Victory at Laguna Seca in the last race of the 1995 season helped to change the outlook of one of the IndyCar series' hardest working development engineers, who begins his third straight year at Hall Racing.
Bill Pappas, 34, of Indianapolis started with Hall in 1992 after a limited season with Jim Hayhoe and his driver, Jimmy Vasser, fastest rookie in the 1992 Indianapolis 500 field. Pappas has developed into one of the sport's top talents, as witness the final race of 1995, won by Pennzoil driver Gil de Ferran for Hall Racing.
For four seasons before coming to the Pennzoil team Pappas was associated variously with drivers Arie Luyendyk and Emerson Fittipaldi, car owners V. J. Granatelli and Pat Patrick and engineer Maurice Nunn on the Indy car circuit.
Earlier, Pappas had served as technical director for the International Motor Sports Association (1985) and as a design and development engineer for Jack Roush, including work with Roush's Trans-Am and IMSA teams.
At 6 ft. 7 in., he was a sought after high school basketball player, but a knee injury prevented him from playing at Purdue University, from which he was graduated with a mechanical engineering degree. Pappas describes himself as a "typical Hoosier, growing up dribbling a basketball around a 2 ½-mile track."
Pappas commutes when he can to Indianapolis, where he and wife Denise live with a daughter, Kyra, 9, and a son, A. J., 7.
