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" Dan Gurney&amp;#039;s achievements in motorsports and engineering\u00A0are so numerous, moments that would define another&amp;#039;s career are registered as small blips in the incredible life of Gurney. Today is his 85th birthday, so to celebrate, we&amp;#039;re going to take a look at his performance at the 1962 French Grand Prix, his first F1 victory and Porsche&amp;#039;s sole F1 victory. For the first time since 1957, the\u00A0French Grand Prix was held at the Rouen-Les-Essarts street circuit near Rouen, France. It was known as a bumpy, difficult circuit with an especially fearsome downhill section\u00A0consisting of quick sweepers leading directly into a slow hairpin. Ferrari didn&amp;#039;t enter any cars in this race, apparently due to a strike in Italy.  Even without Ferrari to contend with, Porsche&amp;#039;s single-seater 804 was arguably outgunned by the primarily British competition. Porsche&amp;#039;s F1 history isn&amp;#039;t terribly well known, because unlike the other forms of motorsport it participated in\u2013namely sports car racing\u2013it wasn&amp;#039;t all that successful. It first entered a handful of heavily modified 718s in\u00A01961, and the purpose-built 804 in 1962. While the 804 had a 180-horsepower air-cooled flat-eight (with a 10,000 rpm redline!) that was also\u00A0used in a handful of 718s,\u00A0it was outgunned by\u00A0BRM&amp;#039;s more powerful V8. It was also technologically a step behind the genius Lotus 25, the first racer to use a monocoque chassis. The 1962 Grand Prix at Rouen, though, would be Porsche&amp;#039;s shining hour in F1. &amp;quot;[Rouen-Les-Essarts] is\u00A0very rough on suspension, gear-train, and steering,&amp;quot; said Gurney, in a pre-race interview.\u00A0&amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s a much rougher circuit than it looks like it is.&amp;quot;        To boot, Gurney was feeling under the weather before the green flag had even waved. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ve got a doggone cold, and I feel like I&amp;#039;ve already raced,&amp;quot; said Gurney. Despite that, he&amp;#039;s optimistic.\u00A0&amp;quot;I think towards the end of the race, we may be in pretty good shape,&amp;quot; he says. His comments about Rouen&amp;#039;s roughness and Porsche&amp;#039;s chances proved to be incredibly\u00A0fortuitous.\u00A0Over the course of the race, more than half the field retired leaving Gurney to skillfully work his way to the top, taking the lead with 13 laps to go. That&amp;#039;s not to say Gurney&amp;#039;s victory was down solely to luck, since he finished well\u00A0ahead of Richie Ginther, Bruce McLaren, and John Surtees. It was the Porsche&amp;#039;s\u00A0reliability, and Gurney&amp;#039;s skill.  Gurney won a non-championship race in Stuttgart\u00A0the following week, but\u00A0Rouen remains Porsche&amp;#039;s only Grand Prix win.\u00A0It pulled out of F1 after 1962, despite placing fifth in the\u00A0Manufacturers\u00A0championship, once place ahead of Ferrari. As is the case today, F1 was extremely expensive, and Porsche was\u00A0too small to dedicate resources to it. &amp;quot;The technology developed just for the F1 program wasn&amp;#039;t something that could be immediately translate into the production sports cars of the time,&amp;quot; said Porsche&amp;#039;s U.S. Motorsports communications manager Dave Engleman, in an email to Road &amp;amp;amp; Track. Gurney&amp;#039;s legend only grew,\u00A0with victories in NASCAR, Indycar, and at Le Mans. That&amp;#039;s just as a driver: He&amp;#039;s a hugely important engineer too, who gave the world his namesake Gurney flap among many other innovations. His Formula 1 peak came in 1967 where he won the Belgian Grand Prix in a car of his own design, the stunning Eagle-Westlake Mk1. He remains the only American to win a Grand Prix in an American car. That his victory at the 1962 French Grand Prix is just one of many highlights in his long career speaks to how incredible Gurney is. And to think he did it with a doggone cold.   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.roadandtrack.com/motorsports/a28815/dan-gurneys-first-f1-victory-was-porsches-only-grand-prix-win/>