Al Unser: 39 IndyCar Wins, Four Indy 500s, and the Oldest Winner Ever
Welcome to the Happy Hour Racing IndyCar Driver Spotlight - where we pull one driver into the garage, look under the hood at their career, and tell you what makes them tick. This week: the quiet Unser brother who won the Indianapolis 500 four times, including one nobody saw coming.
The Short Version
Al Unser won the Indianapolis 500 four times, which puts him in a club of four drivers in 110 runnings of the race. He won 39 IndyCar races and three national championships across 30 years of racing. He is still the oldest man to ever win the 500, and he did it in a car that had spent part of that same May sitting in a hotel lobby as a display piece. He was the calm one in the loudest racing family in America.
The Youngest of the Unsers
Alfred Unser was born on May 29, 1939, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, into a family that already had racing in it. His father Jerry ran a garage. His uncles ran Pikes Peak. His older brother Jerry Jr. died in 1959 from injuries suffered in a practice crash at Indianapolis. His other brother Bobby went on to win the Indy 500 three times.
Al came up the hard way, on dirt and on the mountain. He won the Pikes Peak Hill Climb in 1964 and again in 1965, and he ran his first national championship race at Milwaukee in 1964. The big break came when Vel's Parnelli Jones Racing hired him in 1969 and paired him with legendary chief mechanic George Bignotti. What happened next was one of the most dominant runs anybody has had in an American open-wheel car.
Signature Moments
In 1970 Unser drove the Johnny Lightning Special, a Colt with a Ford V8, and he tore the season apart. He won the pole at Indianapolis at 170.221 mph, led 190 of the 200 laps, and beat Mark Donohue by 32.19 seconds for his first 500. He won 10 of the 18 races he started that year and took the national championship.
Then he did it again. The 1971 Indianapolis 500 was held on May 29, which happened to be his 32nd birthday. He started fifth, led 103 laps, and beat Peter Revson by 22.91 seconds. He remains the only driver to win the Indianapolis 500 on his birthday, and he was the first man to win it back to back since Bill Vukovich in 1953 and 1954.
The 1978 season is the one racing historians point at. Driving Jim Hall's Lola T500 for Chaparral, Unser started fifth at Indianapolis, led 121 laps and beat Tom Sneva by 8.09 seconds. He then went out and won the Pocono 500 and the California 500 in the same year. Nobody else has ever swept all three 500-mile races in one season. Counting his California 500 win from the year before, he won four straight 500-mile Indy car races.
And then there is 1987. Unser showed up at Indianapolis that May with no ride and no sponsor, mostly to help his son. Danny Ongais hit the wall hard in practice on May 7 and was concussed for the month, so Roger Penske needed a driver. He handed Unser a year-old March 86C with a Cosworth in the back. Weeks earlier that same car had been on display in a hotel lobby in Reading, Pennsylvania. Mario Andretti proceeded to lead 170 of the first 177 laps and lap the entire field, then broke a valve spring. Roberto Guerrero inherited the lead, then lost time in the pits. Unser drove past all of it and won by 4.496 seconds at 47 years and 360 days old. He is still the oldest winner of the Indianapolis 500.
By the Numbers
Here is the whole career laid out. Every figure below is a top-level national championship car number.
The Title He Took From His Own Son
The 1985 championship came down to the last race of the year at Miami, and it came down to two men with the same name. Al Unser Jr. was running third and had the title in hand on the road. Al Unser Sr. was running fifth and needed one more spot. With a handful of laps left, he passed Roberto Moreno for fourth. That was the difference. He beat his son for the championship by one point.
He had already won the 1983 title with Team Penske, so 1985 made it three national championships, spread across 15 years. Very few drivers stay good that long. Almost none stay that good.
Off the Track
Unser was known as Big Al once his son started racing and became Little Al. He was the soft-spoken one, the brother who let the car do the talking while Bobby did the talking for both of them. Away from the track he hunted and fished in New Mexico and spent time at the family museum in Albuquerque.
The Unser family record at Indianapolis is nine wins, and Al accounts for four of them. Brother Bobby won three, son Al Jr. won two in 1992 and 1994. Al Sr. is the only person in the history of the race with both a brother and a child who won it. He ran his final Indianapolis 500 in 1993 and led 15 laps in it, then stopped for good the following May.
He was diagnosed with cancer in 2004 and lived with it for 17 years. Bobby died in May 2021. Al died on December 9, 2021, at his home in Chama, New Mexico, at 82.
An icon and hero to racing fans around the world. A history-making and beloved member of the #IMS family. 4-time #Indy500 winner Al Unser has passed away at age 82. Godspeed, racer.
— Indianapolis Motor Speedway (@IMS) December 10, 2021
Fun Stats
A few numbers that stick. Unser led at some point in 11 of his 27 Indianapolis 500 starts. He won eight 500-mile races in his career, half of them at Indy. He won the Hoosier Hundred four years in a row from 1970 through 1973. He won the 24 Hours of Daytona in 1985 and an IROC championship in the 1977-78 season. He also ran a handful of NASCAR Cup races in the 1960s with a best finish of fourth. He is in the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Hall of Fame, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America and the International Motorsports Hall of Fame.
The Bottom Line
Al Unser never needed the spotlight and never chased it. He just kept turning up at the Speedway and winning the biggest race in America, in a dominant car in 1970 and in somebody's leftover show car in 1987. Four wins, 17 years apart, one of the quietest careers anybody ever built on top of numbers that loud.
Gear Up for the 500
We do not carry Al Unser merch, but the race he won four times is well covered. Here is what is in stock right now from the Indy 500 rack.
