Yahoo Autos Don Panoz, Pharmaceutical Innovator and Panoz Cars Founder, Dies at 83
Donald Panoz, American pharmaceutical entrepreneur, co-founder of Panoz cars, and founder of the American Le Mans Series, has died. He was 83 years old.
Panoz attended Greenbrier Military School in West Virginia, where he met his wife, Nancy. After serving in the U.S. Army, he moved to Pittsburgh to study business at Duquesne University. During his time at college, he operated two drugstores. This would be just the beginning of a legendary name in both pharmaceuticals and motorsports.
In 1961, Panoz founded Milan Pharmaceuticals before moving on to create Élan Corp., where he developed a method of delivering medicine through a patch applied to the skin. Today, Panoz's transdermal technology is best known through the nicotine patch that helps people quit smoking.
Having found huge success with his invention, Panoz turned his attention to motorsports. In 1989, he co-founded Panoz Auto Development alongside his son, Dan. The younger Panoz oversaw the road-car aspect of the newly founded car company, building two exotically styled sports cars, the Panoz Roadster (later sold as the AIV Roadster) and the Esperante, both of which used Ford running gear.
The elder Panoz headed the racing side of the business. The first Panoz race car, the Esperante GTR-1, competed in the FIA GT Championship, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the IMSA GT championship. In a 2013 interview, Panoz told Car and Driver why he chose endurance racing. "When [Adrian Reynard] asked what kind of racing I wanted to do, I'd only been to four races in my life, and I was thinking of that Steve McQueen movie and said, 'I want to do those cars that you see at Le Mans.' I didn't know the name of the movie or the series. I just liked that those cars had to endure the weather."
The Panoz family's experience campaigning this first Reynard-built race car inspired what may be Don Panoz's greatest motorsports accomplishment: The founding of the American Le Mans Series.
As Don wrote in a column for Road & Track, he was prompted to start ALMS from an unpleasant experience running the Panoz GTR-1 at the 1998 Daytona 24 Hours. "We were penalized before we ever raced and it left a sour taste in my mouth," Panoz said of his first Daytona experience. He reached an agreement with the Automobile Club de l'Ouest (the sanctioning body for the 24 Hours of Le Mans) and created a new worldwide sportscar series that used the ACO's Le Mans rules. The first ALMS race happened in 1998, and the series ran until 2014, when it merged with the Grand-Am Road Racing series under IMSA.
For 1999, the Panoz race team built a new Le Mans prototype called the LMP1 Roadster-S, competing with success in both the American Le Mans Series and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. In 2005, Panoz switched to the GT2 class with a new Esperante GTLM race car that ended up winning the 12 Hours of Sebring and a GT2 class win at Le Mans, both in 2006.
Beginning in 2008, Panoz turned his focus to the DeltaWing project, a radical new idea for a low-drag race car. The DeltaWing made its racing debut at the 2012 24 Hours of Le Mans and also raced in the Petit Le Mans, but in 2017 new rules made the car ineligible for competition. Throughout all of these racing endeavors, the Panoz team was also building Indy 500-winning IndyCar chassis.
In addition to fielding successful race cars, Panoz was deeply rooted into the business side of car racing. He was either a full or part-owner of three race tracks: Road Atlanta, Sebring Raceway, and Mosport International Raceway. In addition to building the DeltaWing, he was also chairman of the DeltaWing Technology group, which now works on other automotive-based engineering projects aimed at improved fuel efficiency.
In 2012, Panoz sold his holdings in those tracks, along with the ALMS, to NASCAR, dedicating his career to pursuing fuel-efficient and zero-emission technology through racing. In 2017, the company announced plans to field an all-electric race car at Le Mans. While the plan was eventually scrapped, it showed Panoz's drive to develop new technology and innovation in the racing world.
Don Panoz was a singular figure in the motorsports world, a man who forged his own path and tried his hand at a variety of endeavors. He will be missed.
A version of this story originally appeared at Road & Track.
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