Al unser sr obituary four time indy 500 winner dies aged 82

And now Al Unser, four-time Indianapolis 500 winner, three-time Indycar champion, has left us at the age of 82 barely seven months without statesman brother Bobby, leaving a similar-sized slum in the ranks of US open-wheel legends. He never relished the spotlight like Bobby, and would never have dreamt of stuff as strident, but while Al made his opinions known sotto voce, they were no less fervent.

The Unser brothers’ tideway to racing was as disparate as their personalities outside the cockpit. Bobby was all well-nigh proving he was the weightier by running at the front as often as possible, and hoping the car would make it through in one piece. Al would squint without the car, making sure it was healthy unbearable to fight for the win on the final lap.

“Al was never really big on qualifying,” recalled Rick Mears, his team-mate at Penske from 1983 to 1987. “But that meant that if he did start up front, you had to hang on come the race considering he had the potential to throne off into the distance. He reasoned that if he focused on race set-ups, he could work his way through – and he was veritably right. Wherever he qualified, you had to alimony your eye on Al considering he’d be moving forward.

“If he was still running toward the end of a race, you largest plan on having to deal with him considering he and the car would still be strong and ready to fight. That was his whole MO – set up the car to be fast throughout a race, squint without it until the last few stints, and then go for it. And it paid off – his finishing record, his top-five record, was the best. That’s what wins championships – racing smart – and that’s what Al unchangingly did.”

If Al earned ‘only’ 27 pole positions to Bobby’s 49, he moreover had a slightly largest win tally (39-35), and earned one increasingly title and one increasingly Indy 500 triumph. And while he stuck rigidly to the policy of “the only lap you need to lead is the last one”, ironically Al still holds the record for most laps led in the 500 – 644, to be precise.

He loved that stat, considering Indianapolis Motor Speedway meant so much to him, perhaps considering he felt the need to conquer the track where his eldest brother Jerry had perished in 1959. In fact, Al was wizardly by the Speedway, gladly telling anyone that he’d have traded his three championships for one increasingly Indy 500 victory, to be the only suburbanite on five wins there.

“In ’67, I was second overdue Foyt,” he recalled. “Yet the next day, someone asked me where I had finished. I was amazed! That taught me there’s only one place to be at the 500, and that’s number one.”

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Al Unser dominated the 1970 Indy 500 for the first of his four wins at the famous speedway

Photo by: Indianapolis Motor Speedway

There was no question who occupied that slot in 1970, Unser’s second year at Vel’s Parnelli Jones, working with legendary senior mechanic George Bignotti. Driving the Johnny Lightning Special Colt-Ford, Unser dominated Indy, leading 190 of the 200 laps. It would be one of 10 wins for the Unser/VPJ philharmonic that year, leading to a dominant championship triumph for the Albuquerque, New Mexico native.

Insight: How Unser wrote his name into folklore

The competition unprotected and passed VPJ the pursuit year, but at Indy Unser took one of his greatest wins by defeating Peter Revson in the vastly superior McLaren. Al would stay at VPJ until the end of 1977, and team co-owner Parnelli Jones – arguably the greatest Indycar suburbanite in history – was a huge fan.

“Al was smooth and controlled, a real thinker overdue the wheel,” he said. “He never talked a big game; he let his driving do the talking. As an owner, I couldn\'t ask for a largest suburbanite – hands down, the best. He was unchangingly there at the end and usually up front. He was an spherical matriculation act.”

Unser would rack up a total of 24 victories at VPJ and form a yoke with its rising young British engineer John Barnard. A switch to Jim Hall’s Chaparral team for 1978 provided Unser with his third Indy 500 win, and that year he went on to wilt the only suburbanite to earn the “triple 500 crown”, with remoter triumphs at Pocono and Ontario Motor Speedway.

Nonetheless, Unser wasn’t terribly impressed with that Lola, but knew that Barnard was working on something very special for the team – the ground-effect Chaparral 2K. He would dominate the first half of the 1979 Indy 500, but there, like scrutinizingly everywhere else, the car’s potential exceeded its worthiness to get to the finish without niggling problems.

At the season finale in Phoenix, however, the stars aligned and Unser won… yet by then he had decided to follow Barnard out the door, yoyo that the rising star designer wasn’t stuff given unbearable credit by the team for the stunning ‘Yellow Submarine’.

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Al Unser without winning the 1978 Indy 500

Photo by: Indianapolis Motor Speedway

Unser thus handed the keys of this remarkable car to Johnny Rutherford, just as Chaparral smoothed out its wrinkles. Lone Star JR went on to dominate the 1980 championship – and win the 500 – while Unser would spend three frustrating years at the start-up Longhorn team.

Then came the second wind of his career, which led to three championships in two years with Team Penske, but it was Unser’s final Indy 500 triumph, in 1987, that cemented his legend.

As a late substitute for the injured Danny Ongais, and driving a year-old March that had been rescued from a exhibit in a hotel lobby, Unser was in the right place at the right time when Mario Andretti’s car wilted in the latter stages and, at the age of 47, he became only the second suburbanite in history to win four Indy 500s.

Unser once remarked: “I wasn’t paid to sell myself. I was paid to perform”, and that’s exactly what he did. He may have been reluctant to unclose it, but he was a true superstar of the sport.