December 17, 2003

NC State Alumnus Drives Indy 500 Pace Vehicle

 — Dream Comes True for Herb Fishel

Herb Fishel (left) greets Johnny Rutherford, a former Indy 500 winner. (Photo: Jim Fets for General Motors)

On Memorial Day 1952, armed with a glass of lemonade, a notepad and an AM radio, 11-year-old Herb Fishel (ME ’63) set up a card table under the shade of an oak tree in his front yard in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, ready to listen to the Indianapolis 500, just as he would do every Memorial Day throughout the 1950s.

“The Indianapolis 500 was the greatest race in the world, and it still is,” Fishel says. “As a symbol of this country and a symbol of greatness, the Indy 500 is it.”

Some 50 years later, on May 25, 2003, he was driving the official pace vehicle for the 87th running of the Indianapolis 500, realizing a lifelong dream after a monumental 40-year career in motorsports with General Motors.

After receiving a mechanical engineering degree from North Carolina State in 1963, Fishel sent his resume to three of the hottest NASCAR teams at the time: Junior Johnson, Lee Petty and Bondy Long, the car owner for Ned Jarrett. Only Jarrett wrote back, sending his thanks but explaining the team did not need an engineer. General Motors, however, did have an interest in the young Fishel, and he packed up his 1950 Oldsmobile and headed for Detroit.

	The highlight of Fishel’s career was driving this 1953 Ferrari 250MM built specifically for the Milli Miglia, an annual road race in Italy for sports cars built between 1927 and 1957. The Ferrari, which has an aluminum body and right-hand drive, is housed in the Maranello Rosso Collection of Fabrizio Violati in the Republic of San Marino. Fishel's passenger is his wife Sandy Heng. (Photo: courtesy of Herb Fishel)

As a young engineer at GM, Fishel mentored under childhood heroes: American racing legends Smokey Yunick, Junior Johnson and the Father of the Corvette, Zora Arkus-Duntov.

In 1969 he landed a job in the Chevrolet Product Performance Group, where he learned to design high-performance engines for Chevrolet’s race cars. Subsequent positions at GM included staff engineer, director of Chevrolet Special Products and, in 1991, executive director of GM Racing, where he was responsible for the engineering resources and program management of GM’s North American racing programs.

Fishel’s priority and emphasis have always been engine design, and he dedicated his career to making sure General Motors engines powered the winners. The engines he helped design have won 12 of the last 15 Indy 500 races, 21 of the 24 Winston Cup titles from 1979 through 2002 and 9 consecutive NASCAR Winston Cup Manufacturer’s Championships from 1983 through 1991.

In 1996 Fishel’s leadership helped form a new open wheel series, an effort that was ridiculed by the media. Today, that series, the Indy Racing League, just finished the season with what is called the closest, most entertaining racing in the world.

	A Winston-Salem native, Herb Fishel lives in Clarkston, Michigan, with his wife, Sandy. He collects tobacco and racing memorabilia, including cigar box signatures from celebrities such as George Burns, Milton Berle and Mickey Rooney. He enjoys driving his immaculately restored 1940 Ford Deluxe Coupe with a Chevy engine.

In 1997 Hot Rod magazine named Fishel one of the 100 most influential people in hot rodding, and Racer magazine has repeatedly recognized him as one of the dozen most influential people in racing.

Under Fishel’s guidance as executive director of racing, in 2001 GM won the Indianapolis 500, the Daytona 500 and the 24 Hours of Le Mans, becoming the first automaker in more than three decades to win the Triple Crown of racing in the same year.

In June 2003 he was awarded the prestigious Spirit of Le Mans award from the Automobile Club de l’Ouest, organizers of the Le Mans 24 Hours.

Fishel, who retired from GM in September 2003, says the highlight of his career in motorsports was racing in the 2001 Italian Mille Miglia, driving a 1953 Ferrari 250MM with the love of his life, Sandy.

— rudd —

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