PARADISE VALLEY, Ariz. – Bob Bondurant, a former championship race car driver who opened a high-performance driving school in 1968 and taught many A-list actors for their film roles, has passed away. He is 88 years old.
According to the family and the Bondurant Racecourse website, Bondurant died Friday in the Phoenix Valley suburb of Paradise. No cause of death was given.
Bondurant teaches stunt driving, competition driving, police chase driving, dodging driving to drivers and bodyguards, among other skills, according to the website. His school had more than 500,000 graduates, it said.
Among the celebrities Bondurant has coached in off-road driving courses for their film roles are Paul Newman, Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood, James Garner, Nicolas Cage, Robert Wagner, Tim Allen and Christian Bale, according to the website.
Born in Evanston, Illinois, Bondurant and his family moved to California when he was 2 years old.
He raced dirt bikes as a teenager before switching to cars in 1958 and racing for the Shelby American, Ferrari and Eagle teams.
Bondurant won 30 of 32 races in the Corvette between 1961 and 1963, and won the GT class at Le Mans in 1964, co-driving with his American counterpart Dan Gurney.
Severely injured in a 1967 crash at the track in Watkins Glen, New York, Bondurant sketched the idea of a high-performance driving school while recuperating.
He opened the school in early 1968 at California’s Orange County International Speedway, then transferred schools to Ontario, California, and then Sonoma, north of San Francisco.
Bondurant transferred driving school to Phoenix after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake in California.
He was inducted into the American Motorsports Hall of Fame in 2003.
Bondurant is survived by his wife, Pat, president and chief executive officer of Bondurant Racecourse. She vows to continue the school’s legacy.
“Bob Bondurant has had a worldwide influence on the motorsport industry, and his legacy will live on forever as Bondurant Raceway moves forward into the future,” said Phoenix Raceway President Julie Giese. know in a statement.
Funeral plans were not immediately released on Sunday.
