Sponsor, driver

When you think of the Gulf-liveried Ford GTs and Porsche 917s of the late 1960s and ‘70s, thank Grady Davis. A graduate of both Harvard and the University of Texas, he spent close to 45 years with Gulf Oil. When the company frowned on the executive vice president’s burgeoning amateur driving career, he formed a Gulf-sponsored Corvette racing program in 1961 with Don Yenko and Dr. Dick Thompson. One of the first corporate-sponsored private racing teams, it won four national championships. “His efforts established the Corvette as a genuine competition sports car, and set the bar that others would shoot for,” said inductee Carroll Shelby. Davis met famed British endurance racing specialist John Wyer at Sebring in 1966 and became Wyer’s patron. Thereafter, Gulf powder-blue-and-orange JW Automotive Mirages, Ford GTs and Porsches became the standard by which all other endurance racing programs would be measured, winning Le Mans in 1968, ’69 and 1975, and the World Sports Car Championship in 1968, 1970 and ’71. Davis was inducted into the Corvette Hall of Fame in 2010.