Few racing automotive designers have loved such lengthy and distinguished careers as Bob Riley. The American, who has died 93, was each prolific and profitable in a number of disciplines over the course of greater than 60 years on the drafting board.
Riley-designed automobiles received the Indianapolis 500, the US Auto Membership Champ Automobile title a number of occasions and nearly every thing price profitable in North American endurance racing. Repeatedly! His designs triumphed on the Daytona 24 Hour no fewer than 13 occasions.
It is going to be for these successes in sportscar racing that Riley shall be finest remembered, not only for the sheer variety of races and championships received, however as a result of the automobiles that accrued them carried his identify. Riley & Scott took a trio of wins at Daytona in with the MkIII World Sports activities Automobile within the second half of the Nineties, whereas Daytona Prototypes recognized merely as Rileys took an additional 10 within the US endurance traditional in the course of the Daytona Prototype period between 2005 and 2015, together with eight on the bounce.
The MkIII open-top prototype and the household of Riley DP coupes – the MkXI, the MKXX and MkXXVI – (each spaceframe chassis designed along with son Invoice) had been serial championship winners. Drivers of the previous took a complete of eight titles on the unique IMSA path (subsequently recognized Skilled Sportscar Racing), in the US Racing Racing Championship, the American Le Mans Collection and the Grand American Highway Racing Collection. The road of DPs took the Grand Am crown 9 occasions.
“Nearly every thing I drove designed by Bob was unimaginable,” says Wayne Taylor, who received Daytona with each the MkIII and the MkXI, in addition to the IMSA and Grand-Am titles with every automotive. “With a Riley chassis I knew that I used to be going to be able to win races and championships.
“Bob understood what was required for racing on the tough tracks in North America; he understood that you just want mechanical grip. His automobiles had been at all times simple to drive. That was at all times the massive factor a couple of Riley.
Wayne Taylor, pictured along with his staff after profitable the 2005 Daytona 24 Hours, loved huge success in Riley automobiles
Photograph by: F. Peirce Williams / Motorsport Photographs
“He performed an enormous function in my profession going all the way in which again to the Intrepid GTP I raced initially of the Nineties. I’ve so much to thank him for.”
Riley’s successes in single-seaters got here as a employed hand. He began working for US racing legend AJ Foyt for the 1971 season, designing the Coyote with which his employer took third place at Indy that 12 months. An evolution of the automotive Riley conceived for ’73 would give Foyt his fourth and remaining victory on the Brickyard in 1977.
By then, Riley had moved over to work for Pat Patrick. He would design a quartet of Wildcats for him, although not earlier than he’d constructed the primary Indycar to bear his identify in ’74. There could be one other two R&S designs constructed for the Indy Racing League between 1997 and 2000. Each marques had been race winners of their respective collection, as was one other Coyote, with full ground-effects, constructed for Foyt in 1981. It sat on the entrance row at Indy, too.
Lots of Riley’s sportscar designed didn’t carry his monicker, both. The Chevrolet-engined Intrepid RM-1, an IMSA race winner in Taylor’s arms in 1991, was an essential automotive the Riley story: it was the primary machine father and son designed collectively and might be thought-about the roofed forebear of the MkIII. Then there was the primary Cadillac Northstar LMP that flew the flag for the Basic Motors model at Le Mans in 2000 and once more, in a type modified by others, in 2001.
His Ford Mustang GTP – a front-engined prototype that predated the Panoz LMPs of the late Nineties and early 2000s – was a race winner, too. It received first day out in IMSA in 1983, although by no means once more.
But Riley was far more than a designer of prototypes and Indycars. His physique of labor was immense. A string of titles had been claimed by his chassis within the Trans-Am silhouette collection: 13 drivers claimed general titles within the Riley-penned tubeframe racers. GT equipment, tubeframe or in any other case, by his hand received North American sportscar titles with Chrysler’s Dodge model, Oldsmobile and Mazda.
Components Ford, Tremendous Vee chassis and a Busch Grand Nationwide second-tier NASCAR emerged off the Riley drafting board through the years. There was even a Land Pace Document automotive constructed for the salt flats of Bonneville.
Foyt took his fourth Indy 500 win in 1977 with Coyote initially devised by Riley
Photograph by: Motorsport Photographs
Riley began out constructing automobiles by which to compete himself. The primary was a C-Modified Sports activities Automobile Membership of America contender in-built 1959 that adopted on from a pair of Triumphs, a TR2 after which a TR3, bought throughout a stint within the US Air Power. The tubeframe machine often known as a Lynx was powered by a Chevrolet V8 and, he would relate in his autobiography The Artwork of Race Automobile Design printed in 2015, had greater than a touch of of the Jaguar D-type about it.
He started his engineering profession engaged on the Saturn area programme earlier than shifting to Ford, which seconded him to Kar Kraft to work on the mission that yielded the US producer 4 straight Le Mans victories in 1966-69. Suspension design was his concentrate on the Ford MkII and IV. All of the whereas, he was constructing extra Lynx chassis, Vees and FF1600s, in his spare time.
Riley & Scott was established in 1990 with Briton Mark Scott, a former McLaren mechanic who had moved to the USA with Teddy Mayer’s new CART operation arrange on his departure from the F1 staff. R&S was briefly a part of the Reynard Racing Automobiles empire from 1999, earlier than possession shortly returned to the Riley household. Riley Applied sciences was the brand new identify for the corporate.
A ardour for engineering drove Riley to proceed designing racing automobiles into his dotage. Riley by no means actually stopped working: he labored on a brand new Trans-Am automotive this decade. Suspension and aerodynamics had been his twin specialities: he was experimenting with ground-effect similtaneously that different nice innovator, Lotus boss Colin Chapman, within the mid-Seventies.
Bob as soon as remarked to this writer when already deep into his 80s that he was solely working half time lately. In previous age, he identified, he wasn’t attending to the workshops till till 9:30.
Riley & Scott firm he co-founded with Mark Scott in 1990 helped cement Riley’s identify in sportscar racing lore
Photograph by: Motorsport Photographs
