This is part three of a three-part story written by Bruce Martin about the life and recent passing of four-time Indianapolis 500 winner Al Unser.
MOORESVILLE, N.C. – Al Unser had enjoyed a wildly successful career long before he joined Penske Racing in 1982, but there turned out to be a great deal more left for him to accomplish.
Unser achieved some of the most historic moments of his career with Penske Racing. He won two of his four IndyCar National Championships with Penske Racing in 1983 and ’85.
He defeated his son, Al Unser Jr., in the championship battle that went all the way to the final lap at Tamiami Park in Miami. Al Unser Jr. finished third, while Al Unser finished fourth and the father beat the son by one point for the championship.
Then in 1987, Al Unser arrived at Indianapolis Motor Speedway without a ride for that year’s 500. When Danny Ongais crashed into the turn four wall during practice, he was hospitalized and unable to qualify or race.
Team owner Roger Penske replaced Ongais with Unser. He brought a one-year-old March/Cosworth that had been a show car in the lobby of a hotel in Reading, Pa., to replace the crashed March/Chevrolet-Ilmor. Unser qualified 20th.
Mario Andretti’s Lola/Chevrolet was the class of the field in that contest, starting on the pole and leading 170 laps.
While Andretti was running away from the field, leading by as much as two laps, Unser drove his typical, conservative race, taking care of the car for the end.
Then, in rapid fashion, the race changed dramatically.
Andretti’s car quit running on lap 180 in one of the most heartbreaking moments of his career. That put Roberto Guerrero into the lead as he made his final pit stop. Guerrero stalled the Vince Granatelli Racing March/Cosworth as he attempted to leave the pits. The crew could not get the car re-fired without stalling the engine.
With Guerrero in the pits frantically trying to return to the race, Al Unser unlapped himself. One lap later, he zoomed down the frontstretch and took over the lead just as Guerrero finally got the engine restarted and returned to the race.
Al Unser led the final 18 laps to become the second four-time winner of the Indianapolis 500 in a story that nobody would have believed earlier in the month.
He defeated Guerrero by 4.496 seconds.
“The last Indy 500 win was the best because of the circumstances,” Unser said in 2016. “They said I was too old. They wanted the young drivers and the car owners that wanted me to run for them, I didn’t want them.
“When Roger Penske’s deal came up, he called me and said what he said, that is what I was looking for. To start that race as far back as we did in the second weekend of qualifying, then end up winning it because Mario Andretti got tired again. I would have never caught him – he was gone.
“But you have to first finish, in order to finish first.”
Penske recalled that historic day.
“Al was always just a phone call away and, thankfully, he answered that call back in 1987,” Penske said in the letter read to the crowd at Unser’s Celebration of Life. “He did not have a ride for the Indianapolis 500 that May and, after one of our drivers was injured in practice, we turned to the man I knew that had the experience, the competitive drive and the cool head we needed to get back to Victory Lane – Al Unser.
“Driving a car that was a year old and was actually on display in a hotel lobby just a few days earlier, Al qualified the car into the starting field and then went out and won the race. It was an honor for our team to help Al race his way into history that day with his fourth Indianapolis 500 victory. It was a perfect example of who he was as a competitor and as a teammate – a racer who could instantly elevate a team’s performance, and a man who was always capable of greatness, no matter what the circumstances.”
Although that would be the final time Al Unser won the Indianapolis 500, it would not be the final time a driver named Al Unser won the Indianapolis 500.
After coming close so many times, Al Unser Jr. scored the first of his two Indianapolis 500 victories on a cold, windy Sunday in 1992 when he defeated Scott Goodyear in the closest finish in Indianapolis 500 history. The margin of victory was .043 seconds.
The elder Unser finished third in a Buick for Team Menard.
“You have to have kids to realize how important that is,” Al Unser recalled. “In 1992, I ran third at Indy and I was pissed because I finished third. But him winning the race, I felt like I won the race. I was so happy. I couldn’t have been happier because he won the race and I finished third.
“If my pit crew had done the right thing, I would have won that race. I went by him and Scott Goodyear like they were parked. I had a better race car than he did. Because of John Andretti, I was quite a way back. He wouldn’t let me pass him even though he was seven laps back.”
Al Unser Jr. won his second Indianapolis 500 two years later driving for Team Penske. That gave the Unser family nine wins in the biggest race in the world.
“Indianapolis is the race you want to be at and when you win it, it carries your career the rest of the way,” Al Unser said. “It shows you what that place does. It has a magic to it.”
At the Borg-Warner Dinner in Indianapolis on the Friday before Helio Castroneves joined A.J. Foyt, Al Unser and Rick Mears as the only drivers to win the Indianapolis 500 four times, Al Unser was reflective.
Twenty-seven days earlier, older brother Bobby Unser had passed away and he still felt the burden of that loss.
“We miss Bobby,” Al Unser said. “My brother was a man that if it wasn’t his way, there wasn’t any way. Bobby would tell you; I know more than you know. That was my brother. He tried to get me to retire, and I come back and win the race and the championship. I asked him, now what are you going to say. That was Bobby.
“He was a good man. A good race car driver, a good father, he was a good man. When you went against him and beat him, you knew that you beat someone.
“He said Al always snuck in. Did I? Or, was it planned?
“Bobby and Dan Gurney, he was up in the Pagoda a couple of years ago and I asked, where did the wicker bill come from? He looked at me and said, I don’t think it came from your brother, but he takes credit for it and didn’t care.
“But he was a good brother, and damn, I really miss him.”
He had one more reflection that night. It was the satisfaction at excelling in a sport that is so difficult.
“Auto racing was a great sport, and it is a great sport,” Al Unser said. “There is no sport like it, but it’s the most demanding sport there is. It is hard because it demands everything.
“It’s demanding.
“But I love everything about it.”