When Bob Bondurant offered me the chance to take a few hot laps around the track, I jumped at the chance. I’d come to Sonoma, California to experience — and write about — his four-door performance driving program and what better way to get the color I needed for my story. I just didn’t expect that my first few laps around Sonoma Raceway would come sitting alongside the legendary racer and driving instructor as he buzzed the track in his Aerospatiale helicopter.
The Aerospatiale was not only fast, but also — at the time — the only helicopter in the world capable of flying loops. It was precisely the sort of machine Robert Lewis Bondurant would have set out to master.
Bondurant, who passed away Nov. 12, at the age of 88, collected an enviable pile of trophies throughout the decades competing at tracks like the Nürburgring, Le Mans and Sebring, and in series including NASCAR CanAm and Formula 1. He drove for Carroll Shelby and teamed with Dan Gurney. And, during his long career, he was inducted into 10 separate motorsports halls of fame.
A life in “two halves”
Yet, it was as a performance driving instructor and owner of several different racing schools that Bondurant arguably became best known. Since he first trained actor James Garner for the 1966 film, “Grand Prix,” Bondurant taught more than 500,000 wannabe racers how to master both the track and the street.
“My life has been lived in two halves,” he explained years back. “The first was becoming a World Champion driver. The second was teaching the world to become champions.”
Bondurant was introduced to the automotive life early. When he was born on April 27, 1933 his father, John Roper Bonduant, already owned two luxury car dealerships. At age eight, he tagged along with his father to see his first race. The family divorced soon after a move to California. But Bob’s fixation with a fast set of wheels was already in motion.
At 12, his mother bought Bob a Whizzer electric bike — ostensibly so he could add more houses to his newspaper delivery route. Two years later, he got an Indian motorcycle and then a Harley. He became the youngest member of the “Galloping Gooses,” a motorcycle club that would later earn a tougher reputation when renamed the “Hell’s Angels.”
From motorbikes to race cars
While Bondurant retained his love of motorcycles, he soon realized he’d do better racing on four wheels and, at 23, began with a Morgan Plus 4. He would quickly become one of the most formidable competitors in the field. During a 12-year stretch, Bondurant won 30 of 32 races with a Corvette. He won his class at Le Mans and was the first and only American to capture the World Sports Car Championship while driving a Shelby Daytona Coupe.
Bondurant wasn’t content to focus on one or two race series. If anything, he seemed determined to score wins in every class that mattered, including NASCAR and Formula 1. He even took the win at the Baja 500.
But his career took an unexpected turn while racing at the winding Watkins Glen International road course in 1967 in the CanAm series. His McLaren left the track, flipped eight times and left most observers expecting the worst. That included the nurses at the hospital who were cutting off Bondurant’s fire suit when he suddenly woke up, said wife Pat.
“That scared the daylights out of the nurses that thought they were dealing with a morgue situation,” she told an interviewer. Bondurant himself recalled having a near-death experience, and a “conversation with God,” that convinced him his real career would be helping others to learn how to drive fast — and safely.
A new mission
The Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving opened in California barely a year after his horrific crash. Over the years, it has operated out of several locations, including the one I attended 30-some years ago at Sonoma Raceway. Bondurant had, by then, expanded to the point where he employed a crew of skilled instructors. But he still took time to meet with each new class and take them out on the track for a few laps.
By then, I had already logged several days behind the wheel of a tricked-out Mustang GT and felt pretty good about the lap times I was posting. Bob was less impressed and, as we launched down a tricky back straight that ended in a sharp right turn, I felt his foot on top of my own, holding the accelerator down for a few extra seconds, his hand reaching over to show me the proper line to take through the corner.
Throughout the decades, Bondurant trained hundreds of thousands of people how to get more out of their driving, whether on the track or the street. He also offered specialty programs for police officers and even Secret Service agents. And plenty of celebrities came calling on the master, including Garner, Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood, Nicholas Cage and Christian Bale. Bale was cast in Ron Howard’s film, “Ford v Ferrari,” where he would play British driver Ken Miles, a close friend of Bondurant’s killed in a 1966 crash.
Another alumnus was actor Paul Newman who went on to become a celebrated racer in his own right.
Speed bumps
Bondurant’s career wasn’t always smooth. Nor was his personal life, with a series of divorces leaving him financially strained on several occasions. The school itself was forced to leave Sonoma, settling into the Phoenix suburbs, something Bondurant later called a stroke of luck.
He was able to build the Firebird course from scratch, precisely to fit his teaching strategy. He started out, Bondurant once told me, by driving a Mustang through the desert sands to lay out precisely how the straights and corners should look like.
During the past decade, Bondurant ran into some health problems and wife Pat thought it was time for what she described as a “succession plan.” They turned day-to-day management of the school over to her son. But they soon discovered financial irregularities that, in 2018, forced the operation into Chapter 11, reportedly with a debt of $3.5 million.
New owners, new name
Bondurant continued to look for ways to raise new capital but, a year later, it was purchased out of bankruptcy by Stig Investments for $1.7 million. The new owners, which includes a number of auto enthusiasts, collectors, and graduates of the school, did what Bondurant had hoped completing a multi-million-dollar renovation of the Chandler, Arizona track.
But they also decided it was time to severe all ties to Bondurant, last March renaming it the Radford Racing School.
As part of the bankruptcy process, Bondurant did get to keep the name — and “Bondurant Method” teaching plans — for his own school. The now-widowed Pat Bondurant said she plans to continue operating a program.
“His wife Pat is the President and CEO of the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving dba/ Bondurant Racing School and is carrying his legacy forward into the future,” a statement said.
Bondurant remained a fixture at his school up until its bankruptcy, as well. He also remained active long after most of his contemporaries were gone. He won his last championship in the World Cup Challenge in 1997, racing for the Saleen team. His last race, at the age of 79, was in a vintage Ford GT40. He won, of course.