{"id":1565,"date":"2011-04-13T19:19:03","date_gmt":"2011-04-13T19:19:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wp\/?p=1565"},"modified":"2011-04-13T19:19:03","modified_gmt":"2011-04-13T19:19:03","slug":"dan-gurney","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/2011\/04\/13\/dan-gurney\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Gurney"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"Dan<\/a>
Image by The Henry Ford via Flickr<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Today is Dan Gurney<\/a>‘s 80th birthday.<\/p>\n

Normally I wouldn’t blog about such an event. – but to me it is significant.\u00a0Not only is Dan a key figure in motor racing<\/a> history – after all, he is credited with being the first driver to wear a full face helmet and he was the first person to spontaneously spray\u00a0champagne\u00a0at the end of a race<\/a> in celebration at the 1967 Le Mans 24 Hours<\/a> (above).<\/p>\n

He never quite set the world alight with his results, although he was the first to have won in Sports Cars<\/a>, F1, NASCAR<\/a> and Indy Car<\/a>, he only won 4 Formula One<\/a> races in his career as a driver.<\/p>\n

For this, and his other\u00a0achievements, especially in a time of such high attrition in motor racing, I just felt a little nod to him was worth it. I never saw him race, have never seen archive footage of him either, but I appreciate his place in the history of the sport I love.<\/p>\n

\"Enhanced<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is Dan Gurney‘s 80th birthday. Normally I wouldn’t blog about such an event. – but to me it is significant.\u00a0Not only is Dan a key figure in motor racing history – after all, he is credited with being the first driver to wear a full face helmet and he was the first person to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[41,11,29],"tags":[98,273,321,848,1078,1171,1514,2052,2104,2837,2839,2840],"class_list":["post-1565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-formula-one","category-history","category-sport","tag-98","tag-april","tag-auto-racing","tag-dan-gurney","tag-f1","tag-formula-one","tag-indycar","tag-motorsport","tag-nascar","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-sports-car","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6OeSW-pf","jetpack-related-posts":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1565\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thomasjpitts.co.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}