Dave MacDonald

David George MacDonald (July 23, 1936 – May 30, 1964) was an American road racing champion noted for his successes driving Corvettes and Shelby Cobras in the early 1960s. At the age of 27 he was killed in the 1964 Indianapolis 500. In his four-year racing career, MacDonald competed in 118 races with 52 victories and 75 top-three finishes.

MacDonald was inducted into the National Corvette Museum's Corvette Hall of Fame in 2014, and into the United States Road Racing Championship (USRRC) Hall of Fame in 2016.

MacDonald began racing in 1956, running a ’55 Chevrolet Corvette on Southern Californian drag strips. He won nearly 100 trophies between 1956 and 1959, all in Corvettes.

At the 1958 NHRA Western US Drag Racing Championships at Chandler Air Force Base in Arizona, MacDonald set two standing start speed records in a stock '58 Corvette - 104.68 mph in the ¼ mile and 123.11 mph in the 1/2 mile. Between 1958-1962 he drove Corvettes to six more speed records in the 1/4, 1/2 and one-mile distances at annual US speed trials.

MacDonald moved to the road racing circuit in 1960, and his first race was at Willow Springs Raceway on February 13–14. He ran a ’57 Corvette to a fourth place finish, behind winner Bob Bondurant in Saturday’s preliminary race, and then won Sunday’s feature race to record his first ever victory. At the end of the 1962 season, he had driven Corvettes to 28 victories in 64 races, including 42 top-three finishes. MacDonald’s unique style of drifting through turns at full speed made him a crowd favorite and earned him the nickname "Master of Oversteer".

In June 1962, Zora Arkus-Duntov selected Dave MacDonald and Dick Thompson to do the shakedown testing during development of Chevrolet's all new 1963 Corvette Sting Ray. Four days of all-out road testing were performed on a coupe and a convertible at the General Motors Proving Grounds in Milford, Michigan. General Motors used footage from these tests to create a promotional film entitled "Biography of a Sports Car". The film was distributed around the globe as part of GM's marketing campaign promoting the new sports car. In September Duntov and other Chevrolet executives presented MacDonald with the first ever 1963 Z06 Sting Ray that he race debuted at Riverside Raceway on October 13, 1962. The highly anticipated race also marked the debut of Carroll Shelby’s new Ford Cobra Roadster. MacDonald and Cobra driver Billy Krause exchanged the lead during the first hour before both cars dropped out with mechanical troubles.

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Wikipedia