A moment in time with Al Unser Jr.

The Grand Marshal for this year’s Watkins Glen Grand Prix Festival was none other than Al Unser Jr. He is a two-time Indianapolis 500 winner (1992 and 1994), a two-time CART IndyCar World Series Champion (1990 and 1994), a two-time IROC Series Champion (1986 and 1988), and the 1982 SCCA Can-Am Champion. These are just but a few of his racing highlights and achievements in an illustrious career.

I took this photograph at the 1986 Miami Grand Prix, which took place at Tamiami Park. It was just prior to the first practice session when I spotted him in the pits. He was just putting in his gloves. Afterwards he gave me a thumbs up! Unser Jr. went on to qualify 19th, and then won the race. 36 years later I was able to get him to sign it for me. It was worth the wait!

TJ….2022

About terryjohnsen

Writer/photographer of vintage/historic sports car racing. See you at the track! Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Terry Johnsen and terryjohnsen.wordpress.com with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
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