CHANDLER, AZ — Legendary racecar driver Bob Bondurant’s name is no longer on the school he started more than 50 years ago and moved to Chandler in 1990, but he and his family are looking to open a new high-performance driving school bearing his name.
In March, the owners of the Bondurant High Performance Driving School announced it was changing its name and brandingto the Radford Racing School. The change came after nearly two years of litigation between the school’s owners and the Bondurant family.
The school filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the fall of 2018 and in early 2019 it was purchased out of bankruptcy for $1.675 million by Stig Investments Inc. The use of the name was questioned during the day of the sale in March 2019 and the family maintained that it should have control of it. The two sides finally came to a settled agreement that forced the school to change the name, Pat Bondurant, Bob’s wife and the former co-owner of the Bondurant School, told the Business Journal.
“Everybody forgot Bob Bondurant is the world champion. And he’s had harder hits than this before,” Pat Bondurantsaid. “He just gave me the directions. He goes, ‘Sweetheart, you got to protect our name. Nobody can come and steal your name. I don’t care how much money you have. You cannot do that in this world.’ And so I did, I fought like a badger and we got our name back.”
Read the full article at Phoenix Business Journal.
