The son of a Metropolitan Opera star, he was born in Port Jefferson, New York, but moved to California as a teenager. Profile for racing driver Dan Gurney from United States. If Dan Gurney wasn't the greatest American racing driver of all time, he was certainly in the running for the honor.

He was 86. With successes in Formula One, Indy Car, NASCAR, IMSA and Sports Car Club of America competition, he achieved 51 wins and 47 podium finishes over a career that saw him pilot 51 makes and over 100 different models. The original application, pioneered by American automobile racing icon Dan Gurney (who was challenged to do so by fellow American racer Bobby Unser), was a right-angle piece of sheet metal, rigidly fixed to the top trailing edge of the rear wing on his open-wheel racing cars of the early 1970s.

NEWPORT BEACH — Dan Gurney, the first driver with victories in each of the Formula One, IndyCar and NASCAR Cup series, died Sunday from complications of pneumonia. Further to that, he established Eagle and All-American Racers as an iconic marque and team that were as successful as the man himself. Dan Gurney was one of motorsport's greatest innovators and free-thinking spirits, as well as a world-class driver who survived and excelled in one of racing's most deadly eras After that it’ll then undergo a nut-and-bolt restoration, getting it race ready. Dan Gurney was a true legend of motor racing on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a winner in Formula 1, the World Sportscar Championship, Can-Am, Indycars and NASCAR.

Daniel Sexton Gurney was born April 13, 1931, in Port Jefferson, on New York’s Long Island, the son of a Metropolitan Opera singer father and a former art teacher mother. About Dan Gurney Daniel Sexton Gurney (born April 13, 1931) is a retired American racing driver, race car constructor, and team owner. Dan Gurney, one of the greatest Formula 1 drivers of the 1960s and the first to spray champagne on the podium, dies aged 86. The current one is this: We’ll return it to the exact specification that Dan Gurney had it in for the British Saloon Car Championship race in 1961 and it will be at the Revival, just not racing.