Remembering John Cooper

John Cooper, who died Wednesday at the age of 84, was a major player in the motorsports world, not just during his time from 1979-82 as the president of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He was the kind of man who knew not only the big sponsor developments of the day, but why Joe Smith missed Saturday night’s feature at the local dirt track. Cooper was as much of a racing enthusiast as a mover-and-shaker.

The Iowa native attended Northwestern University and then started hanging around tracks in 1953, serving as a “stooge” for sprint cars and championship cars. He even appeared in crew photographs from 1954 Indianapolis 500 qualifying.

The next year he was the first employee of the United States Auto Club. In December 1955, USAC hadn’t held a race yet, but he became its first official employee when good friend Duane Carter, then an eight-time “500” starter, was named the first USAC director of competition but couldn’t come to work right away. 

The first USAC race was at Fort Wayne on Jan. 8, 1956, and Cooper remained with the organization for a few months before going to work for the Leo Burnett advertising agency.

In 1972, Cooper was named president of Ontario (California) Speedway, at time when the track went through several management changes. In 1974, he played a pivotal role in helping motorsports through the energy crunch that swept the country. He kept a small office in Washington, D.C., as a lobbyist and legislators essentially asked him to help the motorsports industry implement a 10 percent across-the-board reduction in energy consumption.

In late October 1979, Cooper took over as president of IMS. Championship Auto Racing Teams (CART) had just been formed and there was a movement in open-wheel racing to reunite the sport again. Cooper helped merge CART and USAC into the short-lived Championship Racing League (CRL). He moved on from IMS just before the 1982 Month of May to serve as chairman of the Automobile Competition Committee of the United States (ACCUS).

Cooper always maintained close ties with NASCAR. He helped lead several “500” drivers to race at Pocono in the late 1970s including Tim Richmond, who arrived in NASCAR as a one-off and ended up making a career in stock cars. Cooper deserves a lot of the credit for that.

His ties to NASCAR and longtime friendship with Bill France led to the presidency of Daytona International Speedway from 1987-90. Before that, while he was IMS president, he began talks to get NASCAR to race at Indianapolis. That proved to be a bit premature, but later when Tony George realized the time had come for NASCAR at IMS, Cooper was instrumental behind the scenes in making that happen.