It was one of the first true tests of man versus machine when Spencer Penrose created the “Race to the Clouds” on the Pikes Peak Highway in 1916. The event is still run annually on the 12.42-mile Pikes Peak Highway that winds its way to the 14,110-foot summit of the famed Colorado mountain.
Through the years, the Unser family was dominant at Pikes Peak with Bobby Unser winning it 13 times in three classes, including eight wins during a 10-year period from 1956-’66. The driver that beat him in 1964 and ’65 was his brother, Al.
Uncle Louis Unser won Pikes Peak in 1946 and ’47. Other Unsers who have conquered Pikes Peak include Bobby’s son, Robby, and Bobby’s older brother, Jerry, who died from blood poisoning following a fire at Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1959.
“It was my first big thing,” Unser said. “As a young kid, it’s what I saw where my racing future might be. I didn’t know I was going to be there until later on. It was a national championship race and it was important to recognize that. It wasn’t a local barnyard special. All of the people in general from the Indianapolis 500 also went to Pikes Peak. It had a lot of credibility and the credibility is what excited the Unsers because the big names were there.
“And it was in the mountains. We were born and raised in the mountains.”
Bobby Unser was born in Colorado City, Colo., but his family moved to Albuquerque when he was a year old. The first time he went up Pikes Peak was when he was 7 with his father, Jerry, driving the car.
“It scared the crap out of me,” Unser recalled. “I was really a young kid, but I remember it was awesome and scared the crap out of me, but it was the mountain.
“I don’t think there was any doubt that the Unser family was born into that event,” he noted. “In my younger days, Pikes Peak was the place to be — not Indianapolis, or Sacramento, or Springfield. It was the Pikes Peak Hill Climb, 100 percent.”
The Indianapolis 500 brought the Unsers tremendous fame and glory and the ultimate heartbreak.
The first of six Unsers to compete in the Indianapolis 500 was Jerry, the eldest of the Unser brothers. He was a rookie in the 1958 Indianapolis 500, but his car went sailing over the turn-three wall in the massive first-lap crash that killed Pat O’Connor. Although Jerry Unser was unhurt, he was involved in a crash at Indianapolis Motor Speedway the next year and died on May 17, 1959, from blood poisoning.
During that same time, Bobby Unser also had an incident that nearly cost him his career.
“When Jerry got killed, that was a big downer,” Unser recalled. “We came back home and got that taken care of and, as for racing, I was going to keep doing it.
“I stopped in Tulsa, Okla., to see John Zink (famed car owner). Jack Zink was working on a go-kart that had a weird setup with two engines and a separate throttle for each engine,” Unser continued. “I was driving that go-kart around the office building and the left throttle stuck wide open. It was either going to go under the car, which would have cut me in two, or I was going to smack the side of the building.
“I didn’t have a helmet on and I spent time in the hospital. The spinal and brain fluid was coming out of my eardrum and I nearly didn’t make it. That was in 1959. We had just put Jerry in the ground and now I was close to joining him myself.”
The injury kept Bobby Unser out of racing for nearly a year.
Unser began his Indianapolis career in 1963 and scored the first of the family’s nine Indy 500 victories in 1968.
Unser’s path to Indianapolis may have been the least likely. He was just a local short-track driver from Albuquerque, who attempted to go to Indianapolis four years after his oldest brother’s death.
It was a strong friendship with Parnelli Jones, who won the 1963 Indianapolis 500, that helped him make the field that year. Unser’s first ride wasn’t going to be fast enough to make the race and the team had run out of tires, so Jones convinced team owner Andy Granatelli to give Unser a chance in the loud, powerful Novi.
“My career was right there in front of my eyes, so I had to make the race,” Unser said. “Lo and behold, I went really fast — the fifth fastest qualifier in the race. Yes, I had some lesser than good cars after that, but I knew how to go fast. There were some lean years before 1968, before I won it for the first time. There were 60 to 70 cars entered that were looking for drivers.
“In 1968 with the turbine, they had us beat and it turned out they screwed up, but we got better,” Unser said. “I have always said the Good Lord had everything to do with that. It wasn’t me because I didn’t have the power to do that.”
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