Bill Whittington, winner of the 1979 24 Hours of Le Mans, has died after a reported plane crash at the age of 71.
According to multiple reports, Whittington was killed when a private aircraft he was piloting crashed in the Arizona desert.
The Texas-born driver won the French endurance classic in a Kremer-built Porsche 935 K3 alongside brother Don and Klaus Ludwig, while also achieving success in IMSA, taking 14 race wins and the GTP title between 1978 and 1985.
He remains the only driver to win Le Mans alongside a sibling and holds similar distinction in the Indianapolis 500, where he, Don and brother Dale become the only three brothers to qualify for the same race, one of five starts in the race he would make.
In 1986 Whittington pleaded guilty to income tax evasion and conspiracy to smuggle marijuana into the United States from Colombia.
He was sentenced to 15 years in federal prison and ordered to surrender $7 million in property and other assets, with brother Don pleading guilty to money laundering in association with Bill’s operation a year later.
Both brothers served prison sentences, with Bill serving five years behind bars while Don was incarcerated for for 18 months.
“I just spent three days will Bill here in Florida last week, then he went to the Bahamas, then went back to Arizona,” Whittington’s former co-team owner and co-driver Randy Lanier told RACER. “He took a friend out in a Merlin (plane) there. It was a friend with terminal cancer who lost his pilot’s license, so he took him up flying.”
“We were close. He was my brother,” he continued. “He sent me a message yesterday morning, it was scripture: ‘Put on the full armor of God, so that you can make your stand against the devil’s schemes.’ And he said he was going to get ready to take his buddy up. His final act was taking up someone with terminal cancer.”
Lanier said he recently reconnected with his former IMSA team-mate when he himself was released from prison following similar drug-related convictions in 2014.
“I got out about six years ago, and was pretty high-profile and couldn’t see him for a lot of reasons,” he said. “And then, just last week, all that changed and it had been 34 years of racing since we’d seen each other. It was like God brought us back together before he transcended.”
