Sad news

[senn65]

Jim Rathmann 1960 Indy 500 winner has passed away.

[clm1545]

Very sad news. Another one of my heros gone.I guess when we heard of a massive stroke and him going directly to hospice, we all knew what the outcome would be.
RIP for a life well lived.

[Deleted]

I give thanks today,for the chance I had to see Jim drive at Indy.Those were the days.RIP Jim.

[professor]

I have his C-1 winner autographed by him and Watson. Will pass it on to my boys someday.

[indydog]

Rest in Peace Mr. Rathmann...

[indycals]

RIP Richard!

When I met Jim in 2007 I asked him about the name switch with his brother. He promptly pulled out his drivers license to show me that legally his name still was Richard

I was thinking that the 51 years Jim lived after winning Indy was quite remarkable. I was aware that Louis Meyer lived over 60 years after his first win, but my curiosity was piqued so I assembled this list of drivers who lived at least 40 years after their first Indy win:

Ralph DePalma 40 yrs 10 mo
Al Unser 41 yrs +
Mario Andretti 42 yrs +
Bobby Unser 43 yrs +
Troy Ruttman 44 yrs 11mo 20 days
Rodger Ward 45 yrs 1mo 6 days
Pat Flaherty 45 yrs 10mo 10 days
Billy Arnold 46 yrs 5mo 11days
Parnelli Jones 48 yrs +
George Souders 49 yrs 1mo 29 days
AJ Foyt 50 yrs +
Jim Rathmann 51 yrs 5mo 24 days
Jules Goux 51 yrs 9 mo 7 days
Pete DePaolo 55 yrs 5m 27 days
Ray Harroun 56 yrs 7m 20 days
Rene Thomas 61 yrs 3mo 24 days
Louis Meyer 67 yrs 4mo 8 days


But... there is one competitor who made it to victory lane that lived even longer than 67 years... 1935 winning Riding Mechanic Jimmy Dunham who lived 74 yrs 1mo 27 days after entering victory lane.

[Art Laski]

Very interesting list!

[Deleted]

For me, Jim Rathmann also has special meaning given that I am into the space program as well as Indycars. Jim Rathmann was the man responsible for talking GM into leasing cars to the NASA astronauts in the 1960s for essentially free (or a very low price anyway) because of the advertising it would bring in if people saw astronauts driving GM products. The astronauts would typically get to drive Corvettes while the wives would get to lease station wagons to haul around the rest of the family.

Of course, the astronaut corvettes were rather notorious, particularly in the early days of Mercury when the astronauts were spending a lot of time in Florida. They would stage some pretty crazy races on the back roads around Cape Canaveral. The funniest experience involved Gus Grissom racing one of the other astronauts (probably Gordon Cooper who was the biggest lead foot of the bunch). They had a bet going as to who had the fastest car. Well, Cooper won it hands down and Grissom's car acted like a slug. So he asked what they did. Turns out the last time Grissom took his car to Rathmann's dealership for scheduled maintenance, Gordo made arrangements with Jim to have one of his mechanics change the rear gear ratio to a higher speed one. So the car could probably have gone 200 mph, but it would have taken a LONG time to accelerate to that speed. Grissom reportedly laughed like crazy when he found out because he knew he'd been had.

Thanks for the memories Jim!