Yahoo Autos 2003 Indianapolis 500 Winner Gil de Ferran Dies at 56
Gil de Ferran, the 2003 Indianapolis 500 winner and a major player in the past 25 years of global auto racing, died on Friday after an apparent heart attack while racing with his son on a private track in Florida, AP News reports. He was 56.
After a promising junior career in Europe, de Ferran rose to prominence in America with a win at the end of his 1995 rookie CART season. He finished third in the 1997 standings for Walker Racing before joining Penske in 200. There, he won two consecutive CART championships before following the team to the rival Indy Racing League. He went on to win the 2003 Indianapolis 500 before retiring at the end of the season.
When his time as a driver came to an end, de Ferran moved behind the wall to become technical director for the BAR-Honda Formula 1 team. He stayed in that job for just two years before returning to racing as an owner-driver, acquiring an Acura LMP2 chassis to race in the American Le Mans Series alongside a former ChampCar rookie named Simon Pagenaud. The team ran for just two seasons, but in 2009 it moved up to the LMP1 class with Acura's spectacular and short-lived ARX-02a.
Pagenaud and de Ferran would win half the year's races, but two early retirements handed the season-long championship to another Acura prototype. The pair ran a white and silver Chaparral tribute livery in honor of legendary car builder and team owner Jim Hall at Laguna Seca, honoring the team owner that de Ferran raced for in his first season in America.
Both Pagenaud and de Ferran went on to IndyCar, but de Ferran was unable to secure funding for a program run with Jay Penske's Dragon Racing, and his operation shuttered by 2011. His protege Pagenaud went full-time in IndyCar in 2012, eventually earning a seat de Ferran once held at Team Penske. Simon Pagenaud would win an Indianapolis 500 and an IndyCar title of his own. Gil de Ferran would return to F1 leadership, joining Zak Brown's modern McLaren operation in 2018 and again in May of this year.
On social media, fellow Brazilian IndyCar star Tony Kanaan called de Ferran a "champion, friend, rival, mentor at the track and outside of it." Team owner Roger Penske said "Gil defined class as a driver and a gentleman...[his] passing is a terrible loss and he will be missed." Championship-winning protégé Simon Pagenaud compared him to Yoda from Star Wars, adding "I will miss you in my moments of joy, and my moments of doubts, and all the moments in between. You have been my model in life and it feels really empty right here right now."
De Ferran holds the unusual distinction of winning the final race of his career twice. When he left IndyCar in 2003, he went out a winner at Texas. His two seasons as an owner-driver in the American Le Mans Series ended with that 2009 Laguna Seca win. He rewarded Jim Hall for his chance in a Hall/VDS IndyCar with the same honor, winning in Hall's final race as an IndyCar team owner.
In addition to his stellar career as a driver, owner, and executive, de Ferran has also held the record as the fastest man to ever lap a race car for over 20 years. As a Penske driver during the fastest era of oval racing in history, he got a shot to set the record in qualifying for the 2000 race at Fontana. He responded by setting a one-lap average speed of 241.428 mph, still the fastest official lap by a racing car in history.
Gil de Ferran is survived by his wife, Angela, and two children, Luke and Anna.
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