STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK
Bob Baker turns 88 this month. And he still has a need for speed.
His need for speed goes far beyond that of the average man or woman.
Bob Baker has been racing Formula One race cars for 40 years, reveling in a G-force that can be exceed gravity by four times. And he does it while sitting a foot off the ground behind what resembles the command centre of a spaceship.
His semi-contemporary stone home north of Ketchum, which he designed with the late architect Neil Wright, boasts plenty of photographs and posters memorializing his journeys through winding race tracks in Europe and the United States, as well as road rallies through Italy.
And his so-called “car barn” is a showcase for more than a half-dozen meticulously waxed open wheel and closed wheel racing cars.
“Over the years, I’ve had about 40 cars. Now I have 15. I have cars in San Francisco, too,” said Baker, whose prized cars have included a 1954 Jag 120, a yellow Ferrari and a Porsche Spyder 550, similar to the one in which James Dean died in near Bakersfield, Calif.
Baker is the grandson and great-grandson of rabbis—his forefathers came to America around the turn of the century to escape persecution in Minsk, Russia, and Poland.
“They were treated so terribly they had to get out of there if they wanted to stay alive,” he said, fingering a tiny necklace containing the Ten Commandments that one of his grandmothers gave him when he was 8. “They told me lots of stories but they’re so horrible I’d rather not get into them. The Russians were like wild cowboys, riding into the homes of Jews on horseback and raping the women.”
One of Baker’s grandfather’s ended up in Sioux City, Iowa, where he opened a store featuring fresh fish he imported from Canada.
Baker and his father and brother built a chain of 20 supermarkets from their base in Omaha, Neb., before selling them to Kroger.
Baker and his late wife Sonja, a competitive skater, first came to Sun Valley in 1958, following Sonia’s trainer who had been hired by Sun Valley Resort. One schuss down Bald Mountain and Bob, Sonia and their three sons were hooked.
“We had skied other mountains, like Aspen, but Baldy is by far the best ski mountain in the United States,” said Baker, who moved here full-time in the 1990s.
Bob Baker went to 24 hours of Le Mans in France as a spectator and came back with a race car. He started collecting and showing Jaguars and other cars, and he eventually amassed seven Formula One cars.
That’s pretty remarkable, considering that they rarely appear at auction and, when they do, the bidding can be out of sight.
Over the years, he’s collected a 1983 11,000-rpm Williams that won a world championship, a 1979 Ferrari T-4 that Gilles Villeneuve drove, a 1973 McClaren driven by Peter Revson, a Brabham BT-26 driven by Jackie Ickx that won the 1969 Canadian Grand Prix and finished second in Mexico, a World Championship winning Brabham 1967 Lotus 49B and a 1973 Yardley-McLaren M23/3 that Jody Scheckter raced at the French and British GPs that year.
“As time went on, showing cars got sort of boring so I began to race historic cars—cars of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s,” he said, listing some of the Jaguars, Maseratis and Farraris he raced. “I eventually began racing Formula Junior and Formula One, Two, Three cars.”
Baker has raced Formula One cars at countless venues, including Monaco, Laguna Seca, at Infineon in Sonoma, Road Atlanta, Road America at Elkhart Lake and at the 2006 Kohler International Challenge.
Going straight at 160 miles per hour is easy, he said. It’s going around a curve that’s tricky.
“You learn to race them by racing them on a race track because you can’t drive them on regular roads,” he said. “It’s not as scary, as daredevil, as people think. It’s safer than driving on the streets because everybody on the track is going the same direction. And, if you slide off the race track, you don’t hit anything.”
That said, Baker was badly injured in a 2007 race at Canada’s Motorsport Park. He suffered a concussion and broken back when a driver moved over just as he was passing him.
“I spun around backwards. He never looked back to check to see if anyone was coming,” he recounted.
Baker’s son Danny, a San Francisco photographer, fitness instructor and sports apparel entrepreneur, began racing his Dad’s cars at 18. His first victory was a Formula Junior at New York’s prestigious Watkins Glen Speedway in 1988. He earned a spot on the podium in a 2004 Monaco race and won a Formula One race in Long Beach.
Danny, who also cycles and competes in Iron Man competitions to stay fit for racing, drove his 1977 McLaren M23 to a Historic Formula One Cars victory at the Infineon Raceway. He competed against his father who was by far the oldest driver in the race.
“Dan’s a much better racer than I,” Bob Baker said.
Son Bruce joined his father on Italy’s famed Mille Miglia, a thousand-mile rally in which cars drive from point to point as fast as they can to the cheers of thousands of Italians lining the streets to watch. Father and son amassed three hours of sleep during the two-day event.
“I love going to my Dad’s races. They’re festive—like a museum of moving sculpture,” said Bruce Baker. There are always a lot of car geeks around, and it’s always a good family gathering. And I get to be a groupie as I watch my Dad.”
A third son, Scott, is an attorney living in San Francisco. Like Bruce, he sometimes makes it to the race track to cheer his Dad on.
“He’s a fabulous son,” said Baker.
Bob Baker plans to renew his license to race this month on his 88th birthday. Once he gets his doctor’s blessing that he’s sound in body and mind, he figures he’ll be the oldest driver out there by at least 15 years. Then he’ll decide where to race.
“I usually do six to eight races a year—considerably fewer than I used to do. Mostly now I race in Monterey and San Francisco,” he said.
“I can’t stop,” he added. “It’s competitive. It’s fast. You can be as safe as you can be and still have a good time. I’m going to do it as long as I can.”