Bob Bondurant 1933 -2021

I used to fly in and out of Phoenix, AZ often for work reasons.  After a while I felt that I should see what interesting automotive places there were in the area.  One lunch hour I decided to go over to Bob Bondurant’s school of high performance driving.  I parked my rental car and walked to the entrance to the school.  There was a lady at the desk who introduced herself and asked me what she could do for me.  I told her that I was in town and wanted to see the school for myself.  She had me sign a liability release and invited me to take a look around the facility. As I wandered around there was a lot to see from the race track itself to all the different vehicles to provide different types of training.  Every once in a while, as I toured the grounds, I would be confronted with a sign that warned me that I could go no further.

Eventually I returned to the lady in the main building.  She asked me how I liked my tour and I responded that I liked it a lot, but I kept running into the signs that I mentioned.  She then pointed to Bob and and told me to ask him about looking around.  So I did just that and he told me to follow him.  He took me out to the marketing building and introduced me to his step-daughter.  Bob went back to the class he was mentoring and she took me over to a golf cart and gave me a tour everywhere.  I was able to see everything and it was truly amazing.  There was everything from high performance cars to crazy fast shifter carts.  Then she drove us back to the marketing building and she asked me to stay in the cart as she went up to the driver of a race car who I later learned was the senior instructor.  She told him that Bob wanted him to give me some hot laps around the track.  I was handed a helmet and off we went doing some mighty fast laps around the race track.  Loads of fun.  After we returned I thanked him and then went back to the office where I purchased a black Bondurant polo shirt.  For me it is an important memento.

I would encourage you to find out about Bob Bondurant.  His life was both tragic and amazing.  He was a famous race car driver for many good reasons and was the first to create a school for those that wanted to grow their skills higher than perhaps they believed possible.  His students include many famous actors and race car drivers, but many more people like myself, just wanted to learn high performance driving at the best school around.