1,000 Greatest Drivers: Bobby Unser

Obviously a day late because I was focusing on the races.

All right, Palou, you’ve finally worn me down. I’ve been playing in Andy Miller’s All Racing Fantasy League since 2009. Andy used to run The SpeedGeek blog back in the day. In that era, there was a burgeoning IndyCar blogger scene who I hung out with because some of those guys (most notably NASA meteorologist Will McCarty who ran the Is It May Yet? blog, which no longer exists) were some of the first people to link my own race-database.com. That whole scene fizzled and died as with all blog scenes as everybody moved to the gigantic social media platforms, but I still play in this league with these ex-bloggers. I really embarrassed myself after Palou’s first win this year at St. Pete when I wrote to Andy ranting about how overrated Palou was because I continued to be sick of someone else winning and him backing into races on pit strategy. But he finally answered all my doubts of him this season. All his other wins were certainly well-earned on speed and he didn’t really need any strategic assists to win any of them while Scott Dixon seemed to do worse and worse and worse and Palou has now basically made Dixon look like Marcus Ericsson. And now he’s finally cleared his Indy 500 goose-egg. If he wins at Detroit next week, which it seems like he probably will, he will become the first IRL/IndyCar driver to win four straight races (although people did it in USAC, CART, and CCWS) and tie the IRL/IndyCar single-season win record with six (which he will almost certainly break). And the fact that Ericsson was disqualified makes it even more impressive as it turned out that Palou delivered an Indy first by passing an illegal car for the win. This is clearly the most dominant IndyCar season of my lifetime and I honestly never thought he had it in him because I just viewed him as a Dario Franchitti-style luckbox (until now). Even by Ganassi standards, Scott Dixon never dominated like this. Alex Zanardi never dominated like this. Dario sure as hell never dominated like this. The only season this compares to is Montoya’s 1999 when he won seven races while Jimmy Vasser went winless and finished 9th in points, but dunking on Dixon certainly seems more impressive than dunking on Vasser (maybe not, since I think Dixon’s just about done). I rated Montoya 1st that year and I almost certainly will do the same for Palou this year unless he really shits the bed Paul Tracy in 1997-style. I was also excited personally that my favorite driver David Malukas finished third (eventually second). Take that, McLaren. I really thought Malukas was going to win for a brief moment when he beat Palou out of the pits, particularly since Malukas had passed Palou on track three times and Palou had not passed him to that point. Apparently Palou was just saving fuel…

But Ross Chastain’s drive was definitely even more impressive as a last-to-first win is not something you see very often. The last driver to win from last was Bobby Allison in 1969, but that came against a really shallow 25-car field at Richmond that only had four other great drivers in it (Petty, Pearson, Isaac, and Yarbrough), two of which DNFed. Chastain has been carrying the Trackhouse Racing team on his back for quite some time as they have seen rather lacking in speed. I guess they weren’t yesterday if even Shane van Gisbergen got a top 15 after consistently sucking on ovals. A case could be made that this was the best NASCAR drive of the entire decade. He certainly had help from Kyle Larson, Tyler Reddick, and Denny Hamlin and/or their teams taking themselves out, but that’s part of the game. I must admit given their past feud, it was hilarious that Hamlin ended up giving Chastain the win… As for Larson’s whiff of a double, I am of two minds. He was terrible at Indy all May much like Fernando Alonso was in 2020, so I don’t think he’ll ever try this again now that it’s become clear he’ll probably never win an Indy 500, just as Alonso quit after 2020. I don’t think Larson is better than Max Verstappen and I never did. (I do think he’s unquestionably better than Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri though, who are just today’s Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve.) But the schadenfreude of open wheel fans whenever he crashes has gotten far more annoying than Larson claiming he was more versatile than Verstappen ever was. There is a contingent of fans who act like 14 or 16 F1 drivers, even the likes of Lance Stroll or Liam Lawson, are better than anyone in any other series. You know it exists and that’s ridiculous. As is the idea that whoever crashes least is the best driver. I mean even if you do think Verstappen is usually the best driver in the world (which I do, although it’s Palou this year), he himself has a history of asshole and punk behavior at times and he certainly isn’t the cleanest F1 driver… To minimize the chances of crashing, you often limit yourself by not taking the aggressive chances that help maximize the chances of winning. Larson is also driving under a win & in playoff format that no other series has. Larson is clearly overdriving because he is competing under a playoff format where winning is more important than consistency, and I’m sure if we were back in the terrible Latford “classic” NASCAR points system that everybody wants, Larson would adjust his strategy and focus on finishing races but he would probably win less. Personally, I prefer to judge drivers based on what they do on their best races better than they do on their worst, but it seems because crashes make good Internet memes, Internet fans have now decided whoever crashes least is the best driver when that isn’t how it works at all. This is also why people erroneously think Corey LaJoie sucked because he crashed a lot and nobody cared that he outperformed the level of his equipment often when he wasn’t crashing. I mean, yes, he sucked last year, but he didn’t suck until last year. When are people going to learn that what you do in your best races is much more important than what you do in your worst races? Probably never ‘cause crashes are like so meme-worthy. (Insert eyeroll here.) Anyway, here’s Bobby Unser.