Engineer, crew chief, team manager, team founder

After delivering boss John Mecom Jr.’s ex-Roger Penske Zerex Special to England, the Hingham, Massachusetts native stayed on to co-found Bruce McLaren Motor Racing with 1995 inductee Bruce and Pennsylvanian Teddy Mayer. He then spent the next 40-plus years helping lead the team to multiple Formula 1 titles, five consecutive Can-Am championships and three Indy 500 wins. (1972, ’74 and ’76). (Alexander was crew chief for 1996 inductee Johnny Rutherford’s 1974 and ’76 wins.) In the 1980s, Mayer and Alexander teamed up to form Mayer Motor Racing and nearly won the 1984 IndyCar championship with 2005 inductee Tom Sneva. The following year he and Mayer joined Carl Haas to run the American Beatrice Formula 1 effort, then spent nearly three years with Newman/Haas Racing before rejoining McLaren. Autoweek publisher emeritus Leon Mandel called Alexander “the exemplar of the independent artisan crew chief. Nasty, clever, sarcastic, demanding, obsessive. The best of his kind there ever was.”