Neither injuries nor age prevent “Doc” from climbing behind the wheel of a racecar.
William “Doc” Ingram has divided his life between Doctoring and racing cars, and at 64, the New River Arizona retiree is far from hanging up his steering wheel. He’s still fast.
“If you’re fast in one motorsport, you can be fast in whatever car you get into,” he said.
Ingram is aiming for his third ProAutoSports class championship in six years and is coming off Arizona’s summer club racing circuit recess with a fresh engine and fresh paint on his Mazda GTU sports car for the St. John’s Grand Prix on Labor Day Weekend.
“I’ve got a good chance for the championship if I don’t screw up anything,” he said.
“Doc,” as he is known around the pits, a nickname that stuck with him since his service as a Navy Corpsman, is relatively new to the road racing.
He earned his racing stripes running off-road, criss-crossing wild, open desert over hundreds of rough kilometers in racing machines that bounce their contents around like a paint mixing machine does a gallon of bone white.
He piloted a single seat unlimited racing car sponsored by SKOAL at 135 mph, even at night. “You just get a feel for it,” he said.
In 1984, Doc was sidelined due to a crash in the Baja 1000. He was unable to sit for any length of time, so he was unable to race. “I was really depressed,” but not to worry, his friends, racing drivers, Doc Sauers and Rick Mears (Indy 500 winner) sent Doc a surprise. A semi pulled in front of the house and a Lola Formula Super-Vee rolled off the truck. Ingram couldn’t sit up in a racecar, but he could lay down, the driving position unique to formula cars.
Ingram tried his luck in that car at the oval racing at Phoenix International Raceway and at the now defunct Ontario Motor Speedway in California, and worked on making the transition from dirt to pavement, but after recovery from his injuries the call of the desert was too much. With a new car and a new sponsor, US Tobacco “Skoal Bandit” he headed back to the desert.
Ten years later, in 1996 his off-road career ended at the hand of a “drunken spectator,” he said, who moved a barrier placed on the circuit so racers would not drive off a cliff.
“I flew off the cliff,” he said.
Following his racer instinct with just a few yards of desert left before thin air, “I stood on the gas.” His front bumper hit the canyon wall just six feet below the rim and he pancaked onto the desert floor some 40 feet below, the impact compressed his spine.
“I went from 6’ 4” to 6’ 1” in an instant,” he said. “ I really thought my racing days were done.”
He was out of racing for a year, and when he drove the same desert course the next year, “I kept looking over the next hill. I just didn’t have that edge anymore.”
After that, Doc only raced in his dreams until he met a Mazda RX-7 racer who encouraged Doc to try road racing with the Chandler Arizona based ProAutoSports, an ASA-Racing Division.
Doc elected to get into club racing driving a Mazda RX7 and quickly became faster than drivers piloting higher class RX7’s. Doc spent a year learning to keep the car pointed up the track and stay on the pavement.
In 2002, Doc moved up to the Pro-7 class featuring a lot of good drivers. Dan Murphy (former LeMans winner) and Lauren Pond were leading the way in that very fast race series. Doc was determined to beat them both. He followed them a lot, learning quickly the art of road racing.
In 2003, Murphy left the series and it became the “Doc and Lauren show” with the two of them duking it out for the win all year long. They put on some spectacular shows as neither would give the other an inch on track. Doc finished first in the Championship and also earned the most Popular Driver award at year end.
2004 was a repeat of the prior year. It seemed it wasn’t a race unless Doc had tire marks from Lauren and Lauren had tire marks for Doc. Ten grueling and exciting races later, Doc earned his second championship in ASA-Racing at ProAutoSports.
To be a winner, he says, a driver has to expect to win. It’s a mindset.
“I call it disengaging my brain,” Ingram said. “I always expect to win, and if I don’t, I have to figure out what happened. But in ASA-ProAutoSports the competition is tough and the top dog can’t look back or the rest of the racers will run right over him.”
Larry Pond, Managing Director of The St. Johns Grand Prix said, “We are really pleased to have such a well known and accomplished racer as Doc Ingram competing at The St. Johns Grand Prix. He brings a crowd wherever he goes and is especially nice to spectators and autograph seekers. I once saw him taking a photo for a beautiful blond lady and her dog in his driver seat. Her name was Carol. Now the two of them are inseparable and married….so I guess he knew what he was doing! Or, maybe it was Carol that knew what she was doing!
The St. Johns Grand Prix runs Labor Day Weekend in St. Johns Arizona. The feature race Sunday is the ASA-Speed trucks and is televised on the Outdoor Life Network Channel. Monday follows with races featuring stock cars, sports cars and Indy cars. For more information, call the St. Johns Chamber of Commerce 928-337-2000 or go to the website www.proautosports.com and click on the St Johns link.