Racer and team owner Roy Winkelmann passed away in Florida early on July 17. He was 81.
Winkelmann, a successful driver in North American sports cars during the early 1960s, was best known as the owner of Roy Winkelmann Racing, one of the most successful Formula 2 teams of the 1960s. His team launched F1 World Champion Jochen Rindt on the world's stage.
At the end of the 1960s, Winkelmann chose to close his team, but returned to the racing scene in the 1970s, on the commercial side of Dan Gurney's All-American Racers-entered Eagle cars, in Indy cars and the American F5000 series.
In the mid-1980s Winkelmann was behind a plan for Team Lotus to return to the Indianapolis 500 with a purpose-built Lotus 96T. However, the car never turned a wheel in competition after the rules were changed on short notice.