Off-road driver

While many IndyCar fans think of Roger as 1998 inductee Rick’s older brother, off-road racers know him as a top-shelf competitor. He scored four class wins at the Baja 1000, five at Pikes Peak, two SCORE/HDRA championships and a Mickey Thompson Grand National Sport Trucks title (1985). The senior member of the “Mears Gang” also tried his hand at IndyCar racing shortly after Rick, four-and-a-half years his junior, had become a star, but never latched on with a top team. From 1978-84 he made 31 starts, including the 1982 and ’83 Indy 500s. He scored 17 Top 10s and finished 4^th three times. Rick and Roger Mears were born in Wichita, KS and raced go-karts, stock cars and motorcycles. “We raced every weekend to have fun and we just loved doing it, and all of a sudden, it turned into a career, which was a dream come true for all of us,” Roger told the IMS website. Today Mears can be seen at the races with his son, NASCAR driver Casey Mears.