1,000 Greatest Drivers: Alain Cudini

Just like his teammate Dany Snobeck, Wikipedia thinks he's less notable than he is.

I already talked about this in my Dany Snobeck entry last August, but this is more evidence that Wikipedia editors don’t always know what they’re talking about. Because Wikipedia determines notability by how much has been written about a subject in each native language, it has decided that Snobeck doesn’t deserve a page and it looks like Cudini’s page is about to be deleted shortly even though they are unquestionably two of the best touring car drivers of the ‘80s. Cudini and Snobeck were teammates for the latter’s Snobeck Racing Service team in the French Touring Car Championship from 1983-1987 and then DTM in 1988 and 1989. I suspect the reason Wikipedia disputes their notability is because the FTCC shut down in 2005 and therefore nobody properly archived this series. Touringcarracing.net tried and that’s where I got all my data but even there, there are a lot of races missing and very little has been written about the series in English. But Snobeck led my touring car model globally twice in 1983 and 1987 while Cudini also did in 1986 and Cudini ranked in the top five of my touring car model in four different years, not to mention finishing second in points in the then-renamed French Supertouring Championship between Laurent Aïello and Yvan Muller, who would probably both make my overall touring car top ten. Clearly, Cudini was great but because not enough people have written about his greatness, Wikipedia editors have decided he is only borderline notable while every single F1, NASCAR, IndyCar, Supercars, or BTCC driver (no matter how awful) is considered eligible for a page. There’s definitely a weird double standard here. Then again, it’s not as much of an abomination as the “Speed typing contest” page was at the time I published my book…