Doc Bundy - Doc Bundy Race History

Doc Bundy Race History

Doc Bundy completes the Regogo Racing track triumvirate along with the Owner and Founder, Paul Rego, and the Race Cars, the 79 and the 23b and the Elite, as the legendary and iconic Race Car Driver of the team. Without Doc, Regogo Racing has a very good exhibition of great cars; with Doc, Regog has a race team that plays to win and still looks pretty. Come out to the track and meet Doc, or get to know him at this site, because he is not only a gentleman and a scholar, but also one of the best drivers on the track.

Doc’s road racing career begins with his job as a wheel polisher and technician for famed Porsche racer Peter Gregg in 1973. The next year he moved to Al Holbert Racing, where he spent his next five years preparing cars while waiting for his turn in the driver’s seat. In 1980, Doc began driving for Holbert Racing in a Porsche 924, capturing a National Championship as a rookie. He followed that by driving a 924 Turbo and capturing the GTO Category at the world’s greatest sports car race, the 24 Hours at LeMans. Proving himself to be a national car star, he was rewarded with the chance to drive for Jaguar, Ford, and Chevrolet (Corvettes) over the next few years, topped with a season racing a Porsche 962.

The particular Doc Bundy story that deserves its own stage begins around the year 1990 when the Escort World Championship was born. The International Motor Sports Association (IMSA) started a new racing series featuring production cars in the high-performance category, and it consisted of two classes of competition. The top class, World Challenge, showcased high-performance sports cars like the Chevrolet Corvette and Lotus Esprit Turbo. The second class, Super Production, was for lower-horsepower sports cars including the Honda CRX, Eagle Talon, and the new Mazda Miata. IMSA enlisted Bridgestone to sponsor a race series that would feature its tires, and thereby created the Bridgestone Supercar Championship Series, which ran for five furious years ending in 1995.

It was a pure Nineties thing, with big crowds, a TV deal, sponsorship, and huge manufacturer interest. Given the screaming economy, nobody was shocked that the primary protagonists in the series would be the Porsche 991 Turbos with the Brumos prepared cars and featuring factory drivers such as Hans Stuck and Hurley Haywood. Less probable was the entry of Lotus, which, as a General Motors holding in the early 1990s, wanted a piece of the monster-dollar import market that was mostly going to Porsche. Lotus had commissioned Peter Stevens to redesign the original shape of the Esprit, resulting in the Type 105’s, commonly referred to as X180R’s. They had blueprinted engines, adjustable suspensions, larger wheels and tires, revised bodywork with larger front air dam and rear wing, stripped out interiors, FIA roll cages, and lighter body shells. Lotus entered their Esprit X180R’s with numerous drivers, but the number one driver remained Doc Bundy, with Andy Pilgrim and David Murray featuring heavily in the standings, and additional varied drivers including Paul Newman.

These cars, slightly modified over time, were hugely successful in the IMSA Bridgestone Supercars Series, and in 1992 Doc Bundy won the Drivers title and Championship. IMSA crumbled under the pressure from other manufacturers, and rules were again changed to disadvantage the X180R, resulting in declining performance relative to others. Doc became a TV spokesperson and matinee idol.

Doc continued to drive, instruct, consult, and be a spokesman for Lotus, Panoz, and Porsche, until he recently became part of the perfect storm by agreeing to join forces with Paul Rego and the other members of the team at Regogo Racing. The 2011 racing season, which was the first real season for Regogo Racing and the first race for the 79 with Doc as driver, was beyond the reasonable expectations, as the 23B won most of its races and the 79 was increasingly competitive each successive outing.

We left out a mind-boggling amount of accomplishments earned by and honors bestowed upon Doc Bundy, but nobody tells the actual stories better than Doc himself, so we are providing Doc with the stage and forum to tell us what’s on his mind at any given moment, to share his thoughts post-race, and to let us into his head during the race through the driver camera. Please see Regogoracing.com and Doc's Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/doc.bundy.