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Bob Bondurant Interview

The Best Wheelman in Tinseltown: He was fast and reliable and he didn't crash. What's luck got to do with it?

By Gary Witzenburg | Photos By |   |  
Bob Bondurant is a lucky man. Tall, handsome, smart, and immensely talented, he raced motorcycles as a Southern California teen, graduated to sports cars at 23, and nine years later was piloting a Ferrari Formula 1 car at the U.S. Grand Prix. While racing F1 in 1966, he trained actors James Garner, Yves Montand, Brian Bedford, and Antonio Sabato to drive race cars for their roles in "Grand Prix," perhaps the best-ever racing movie. As a racer, Bondurant was fast, smooth, and consistent. In 15 years of racing and winning, in the fastest cars against the best drivers in the top series on both sides of the Atlantic, his two big wrecks were caused by mechanical failures. Each of them probably should have killed him. He vividly recalls the one that ended his racing career when his Can Am car's steering arm broke at Watkins Glen, New York, in 1967. "Coming out of the turn at the top of the hill, doing about 150, I felt something break. The back end came out, I came up to the curb at an angle, and it turned sharp right when I ran out of curbing. Funny how fast your mind works. In tenths of a second, I shut off the fuel pumps…didn't want a fire. Shut off the engine…didn't want to blow it. Hanging on for dear life, trying to brake, downshifting, I was saying to myself, 'Bondurant, this is going to be a bad one.' "I hit the embankment and took off, tore the belly pan off, and my legs went out the bottom. I went as high as the trees and was coming down, backwards, last thing I remember. I hit and flipped eight times, end over end and sideways, and landed upside down. When the corner workers turned over the car, it landed on my broken feet, and the shock brought me to." About all that was left of the car was the seat he was in and the right rear suspension. He remembers looking down, embarrassed that he had landed in a mud puddle, then looking up and seeing spectators. He hoped he had not gotten into them (he hadn't). "I tried to take my helmet off, but a corner worker said, 'No, I'll get that.' Then I was out again." Born in Evanston, Illinois, Bondurant moved to California at age 3 after his father, an Auburn/Cord dealer, lost everything in the Great Depression. When he was about 8, his father started taking him to midget auto races. He loved it and decided he wanted to race. When his parents divorced, he moved with his mom to Westwood Village. When he was 10, she bought him a Whizzer motorbike to help him do his paper route faster. Before long, he had parlayed that into a motor scooter and later a James 125cc motorcycle. Skipping classes got him tossed out of high school, but he transferred to a private school and graduated at the top of his class. He also did well at Pasadena City College, then Woodbury Business College. To learn to fly helicopters, he worked as a mechanic's helper at a helicopter repair shop after school and finagled informal flying lessons. He also learned to ride Harleys. "I'd go over to the local Harley shop, and you could do wheelies on my James, so they all wanted to ride it. I said, 'I'll let you do that if you teach me how to ride your Harleys.'" Then he decided to go racing, bought an Indian 101 Scout, and started competing on dirt ovals. He worked on his bike in nearby Glendale with a friend who built the best racing engines, and when he was offered one, Bob happily accepted. He went racing that Sunday, looked at the qualifying chalkboards, and thought he was on the wrong one. It turned out his times had vaulted him from the Novice class over Amateur into Expert, and he would be starting on the second row. He actually led that race until an engine valve loosened and put him out. In the hospital the next morning, he remembers a doctor coming in. "How am I doing, and how soon will I be out?" Bondurant asked. "Relax," the doctor said. "You're going to be here a while. I've been watching racing at the Glen for a long time, and I've never seen that severe a racing accident. You're lucky you're alive." When the car was flipping, the rollbar was below Bondurant's helmet, so the helmet got into the mud more than once. The fact that the ground was soft because it had rained the day before probably saved his life. Lucky man. The doctor asked which he wanted first, the good news or the bad. He chose the good. "You got a minor concussion," the doctor said, "but you'll heal from that. You broke three ribs, and you'll heal from that. You broke both legs below the knees, and they'll heal." Then he stopped talking. And the bad? "You hit so hard that it chipped the lower part of your spine. I can't allow you to sit up yet because if you do, you could become paralyzed. But the worst thing is, you broke every single bone in both of your feet and ankles. You'll never walk again. I'm a bone specialist. I put your feet back together, and there were so many broken bones, you just won't walk. And even if you do, you'll have a terrible limp and a lot of pain."He lay there, thinking: "God, I was at the height of my racing career. What am I going to do now? All I know is racing. I've got to make a living somehow. Training the actors for 'Grand Prix' felt good. I've got to learn how to walk somehow, and when I do, I'm going to start a school. I drew a steering wheel and put a number one in the center, because I decided that it would be the number-one school in the world. That's how it all started." With more surgeries, hard work, and perseverance, Bondurant did relearn to walk, eventually with barely a limp, drive as well as ever, and fly his own helicopter. In 1968, he founded, and today still runs (with wife Pat), the world-famous Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving in Phoenix, Arizona. We recently caught up with him for a delightful, story-filled chat.
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Rob Thomas
Rob Thomas

I remember Bob at the Sebring events for Shelby and then driving a P-3 Ferrari. Numerous times at the old Bridgehampton track at the tip of long Island  What made him good was his consistency and the ability to finish. Gurney and Hill may have been a tad quicker but not better. I remember him always in the hunt with the world's best drivers. Bob earned his rides, he didn't buy them. Aside from his terrible crash, his life was an American story book classic racing in the golden age as we all remember it.


I knew bob for a short time in the early "70s and always remembered him as he was such a great guy and had a fantastic sense of humor.  my husband and I went to all the local races and often had breakfast with him.  this was such a great story........what a fantastic life and wonderful survivor.  I am so happy that he is still going strong, is such an incredible success and has a truly happy marriage.  a man to be remembered!!


This is why Bob Bondurant is simply the coolest. 

Formula Uno. 


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