LONG BEACH, Calif. — The Road Racing Drivers Club honored Hall of Famer Derek Bell MBE at a gala on Thursday at the Westin Hotel in advance of the 51st Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach.
Bell’s racing career is one of the most successful diverse and wide-ranging of any British racing driver.
A capacity crowd of racing luminaries representing a variety of racing series, including IndyCar, IMSA and NHRA, along with such racing champions as Mario Andretti, Indy 500 winners Tony Kanaan and Arie Luyendyk, and McLaren’s Zak Brown were in attendance at the dinner presented by Firestone.
Bell is best known as the consummate endurance sports car driver who won the Le Mans 24 Hours five times, the Daytona 24 Hours three times and the World Sports Car Championship twice.
The evening featured Derek’s son, Justin, as M.C., assisting RRDC president Bobby Rahal during the leather-chairs interview on the stage. Memories poured out from Derek’s time with Ferrari, Porsche and other marques, his five victories at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and his heartwarming Le Mans podium finish in 1995 with son Justin.
“Derek’s career demonstrated remarkable longevity,” said Rahal. “He competed in major endurance races from the late 1960s through the mid-1990s, even sharing the cockpit at Le Mans with his son, Justin, and finishing on the podium in a McLaren F1 GTR in 1995. By the time he stepped away from top level competition, Derek Bell had accumulated more than 50 race victories and a reputation as one of the finest and most respected drivers of his era.”
“This is a great honor,” said Derek. “America is so big to me in my life. I’m married to an American. And so to get an award for all the racing and the pleasure that I got out of it, [I hope] it gives some other people on the way pleasure as well. And I think what has been created that I’ve been part of in all these years is making sports cars such a big class of racing. No thanks to me, particularly, but all of us who are in it. I just have so much grace for people like Al Holbert who had me on board and Bob Akin, and people like that.”
Said Justin, “Isn’t it fun to be honored for being part of honoring your dad? And what an opportunity. And, I think, in the history of the RRDC, it’s probably a first to be able to do that. I’m so proud of him and what he’s achieved. Two things: I am proud to host this gala and then proud to honor him. So very special.”
Other Bell family members in attendance were Justin’s daughter Tallulah. Justin was also joined by his partner Mailani DeYoung.
Jim Michaelian, Grand Prix Association of Long Beach President and CEO, who passed away just weeks before the gala, was recognized for his more than five decades of success with the Grand Prix with tributes in a video from Bobby Rahal, Mario Andretti and Roger Penske, and by motorsports journalist Marshall Pruett at the podium. Family members, including Michaelian’s wife Mary, their sons Bob and Michael and brother-in-law Frank Thompson, were acknowledged in the audience.
“You often think about someone’s achievements as ‘they won this, have these many trophies, been crowned champion so many times,'” said Pruett. “None of those things apply when we speak about Jim. Not that he didn’t have success as a driver. This is a man who ran a motor race. Yet was a champion to us. A champion of a person.”
