Driver, team owner

Bob Sharp was racing Datsuns before most people had even heard of Datsuns. By the time he was through, he’d won six SCCA national championships, built his Wilton, CT store into one of the largest Datsun (now Nissan) dealerships in the country and put club racing on mainstream America’s radar by fielding cars for Tom Cruise, Walter Payton and Paul Newman. Sharp went to the Runoffs for the first time in 1964 and brought the marque its first of a record-setting number of national titles in 1967. He’d earn five more championships and an IMSA GTU crown by the end of 1975, and Bob Sharp Racing would win another 11 titles with drivers like Newman, Jim Fitzgerald, Elliott Forbes-Robinson and Bob’s son Scott piloting the distinctive red-white-and-blue machines. (Bob’s driving career ended in 1976 at Lime Rock when he broke his wrist in a crash.) Scott went on to become the 1996 IRL co-champion and 2009 ALMS LMP1 co-champ. Bob was inducted into the New England Auto Racers Hall of Fame in 2013.