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My Questions for David Letterman
A Blast from the Past
By Gregg Leary and Sean Leary
Category:Auto Racing -> Indy Car
With the 93rd Running of the Indianapolis 500 just around the corner, I’d like to pull an archived interview with Rahal Letterman Racing co-owner David Letterman that my son conducted in September of 1997. It says a great deal about the passion that Indy native Letterman has for the Brickyard and “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing.” Bobby Rahal won the Indy 500 in 1986 and Rahal Letterman Racing captured the Borg-Warner trophy in 2004 with Buddy Rice. RLR fields the #17 “DAFCA Special” wearing a retro Gurney Eagle paint scheme for Oriol Servia in this year’s Indianapolis 500.
SL: Growing up in Indy, did you ever think you would own part of an IndyCar team?
DL: No...I never did. I never knew it was possible and it was just like a dream. I had no idea of how you could get near those cars. I had no idea of how you would be able to drive them or even walk through the pits, because when you’re a kid everything is a wonder. You can’t imagine how things happen and even when I got older I didn’t think it would be possible…I just didn’t know what it meant to be an owner or a part owner. I assumed you had to know a lot about racing to be involved in it, so for me it was a lovely thing when I got to participate with Bobby. (Rahal) But in answer to your question, when I was a kid I had NO idea.
SL: Is doing “The Late Show” or being a Rahal partner more fun?
DL: Well, what I’m doing here…entertaining America, believe me, is hard, difficult, dirty, grueling, fatiguing, backbreaking work. It’s NOT fun. Show business is NOT fun, Sean. Let that be a lesson to you. There’s NO fun to be had in show business. So being involved with the race team is nothing but fun…because I show up…there’s always free food…I get to hang around the motor home. It’s air conditioned…I get to go in and take a shower whenever I want. Then I get to go outside and sign autographs…people think I’m a big shot. FREE FOOD…did I mention I get all the free food I can eat?
SL: (Laughing) Yes.
DL: I go sit around the pits and scream at my driver a little bit…slap him around the helmet, then I come back to the motor home, have some more free food. Then in the middle of the race I go in there and take a long nap, shower up again...go back down to the pits and if things go right, I get a trophy. So no…this is nothing but fun!
SL: Who were some of your favorite drivers when you were growing up?
DL: When I was a kid it was guys like Jimmy Clark, Dan Gurney, Jack Brabham, Denis Hulme, A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Jackie Stewart, Graham Hill…Jochen Rindt. I thought those guys were really exciting to watch. That was like in the early sixties, when rear-engined cars first came to the Motor Speedway. Before that it was guys like Tony Bettenhausen who was just a huge, huge racing star. It was thrilling to have him there in those old front-engined roadsters…the sound those things made…just the fury of seeing one being driven around the track was thrilling.
SL: What’s been the greatest Indy 500 you’ve ever seen?
DL: I thought the ’86 500 was not bad. I thought that was pretty impressive. I don’t know the specifics of it but I think Kevin Cogan, Rick Mears and Bobby Rahal were running 1-2-3 or something like that…and with ten laps to go there’s a yellow, and on the restart, Bobby passed Rick Mears and then Kevin Cogan and just blew everybody silly for the last ten laps of the race and won the 500. I thought that was as thrilling as it gets.
SL: If you weren’t in TV would you be a race driver?
DL: I don’t think so. I’ve tried a few things. I’ve tried go karting and I can’t…I just don’t think I have the stomach for it. I don’t think I’m brave enough. I’m missing something that people who race, have. I’m missing something genetically. I love it. I find it thrilling…but when it gets right down to it and you have to ask yourself the question, “Am I going to continue to push my foot on the pedal all the way to the floor?” I almost always involuntarily answer, “Uh…I don’t think so.” So I’m missing something that separates guys who race cars from guys who shouldn’t drive race cars.
Sean Leary’s Bio from 1997.
I’m Sean Leary. I have loved cars and racing for as long as I can remember. I went to my first Indianapolis 500 when I was one. While pit crews were changing tires, my mom was changing my diapers.
Santa Claus filled my stocking with Matchbox cars and the Easter Bunny put Hot Wheels cars in plastic eggs for me to find. Dad helped me build models of race cars and I sometimes drew pictures of cars instead of doing my homework. At age eight I got a go-kart and a tape recorder. At Indianapolis Raceway Park I interviewed racing legend Mel Kenyon and Dave Despain.
My first day of school this year was really cool…a day I’ll never forget. Well, the school part I’ll forget, but that night Dave Letterman called me from his Late Show office. He did a twenty minute racing interview with me. I’d seen him at Mid-Ohio’s Indy Car race and wrote him a note requesting an interview. He didn’t disappoint me. What a funny guy and a real race fan, too. I just got back from my 11th Indianapolis 500. I guess I’ve come a long way since my diaper days. “Gentlemen, start your engines.”