery room for the birth of a baby.”

He should know. He has four children from his first marriage and two sons living with him and his wife, Evi, in Newport Beach.

“We have a strong team in place, most of the same people we had when we developed the IMSA cars, so we know we can do it,” Gurney said.

John Ward, who designed the 1981 Eagle that sat on the front row at Indy, is the team’s chief design engineer; and Hiro Fujimori, who has been with All American Racers for 13 seasons, including time with the all-winning IMSA program, is director of aerodynamics.

Gurney, who won seven Formula One, seven Indy car and five NASCAR stock car races among 37 victories as a driver, had success at Indianapolis with Eagles built at his AAR shop. In 1973, 21 of the 33 starters at Indy were Eagles, including the winning car driven by Gordon Johncock. Bobby Unser scored the other Eagle victories in 1968 and 1975. The 1975 car was owned and campaigned by Gurney.

Twice, Gurney received builder-of-the-year awards from the Society of American Engineers for his Indy car work.

His last involvement with them, however, was more than 10 years ago, after an ill-fated attempt at developing a stock block engine that would compete with the turbocharged Cosworths. Mike Mosley qualified second at Indy in 1981, but lasted only two laps.

After Gurney gave up on his Indy car project, the AAR shops remained nearly idle until he signed with Toyota in 1983 to develop an IMSA GTU. Four years later, he moved up to GTO, and Toyota won its first manufacturer’s championship and Chris Cord the driver’s title.

Then came another step up, to GTP, where Gurney’s Eagles won championships in 1992 and 1993.

His state-of-the-art headquarters, where 100 employees work, includes two wind tunnels, design department, data acquisition and analysis department, fabrication shop and a complete composite materials department where all race car bodies and chassis are built.

“We have the facility to turn out a well-engineered car that is on the cutting edge of all existing technology,” Gurney said. “All we need is a little time and patience. We’ll get there.”