Al Unser
Al Unser
Alfred "Al" Unseris an American automobile racing driver, the younger brother of fellow racing drivers Jerry and Bobby Unser, and father of Al Unser, Jr.. Now retired, he is the second of three men to have won the Indianapolis 500-Mile Race four times, the fourth of five to have won the race in consecutive years, and won the National Championship in 1970, 1983, and 1985. He is the only person to have both a siblingand childas fellow Indy 500 winners...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRace Car Driver
Date of Birth29 May 1939
CityAlbuquerque, NM
CountryUnited States of America
I'm very lucky to be in a sport that I can do this. We can drive the car, we can drive it hard, and so we need to get in there and get some points in order to win this championship and put the Number One back on that Marlboro car. We're physically able to do it, so as long as we're physically able to do it at the at the level we need to then we're going to do it.
I never had very good luck here, ... In an IROC car I crashed, blew a tire in an Indy car, and a Formula 5000 car I ran here I thought I won the race. It was in the rain and the records got washed away, so they took it away from me.
I knew what he wanted to do, and he showed me the plans, but when he brought me to the building and showed me around, I didn't see how it was possible. I didn't think there was enough room but he said, 'We're going to gut all these offices.' I figured even if he tore everything out it wouldn't be very big, so I'm just amazed at how spacious all these rooms are.
They have report cards, and letters they wrote to each other when they were little. Various ladies in the Unser family have done a good job of organizing the family tree. The amount of stuff they have -- boxes and boxes and boxes of photographs and family stuff from when the brothers were just little boys, all of the houses, buildings and passenger cars they owned -- it's just astonishing.
What can I say, the best therapy for me was to get in my Marlboro car and drive it.
Every race I run in is in preparation for the Indianapolis 500. Indy is the most important thing in my life. It is what I live for.
Deep down, I do still think about driving, but you know that your reflexes and everything are just not the same, ... Once you've reached a certain level of racing, you know when you start fading. I can tell that I've faded.
This place shows what we have done. How it started. How it all happened. I think what you see here will bring to life what we have accomplished in auto racing.
That is a heck of a racetrack and I know all the drivers are looking forward to coming out there. I think the people of Northern California are really going to enjoy the show.
I tell all the rookies that come into our series and all the young drivers they can come ask me anything at any time, and we'll give them the straight shoot.
I wouldn't mind meeting Eddie Van Halen. That would be great. We need to invite him to a race.
If we get in an accident that's strong enough to break bones, it's going to break bones. What makes me a little bit higher risk is that if I break my right ankle again, I've got a bunch of screws and plates in there, and that would not be good.
The only thing that's changed is the competitiveness of the series. It's only become harder to win in our series as the years have gone by. Competition breeds good things, and that's what's happened here.
I've got a great team of engineers behind this race car. I've got a great bunch of mechanics that make it reliable. This car is developed to go out there and be better than the Reynard, and I feel that it is.