If you ever drive across the country, from west to east, you’ll likely find yourself on Interstate 40, the nation’s modern arterial highway.
But for those with a taste for nostalgia, for a time long gone, for an era when the automobile was the undisputed king of long-distance travel, ditch the I-40 about halfway through New Mexico and rumble along its predecessor:
Historic Route 66.
This iconic slice of Americana overlaps with the I-40 for long stretches. But just west of Albuquerque, father and progeny part ways, separating, at least for a bit, across the desertscape.
Drive eastward on Route 66, officially Central Avenue along this portion, through the beige expanse for about four miles. You’ll pass Unser Boulevard. And then you’ll want to slow down – lest you miss it.
Lest you miss Unserville.
The place where, for one legendary racing clan, it all began. The place where the Unser family seized the American dream, rising from simple gas merchants to rulers of open-wheel racing. The place where the story of Al Unser Jr. started.
Unser Jr. is one of his family’s greatest champions. And its most-puzzling enigma. He twice claimed the Indianapolis 500. He’s been charged with driving under the influence and driving recklessly. He won the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach, which returns Friday, a record six times. He’s struggled with sobriety and faced financial ruin.
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He’s risen and he’s fallen – and, at 60 years old, he’s trying to rise again.
His story, and his family’s, is one of triumph and tragedy. Like Route 66, Unser Jr’s life has been expansive; like Route 66, he has been weathered and beaten. But also like Route 66, his and the Unser family’s legacy remains a quintessential part of Americana.
And it all began at Unserville.
As a Long Beach native and a lifelong fan of my local grand prix, I had long been curious about the man nicknamed “King of the Beach.”
Despite his legendary status in the world of professional racing, Unser Jr., in recent years, has been a somewhat obscure figure in the sport he once ruled.
Unser Jr., who now lives in Indianapolis, hasn’t been to the Grand Prix of Long Beach since 2019 and won’t be in town this weekend, though he said he’s hoping to return next year. He rarely grants interviews. And the most-intimate look at his life came by his own hands, when he published an unflinching memoir in 2021, titled “Al Unser Jr.: A Checkered Past.”
But a few weeks ago, with the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach quickly approaching, a friend and I went on a road trip to Albuquerque.
Journeying there, to the city referred to by those in the know as “The Land of Unserville,” was my opportunity to find out more about the racing champion.
Just north of downtown Albuquerque, in Los Ranchos de Albuquerque, is the Unser Racing Museum.
Make no mistake, the Unsers are one of pro racings blue-blood families. They have a record nine Indy 500 wins combined. The most successful racers in the family – brothers Al Unser Sr. and Bobby Unser, and Al Unser Jr. – won a combined 108 open-wheel races. And each is in multiple halls of fame. (Unser Jr., though, is the only one in the Long Beach Motorsports Walk of Fame, having been inducted in 2009.)
Unser Jr.’s father., himself a racing legend – having taken the checkered flag at the Indy 500 four times – opened the family’s museum in 2005, in memory of his parents, Jerry and Mary Unser.
The museum, boasting more than 60 vehicles, is shaped like a wheel, with each spoke representing a different aspect of Unser history. Four generations of the family are represented within its walls.
Unser Sr. died in 2021, at 89 years old. His widow, Susan Unser, personally supervises the museum’s operations. She responds to website queries, answers fan mail and works to keep the family’s legacy alive in the racing zeitgeist.
She was gracious enough to offer me a private tour of the facility.
“Al put the same passion he had when he was racing into creating the Unser Racing Museum 18 years ago,” Susan Unser said, “as a way to honor the family’s celebrated success in motorsports.
“The Unser collection,” she added, “will live on to tell that story.”
The focal point of the two-building museum is a yellow race car, with the No. 25 adorned on the side; it spins on a turntable and glows beneath a spotlight. The vehicle is a teammate of the car in which Unser Sr. won his fourth Indy 500 in 1987, when he was 47 years old.
An annex is filled with Unser Sr.’s antique car collection. A trophy room overflows with gold, silver and crystal prizes.
The museum houses a library spanning the history of racing, original artwork, championship jackets and race-worn helmets.
Among the displays is a champagne Cadillac Seville that the Championship Auto Racing Teams, which sanctioned American open-wheel racing from 1979 to 2003, gave Unser Jr. when he won the 1992 IndyCar title.
Unser was hoping for a Corvette and viewed the Cadillac as “an old man’s car that a 70-year-old would drive,” said Don Friedberg, a museum docent.
Friedberg had a trove of tales about the Unser family.
Mary Unser, for example, would arrive at whatever track her boys, Al Unser Sr. and Bobby Unser, were racing on and make a huge pot of chili – enough to serve the drivers and teams. It became a tradition at Indy 500 races, Friedberg told me.
The Unsers didn’t always get long, the docent also said, but if you crossed one of them, they would all unite – against you.
That’s not quite surprising, though, for a family with a clear competitive streak and hardscrabble origins.
“I was born and raised on Route 66.”
— Al Unser Jr.
Today, the Unser family is Albuquerque royalty. Dropping the clan’s name will likely earn you a smile from Albuquerque natives, as well as a yarn about the family.
But the family’s early days in New Mexico were prosaic.
Jerry Unser Sr. – the original patriarch, father to four sons, including Al Unser Sr. – built his family’s home and a filling station along Route 66 in 1935.
That was during the depths of the Great Depression and five years into the Dust Bowl. The Dust Bowl turned Midwest prairies into apocalyptic landscapes and forced tenant farmers to migrate west – along Route 66.
Today, Route 66 is not the artery of the nation’s transit like it once was. And the dirt road that, at one time, ran perpendicular to Route 66 and the racing family’s home is now a four-lane highway named Unser Boulevard.
Still, it’s easy to imagine Jerry Unser Sr. and his family interacting with real-life versions of the Joads – John Steinbeck’s protagonists in his great American novel, “The Grapes of Wrath,” which was published in 1939 – during a pit stop on the latter’s journey to California.
Perhaps that itinerant family looked at the Unser compound, encircled by an adobe wall, with a wooden beam hanging over the entrance bearing the name “Unserville,” and longing for their foreclosed-upon homestead.
But while any migrants would have soon moved on, the Unsers stayed – and their success grew.
The Unser family operated a wrecking service near their home in the 1940s. And the original filling station grew into Unser Garage, which boasted a set-up to rebuild engines, a foreign car parts fabrication shop and an automotive service center.
“I was born and raised on Route 66,” Al Unser Jr. said in a recent phone interview from Indianapolis, where he currently lives.
“Aunt Lisa still lives there,” he added, referring to the wife of Bobby Unser, who died in 2021, nine months before Al Unser Sr. joined him. “You would be welcome to knock on the door. She and Uncle Bobby would always be open like that.”
I visited the family home during my trip, but opted not to disturb Unser Jr.’s aunt. Instead, I soaked in the open spaces on which the property sits – its closest neighbor, the Westward Ho! Motor Court, is two minutes down the road – and the relative accessibility of the dwelling owned by racing icons.
The Unser family, though, was never stationary.
Jerry Unser Sr. and two of his brothers competed in road races, particularly the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb, in Colorado, where the family lived before moving to New Mexico.
The patriarch’s sons followed in those racing footsteps.
Al Unser Jr., in particular, got his taste for speed at a young age.
At 9 years old, he began taking to the track at Route 66 Karting in Albuquerque. By 11, he had graduated to sprint-car racing. He entered his first road race before he could legally buy alcohol.
“I was a natural in the kart,” Unser Jr. said. “I became a race car driver – just like my Dad.”
Soon, he joined Championship Auto Racing Teams – and his rise to stardom began.
But while his ascent to racing royalty began early, so did his addictions. And his personal tragedies.
Unser Jr. first smoked marijuana with his cousin Bobby Unser Jr. before he was even a teenager. He was a self-admitted stoner throughout high school.
The future “King of the Beach” was 19-turning-20 in 1982 when his cousin was jailed for driving under the influence and his little sister, Debbie Unser Jr., died in a dune buggy accident; she was the second Unser to perish in a vehicle-related incident after uncle Jerry Unser, who was killed during a practice run at the 1959 Indy 500.
The same year his sister died, Al Unser Jr. also married his first wife and fathered his first of four children.
Yet, none of that deterred him from drugs and alcohol. If anything, his sister’s death fueled his addiction. He smoked weed, snorted cocaine and emptied alcohol bottles throughout the 1980s.
But it took years before he understood the link between his trauma and addiction.
He didn’t deal with his trauma, in fact, until he attended a group therapy session on loss and grief about a decade ago. During that session, he sobbed.
“Nearly 30 years later,” Unser Jr. said, “those unhealed wounds came rushing back to me.”
But the trauma also didn’t stop him from conquering the racing world.
Unser Jr. finished second in the 1985 CART championship point standings – just one point behind his father.
A year later, he won the International Race of Champions, at just 24 years old.
He also won the 24 Hours of Daytona race in 1986 and 1987.
In 1988, he finally nabbed his first CART championship.
That same year, Unser Jr. began his reign as King of the Beach.
He won the Grand Prix of Long Beach four consecutive years, from 1988 to 1991.
“My predecessor as King of the Beach was Mario Andretti,” Unser Jr. said. “When I dethroned Mario as King of the Beach, it wasn’t the way I wanted it to be done. I accidentally ran into the back of him. I was so upset with myself. I had a lack of patience. I was being too aggressive and I made a huge mistake by running into the back of him.”
Danny Sullivan dethroned Unser Jr. in 1992 – but his first of two Indy 500s was a worthy consolation that year.
And Unser Jr. would go on to reclaim the Long Beach crown in ’94 and ’95.
“I love Long Beach,” Unser Jr. said in an interview before I left on my pilgrimage to Albuquerque. “I have lots of favorite memories from there. No matter what I did in practice to change the car and make it better, we always did the right thing and won.”
But throughout it all, his drinking and his partying – and even a bit of philandering – continued.
In his memoir, Unser Jr. described that period as a “private hell.”
On his 50th birthday, April 19, 1992 – just a week after he finished fourth in the Long Beach Grand Prix, which he led for 54 laps – he contemplated suicide, he wrote.
By 1995, Unser Jr.’s addictions were so severe that his loved ones were planning an intervention.
His record sixth Long Beach Grand Prix title nixed those plans.
And so, his hard-living ways went on.
The intervention-that-wasn’t, in a way, marked the top of the spiral through which Unser Jr. would descend over the next quarter-century.
He kept drinking. His life slowly crumbled.
Unser Jr. divorced his wife in 2001. A month later, at a craps table in Las Vegas, he met the woman who would become his second wife, a coupling that would last 12 years.
He became estranged from his children.
Unser Jr., who announced his retirement in 2004, pleaded no contest to a DUI charge stemming from a car crash in Nevada in January 2007. In 2011, he was charged with drunken and reckless driving, with Albuquerque authorities saying he was traveling at more than 100 mph while drag racing.
Unser Jr. also went in and out of rehab centers, with his father paying the $40,000 a month fee for one facility and embarrassing media coverage forcing him into another.
He tried Alcoholics Anonymous as well. But attending meetings proved tough, he said, since fans would recognize him and ask for autographs.
In October 2017, Unser Jr. tried a change to scenery, leaving Albuquerque for Indianapolis to work for the Harding Racing team and live with his mother, who has lived there for 35 years.
But two years later, in 2019, Unser Jr. was arrested again. This incident, though, seemed to be his personal Rubicon on the road to sobriety.
On May 19, 2019, he was arrested in the Indianapolis area on a charge of operating a vehicle while intoxicated. Before he was apprehended, he stumbled down an embankment.
“I’ve had several rock bottoms,” Unser Jr. said. “All my DUIs were famous; the May 19 incident in Indianapolis, that was the end of it.”
He’s been sober ever since, Unser Jr. said.
Unser Jr.’s road to recovery hasn’t been easy.
But he’s had help along the way.
The move to Indianapolis did help his personal life. That’s where he met his third wife, Norma, through church friends. They married in 2021 – a day before his memoir came out.
“Norma is a dynamo,” Unser Jr. said. “She is go, go, go, nonstop – 200 mph.”
His wife has also taught him to not take things so seriously – and that winning isn’t everything.
“She doesn’t take life so seriously,” Unser Jr. said. “When she was on her scooter and she fell over, she wanted to post it on (social media).”
His wife has also had a deep faith all her life.
For Unser Jr., meanwhile, faith is a more recent development.
When he moved to Indianapolis, Unser Jr., being a dutiful son, began accompanying his mother to church.
One day, while standing in the church, he had a revelation.
“I thought, ‘I have not really given this a try – to let Jesus into my life,’” Unser Jr. said. “There it was: Instantly, there was a warm feeling in my stomach. I have not looked back since.”
Becoming a believer in Jesus, he said, was the real reason he’s been able to recover from addiction.
“Jesus Christ became the bridge between me and God,” he said. “God was this all-encompassing entity that was everywhere all at once – yes, he is a power greater than myself but for some reason, in my mind, I couldn’t put it together.”
In July 2020, Unser Jr. was baptized.
“By connecting through Jesus, I could grab onto his right hand,” he added. “Through Jesus, I have had a real relationship with God. For some reason, I just didn’t get it before.”
“You never know when that thought is going to come in your mind, that feeling that a drink would be nice right now. There is no control over the triggers.”
— Al Unser Jr.
There’s a nondescript mountain, not far from where Unser Jr. grew up, from which you can see all of Albuquerque.
Unser Jr. told me that during turbulent times, he would climb the mountain, look out on the city that reveres him and reflect.
A couple of days after visiting the Unser Racing Museum, I found that mountain and climbed it.
Looking out on the desert city, I reflected on what I’d learned about Unser Jr. and his family. I thought about his life’s pit stops and pitfalls. He’s a celebrity, a hall of famer, the King of the Beach.
But he’s also a man who has faced family and personal tragedy. He’s man who has stumbled – and a man who is well aware of that fact.
“The substance use disorder is still there,” he told me. “That’s why it is one day at a time.
“You never know when that thought is going to come in your mind,” Unser Jr. added, “that feeling that a drink would be nice right now. There is no control over the triggers.”
Besides the looming threat of relapsing, however, things are looking good for Unser Jr.
His recovery is going well. His memoir helped him reconnect with his children.
And he’s getting ready to return to the world of professional racing – at the head of his own team.
Unser Jr. said he is working with an up-and-coming team that will soon launch on the Indy NXT, a developmental series formerly called Indy Lights.
He’s also, apparently, learned to cope with his trauma and his addiction, with the help of his faith and his wife.
“I think about Jesus Christ and then I call someone,” Unser Jr. said. “Right now, I call Norma, by the time I make the phone call and hear her voice, it’s gone”.
Unser Jr.’s life, to this point, has traveled along a fraught road. There have been potholes and detours. He’s driven in the fast lane and been broken down on the shoulder.
Like Route 66, he has been weathered and beaten.
But like the highway he grew up on, his legacy is secure.
And like the child of Route 66 that he is, Al Unser Jr. will keep motoring down the highway, for as long as he can.