5 questions with racing legend Al Unser Jr., grand marshal of WGI's Vintage weekend
For the second time this summer, Watkins Glen International has turned to one of the biggest names in motorsports history as grand marshal for a race weekend.
After NASCAR Hall of Famer Rusty Wallace served the role for August's NASCAR Cup Series Go Bowling at The Glen weekend, two-time Indianapolis 500 winner and Motorsports Hall of Fame of America inductee Al Unser Jr. is grand marshal for the road course's Hilliard U.S. Vintage Grand Prix, which features three full days of racing from Sept. 9-11. Featured marque for the event is Mustang, with a Bugatti reunion and Historic Trans-Am cars also highlighting the weekend.
Unser, 60, also made an appearance at Friday's jam-packed Watkins Glen Grand Prix Festival presented by Chemung Canal in downtown Watkins Glen.
He was winner of one of the closest finishes in Indy 500 history in 1992 and captured the race again in 1994. Unser won 34 career IndyCar races in 329 starts from 1982 to 2007 and was CART Indy Car World Series champion in 1990 and 1994.
Unser closed out titles in the four-race International Race of Champions (IROC) with victories at Watkins Glen in 1986 and 1988. He added a win at WGI in 1989, giving him three wins in five races there.
His father, Al Unser Sr., won the Indy 500 four times and Al Sr.'s brother, Bobby Allison, was a three-time winner of the race. Al Sr. died in December of 2021, seven months after Bobby died.
On Sept. 30 of last year, Unser Jr. married Norma Lawrence. "She's a hoot, she's a hoot. She's a firecracker. I love her dearly," Unser said Friday. The couple live in Indianapolis.
Last year also saw the release of "Al Unser Jr: A Checkered Past," a memoir co-authored with Jade Gurss that chronicles Unser's personal struggles and his racing career.
Question: What are your thoughts on being at Watkins Glen this weekend?
Answer: The people at the Hilliard Vintage Grand Prix here at Watkins Glen, they called me up and said, 'Would you like to be grand marshal?' I said, 'Heck yeah, I'd love to be grand marshal.'
Watkins Glen has so much tradition to it. I've been coming up here since I was a wee little child and watching my dad and Uncle Bobby compete in the early '70s and all that. I had my first opportunity to race up here in 1981 in a Super Vee and then '82 in a Can-Am car. Then I won a couple IROC championships in '86 and '88 up here at The Glen. It's just full of tradition and just beautiful country. Seneca Lake behind us is just awesome.
Q: When you come back up this way, what are some of the memories that come into your mind?
A: Actually, when I first came up here when I was a kid, watching my dad race in the Formula 5000 series in the early '70s. I think it was '74 when I was first up here. As I've come back over the years, to see the changes at the track, all the improvements done to it, it has truly, truly turned into a world-class raceway here in the United States. It's just great.
Q: If you had to pick a favorite moment from your career, what would it be?
A: I guess my favorite moment is winning the Indy 500 in 1992. That was just a lifelong dream of mine. I was just so blessed to be born where I was born, simply put. With Dad being a four-time winner and Uncle Bobby being a three-time winner and just the success they had in all of racing ‒ not just the 500 but in the IROCs and 24 Hours of Daytona and all that kind of stuff ‒ just so blessed to be born when I was born.
Q: Your thoughts on what your dad and uncle meant to the sport and you?
A: My dad and my uncle, I loved them dearly. The kind of people they were away from the racetrack were great people. Especially my dad was a greater person as a father than he ever was as a race car driver, and he's one of the top legends as a race car driver. We miss them dearly. I feel very fortunate that we get to carry on their legacy and that's what I've taken on in my responsibility with their passing is to make sure that they're still here with us all the time at the races and so on.
Q: Unser and Andretti are at the top in terms of iconic racing families. What's the relationship between the families?
The Unsers and Andretti's, they go back a long ways. Uncle Bobby was real close with Mario although he never was a teammate, where my dad was an actual teammate of Mario's. When I first met Michael Andretti, Mario's son, we were like 10, 11 years old and we were riding mini-bikes in Pennsylvania. The families have just grown up together and they're the elite of the elite. I feel blessed, as I'm sure Michael does, that we were born where we were born and we pursued our careers the way we pursued them and were highly successful at it.
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This article originally appeared on Elmira Star-Gazette: Al Unser. Jr. named grand marshal for U.S. Vintage Grand Prix at WGI
