After a promised job at General Motors to work on the Corvette failed to materialize due to a late ‘50s U.S. recession, he became involved with older brother Dick in Carroll Shelby Sport Cars in Dallas, the area’s leading importer of European road and race vehicles.

Hall pioneered wings, movable aerodynamic devices, side-mounted radiators, semi-automatic transmissions, and composite monocoque chassis structures, all of them innovations later adopted by and still present in every Formula 1 car.

Hall also introduced the world's first constant downforce racecar, the 1970 Chaparral 2J, which used a snowmobile engine to power two fans to reduce the air pressure between the bottom of the car and the road regardless of vehicle speed.

Although it was quickly banned, the 2J “vacuum cleaner” concept was copied eight years later by Brabham Formula 1 designer Gordon Murray who figured out a way to circumvent the rules.

The resulting Brabham BT46B won the only race in which it was entered, the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix, proving significantly faster than Colin Chapman's ground effect-tunneled Lotus 79, which secured that year's championship.

When Hall met people from Chevrolet Research & Development, GM's own internal skunkworks, at the 1962 June Sprints at Road America, they picked each other's brains for new ideas.

“Not only is there literally less work to do,” Hall explained in an article he wrote for Autocar in 1965, “we can keep both hands on the steering wheel, at all times concentrating entirely on exact placing of the car in a turn and just when and how much to brake.

Hall put it on the pole at its first race, the October, 1963 Los Angeles Times Grand Prix, over an international-class field that included soon-to-be F1 champions Jim Clark, Graham Hill, and John Surtees, and future Motorsports Hall of Fame of America legends Dan Gurney, A. J. Foyt, Roger Penske, Lloyd Ruby, Parnelli Jones, Rodger Ward, and Richie Ginther.

Hall and Sharp put their Chaparral 2A on pole an astonishing 9 seconds faster than reigning World Champion John Surtees had managed the previous year in the top factory Ferrari.

Ford had seven cars, driven by the likes of Dan Gurney, Ken Miles, Bruce McLaren, Richie Ginther, and Phil Hill.

The Chaparral 2E featured side-mounted radiators, a semi-automatic gearbox and other innovations, but what people noticed most was the massive articulated wing mounted on pillars that soared several feet above the rear deck.

Said fellow competitor, broadcaster and racing historian Sam Posey, “When those cars arrived on their double-axle trailers in the paddock at Bridgehampton, people just stopped everything and their jaws dropped down on the ground.

The 2E missed the first of the season's six races because the wing wasn't yet ready, and won only one of the remaining five, with Hill and Hall finishing 1–2 at the Laguna Seca round where the cars performed flawlessly.

There, drivers Phil Hill and Mike Spence led home a Ferrari 330 P4 driven by Grand Prix aces Jackie Stewart and Chris Amon.

After both Clark and his replacement, Spence, were killed and Stewart injured in separate accidents, the team turned to Hall, even though he had never driven an Indy car before.

At 1968's season-ending Las Vegas Can-Am, Hall was about to unlap himself after an unscheduled pit stop from second-place man Lothar Motschenbacher when the latter's McLaren suffered a catastrophic suspension failure.

Haas-Hall racing was virtually unstoppable throughout the decade, winning three consecutive F5000 titles with Brian Redman at the wheel until the series evolved into the second-generation Can-Am, whereupon the team won four more championships.

He commissioned up-and-coming designer John Barnard to realize his vision of a new kind of Indy car based on the ground effect principle introduced on Colin Chapman's Lotus 78.

The resulting Chaparral 2K, nicknamed the “Yellow Submarine” thanks to sponsor Pennzoil's brand colors, changed the face of Indy car racing.

It came back the following year and not only won the 500, but captured the 1980 CART PPG Indy Car World Series championship as well with Johnny Rutherford at the helm.

After the 1981 season, Hall remained in Indy car racing off and on with store-bought Lola and Reynard chassis and collected more wins and high finishes with a variety of drivers, including John Andretti and Gil de Ferran.

He was an even bigger presence in homes across the United States thanks to a groundbreaking deal with Cox Models, a Santa Ana, California based slot car manufacturer.

An entire wing of the Permian Basin Petroleum Museum in Midland is devoted to Hall and the Chaparral story, and includes seven of the restored race cars: a 2A, 2D, 2E, 2F, 2H, 2J, and 2K.

He was named grand marshal of the 2001 Brian Redman International Challenge at Road America, and Hall and his Chaparrals were featured at the 2003 Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance and 2005 Monterey Historic Automobile Races.

In storybook fashion, de Ferran put the car on pole and won the race with co-driver and 2019 Indianapolis 500 winner Simon Pagenaud.