Tommy Kendall burst onto the professional sports car racing scene in a Clayton
Cunningham IMSA GTU Mazda at 19 years old. He had to rush between classes and exams at UCLA and IMSA race weekends. He was a winner straight away and won back to back GTU championships in 1986 and 1987. Switching to the Chevrolet camp for 1988, he won his third consecutive GTU title in a Cars & Concepts Beretta and he was not yet 22 years old. In four GTU seasons, he had won 15 races in just 50 starts. And all this from a young man people said was too tall to fit in a race car. In many cases of young sensations, a lasting career does not materialize. In Tommy’s case, it most certainly did. TK started collecting Trans-Am wins in 1990 and won the championship that year. He added titles in 1995, 1996 and 1997 driving Roush Mustangs. 1997 was a spectacular year with eleven consecutive wins, setting an all time record for win streaks. For that amazing performance, he was named Racer Magazines’ Racer of the Year. All this success came after a horrible accident in 1991 which shattered his ankle but not his spirit. Besides Trans-Am, Tommy competed in IMSA GTP, six seasons of IROC, Nascar, Corvette Challenge and the 24 Hours of Daytona. In the second of his two Daytona 24 Hour wins, he was teamed with four much shorter drivers. Tommy had to squeeze into the seat. Without a word of complaint, Tommy drove a big share of the race. In fact, Tommy was most uncomfortable and could only laugh about it a couple of weeks later. When Tommy moved into the announcing booth for champ car races, he won rave reviews for insightful and candid observations. He was particularly adept at understanding race strategy and would regularly predict the running order that would follow pit stops. He continues to show his passion for sports cars and racing on his Speed Channel assignments.
By Bill Lovell
It was my good fortune to be on hand, as the IMSA writer for AutoWeek, when Tommy Kendall arrived on the road racing scene when he was all of 18 and concurrently beginning his undergraduate days at UCLA. Though, truth be told, the initial impression was less than overwhelming. He was ninth on the GTU grid at Miami in 1985, and finished eighth, two laps down to Jack Baldwin.
A year later, he drove an old and tired Clayton Cunningham Racing Mazda RX-7 to become the youngest driver ever to win an IMSA championship. The party was just getting started. He repeated the following year in the same car, and the year after that, in a Chevrolet Beretta.
Still, watching him on the track, there was nothing spectacular about him, nothing that made you shake your head. Until you checked the stopwatch. Lap after lap, he was just consistently fast. In short, at a very young age, he drove like a relentless, crafty veteran.
After his first championship season, I put it this way in Auto Racing USA:
"Every once in a while, a kid comes along who drives like he has 100,000 miles on his racing resume."
You knew, even then, that the kid was going to be one of the great ones. And he didn't disappoint.
Moving to the SCCA's Trans-Am series in 1990 – still in a Chevy Beretta – he didn't dominate right way, waiting until the season's sixth race to claim his first win. But he ended the season with six victories in 15 starts, winning the championship in decisive style.
It was a performance Trans-Am fans would grow used to. Unfortunately, that would take a while to happen.
The two most dreaded words in any racer's vocabulary are, "something broke."
In June of 1991, just after graduating from UCLA with a degree in economics, he was battling Geoff Brabham for the lead in an IMSA GTP race at Watkins Glen when a wheel hub snapped on his Chevy Intrepid at the end of the back straight, with horrendous results.
I was there. I remember waiting through a seemingly interminable red-flag period for news about Kendall. The news wasn't good. His right leg was broken in two places, his right ankle crushed and his left ankle broken. He was in surgery for more than nine hours at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, with the surgery team headed by the renowned Dr. Terry Trammell.
It would take months of rehab before Kendall could compete again. Years later, he referred to the crash as the "crossroads of my racing career."
But amazingly, the second half of Kendall's career would be even better.
Following a limited schedule in 1992, Kendall moved to Roush Racing Ford Mustangs in 1993, winning the IMSA GTS championship and taking a class win at the 24 Hours of Daytona. He then moved with Roush from IMSA to the Trans-Am. He didn't win the title the first year, but the next three seasons saw one of the all-time most dominant performances in American road racing history.
Champion in 1995. Champion in 1996. That was the warm-up.
Kendall won the first 11 races on the way to an overpowering championship run in the 1997 season, breaking Mark Donohue's consecutive win record of 8. He was named RACER magazine's Road Racer of the Year – and Driver of the Year.
He would drive a while longer before turning his talents to broadcasting, but 1997 was the high water mark of an incredible career.
Former NASCAR driver Brian Vickers (L) with Tommy Kendall
(MSHFA)
