IndyCar legends remember Danny Ongais: ‘The Flyin’ Hawaiian’ at the Indy 500

INDIANAPOLIS – Danny Ongais, the first and highest-finishing Hawaiian starter at the Indy 500, also might have been one of the hardest chargers in the race’s storied history.

Ongais was a man of few words but drove a race car with the right foot of an elephant on the accelerator. No matter how fast Ongais drove his race car, he always wanted to go even faster.

That earned him such nicknames as “The Flyin’ Hawaiian” and Danny “On-The-Gas.”

He drove with bravado and advocated unlimited rules at the Indianapolis 500.

“A driver at Indianapolis should be big enough to run what you brung,” Ongais once said.

That attitude often got him in trouble, though. Ongais had some of the biggest, hardest crashes in Indianapolis 500 history.

There probably has never been a driver who hit the wall harder more often and was able to survive than Danny Ongais (who died earlier this year).

“Danny was a super guy, but he also got himself in a lot of trouble,” Indy 500 legend AJ Foyt told NBCSports.com. “The cars were fragile on the half shafts, and he liked to drive them hard sometimes. That is the reason why he got into the wall so often.”

Born in Kahului, Hawaii on May 21, 1942, Ongais remains the first driver from the Aloha State to race in the Indianapolis 500, and he’s an appropriate pioneer as May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month. (Though Indianapolis Motor Speedway had listed Ongais as the only Indy 500 driver from Hawaii, Bill Alsup, the 11th-place finisher in the 1981 race also was born in Honolulu, but his racing career primarily was built in the continental U.S.).

Ongais had no fear. When he was 14, he already was speeding around on motorcycles. He enlisted in the U.S. Army as a paratrooper stationed in Europe.

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