When: 1979

Where: Daytona International Speedway

What: 24 Hours of Daytona

Who: Rick Mears

The man known as “Rocket” Rick Mears turned 65 today. Thousands of words have been written about his peerless IndyCar career, and with the Californian’s great achievements in open-wheel racing firmly entrenched in our memories, we wanted to celebrate a lesser-known aspect of the Californian’s career for his birthday.

The four-time Indy 500 winner will forever be linked with the Brickyard, but his brief foray into sports car racing continues to stand as a rather obscure aspect of Mears’ three decades in competition.

He made his debut at the longest endurance race on the North American calendar in 1979, the great 24 Hours of Daytona, with renowned Porsche tuner/driver Bruce Canepa and sports car stalwart Monte Shelton.

The big IMSA season opener spanned Feb. 3-4, and for Mears, who would go on to win his first Indy 500 a few months later with Roger Penske, tackling the high banks of Daytona International Speedway and its rapid infield road course proved was an easy transition.

For Canepa, who also owned and ran the team, recalling Mears’ first sports car race brought back a wave of excellent memories.

“We went to Daytona in 1979 and none of us had been there; Rick had never raced there,” Canepa told RACER. “We drove a two-year-old Porsche that was listed as a 935 against real 935s. We were actually in a 934.5. It was a car that I purchased used from George Dyer; he didn’t like it and he fire-saled that thing to me. It’s the only way I could’ve gotten it at that time in my life, and I ended up with the turbocharged Porsche racecar.

“I did a couple of races with it before Daytona and then we decided to go to the 24 Hours. Rick and I had been friends for a while; he’s also a West Coast guy. I’d done Pikes Peak and he had done Pikes Peak. We did similar things at that point. He did it full-time and I did it for fun.

“We like the same kinds of racecars, and when the opportunity came up to go to Daytona, I don’t even know how we got there but it was just a conversation, I said, ‘Would you like to do it?’ And of course, you know what his answer was to that, you don’t even have to think about it. So Rick became my co-driver along with Monte Shelton. Three rookies at Daytona.”

Pitted against obscenely powerful and brutally fast 935s, Canepa’s 934.5 was never going to challenge the frontrunners on outright pace.

“Well, and it is funny, because we were driving the hardest of those turbocharged cars,” he said. “We were driving a car that was built in 1977 against the new [1979] 935s and there was a big difference. Those [1977] cars didn’t have the relocated suspension points, they didn’t have the tub sitting nice and low, which lowered the roll centers and got the motor low as well.

“They all had twin turbos and we had a single turbo with a huge amount of lag. We didn’t know any of the tricks that the other guys doing, the Peter Greggs, the Interscopes, and the Whittingtons. At that time, we were in a streetcar with flares on it; that is honestly what we drove. It had a little over 500hp. In fact, I think my streetcar drove better than that damn car.”

Despite the 934.5’s vast deficiencies compared to the brand-new twin-turbo Porsches, exceptional driving from Canepa’s upstart team, with Mears as the standard bearer, kept the No. 11 car in the hunt.

“Needless to say, Rick is an absolute first-class act,” Canepa continued. “He doesn’t make a mistake in a racecar. He doesn’t try to prove anything to anybody. He is fast without blinking. He just does it. We went down there to Daytona and didn’t expect to prove anything. We wanted to do the race so we could say we did it. We wanted to have fun, to have a good time. And that is exactly what we did, but we also had a shot at doing something special and Rick was amazing in that car.”

The rookie trio, led by Mears, pulled off a minor miracle by reaching the finish line third overall in the 934.5.

As someone who made his name in off-road racing before turning his attention to Indy cars, Mears’ impressive debut at the 24 Hours of Daytona was simply another demonstration of how vast talent has no boundaries.

“He was definitely a huge part of how we finished,” Canepa said. “I mean, we all drove our turns and stuff, but Rick was a big part in us finishing third overall, which was kind of unheard of in an old car. What can I say? That guy, he was a superstar, he is a superstar. He was a natural talent in a racecar. If he wasn’t a natural sports car talent, then he definitely worked hard enough to earn his stripes, because by the time he got there he could do pretty much anything he wanted to do. It was obvious in everything he drove. It’s still amazing to think we finished third overall; it surprised everybody as much as it did us.”

Having formed a stronger bond across 24 hours of endurance racing action, Canepa and Mears stayed in touch after Daytona and remain friends today.

“I went to Indy all the years that he drove,” he said. “I didn’t miss many races back then. To stand down in Turn 1 at Indy and watch him come sail in there in those days, whether it be qualifying where the race, it was pretty freaking awesome. You could tell he was doing it different than a whole lot of other guys. First of all, he looked like he was half-asleep resting doing it!”

With Mears destined for Indy 500 glory after standing on the podium at Daytona, Canepa says he’s proud to have witnessed his friend’s immediate (albeit brief) impact in endurance racing.

“He’s a very real guy, and he deserves as much applause as he can get,” he added. “He got the applause when we raced IndyCars, but his time in sports car racing gets forgotten. It should not be forgotten about.”

After Daytona, Mears would go on to make a handful of appearances – mostly in Porsche 935s – and added another podium with a third-place finish at the Watkins Glen 6 Hours in 1981. At the end of the 1981 season, the Rocket narrowed his focus to IndyCar and went on to add three more Indy 500 wins in 1984, 1988, and 1991. (Click on the gallery below for larger images of Mears at Indy.)

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