The Fifth Annual Legends of Riverside Racing Film Festival in late March at the Riverside International Automotive Museum honored Bob Bondurant as its latest inductee. He joins Dan Gurney, Carroll Shelby, Parnelli Jones and Bobby Unser as a Legend of Riverside.
As the leader of Shelby’s FIA Manufacturers Championship-winning Cobra team in 1965, Bondurant scored seven wins from seven starts as Shelby American claimed the only FIA World Championship ever won by an American manufacturer. He is, of course, more famous for founding his Bondurant School of High Performance Driving, an idea that came to him while he recuperated from injuries received in a nasty crash at Watkins Glen during the 1967 USRRC season.
On display at the museum were the Washburn Corvette in which Bondurant burnished his early reputation as a winning racer before joining Shelby’s squad, one of the Cobra Coupes he drove during the successful championship assault, the Ford GT40 in which he and Richie Ginther finished 3rd in the 1965 24 Hours of Daytona and a Cobra roadster replica that was a gift from his wife.
Bondurant also took part in an afternoon panel discussion moderated by VR editor/publisher Casey Annis about the United States Road Racing Championship (USRRC) that also included Tony Settember, Dick Guldstrand and John Morton. Several films of USRRC races were shown, along with taped broadcasts from ESPN’s old “Days of Glory” series hosted by Dave Despain.
At the evening’s banquet, Bondurant recounted many of his fondest memories from his career during an interview with Ed Justice Jr. Also at the banquet, Trevor Harris was honored with the event’s Peter Bryant Award for engineering excellence, and Dick Guldstrand was stunned to be presented with the Les Richter Award because he had shared many adventures and accomplishments with Richter at Riverside.
