EddieCheever

Origins

Eddie McKay Cheever Jr. was born in 1958 in Phoenix, Arizona, but grew up in Rome, Italy, where his American father worked. The Italian upbringing made him fluent in the language and gave him an unusual cultural fluency for an American driver — he was equally at home in the Maranello restaurants where Ferrari engineers dined and in the Indianapolis garages where his career would later peak. He started karting in Italy and won the Italian karting championship multiple times in the early 1970s.

Rise

He rose through Italian Formula 3 and European Formula 2 — runner-up in 1979 — and made his Formula 1 debut in 1978 with Theodore at age twenty. From 1980 to 1989 Cheever raced ten consecutive seasons in Formula 1 with Osella, Tyrrell, Ligier, Renault, Alfa Romeo, Haas Lola, and Arrows. He scored points consistently but never had top-tier machinery during the years he might have won.

Championship Years

His best F1 result was second at the 1983 Canadian Grand Prix at Montreal in the Renault, partnering Alain Prost. He scored nine podiums total but never a Grand Prix victory — the curse of the journeyman who is always quick enough to be useful but never in the right car at the right moment. After 132 Grand Prix starts spanning eleven seasons, Cheever became Formula 1's most-experienced American driver — a record that has stood since 1989 and is unlikely to be broken in the modern era of compressed careers.

Style and Legend

Cheever was an aggressive racer with strong qualifying pace and a willingness to make moves that cooler heads avoided. He spoke perfect Italian, perfect English, and was the rare American driver entirely at home in the European paddock; his cultural fluency was as valuable to teams as his lap times. His weakness was a tendency to over-drive in race trim, which cost him finishes that the qualifying pace had earned.

Beyond Racing

After F1, Cheever moved to American open-wheel racing and found the success that Europe had denied him. He won the 1998 Indianapolis 500 — the most prestigious race in American motorsport — driving for his own Cheever Racing team, with the Aurora Olds engine that no one expected to win. He was the first owner-driver to win Indianapolis since Bobby Rahal in 1986. He continued to operate Cheever Racing in the IndyCar Series through the 2000s and remained an articulate F1 commentator for American audiences. The 1998 Indy 500 win is the trophy of his career; the 132 F1 starts are the proof that an American driver could spend a decade in the world's hardest racing series and earn the respect of his European peers.