1,000 Greatest Drivers: Butch Leitzinger
On the day Daniel's career Dyed.
As someone who grew up at a time when NASCAR was the bedrock of “conservative culture” and was first pandering to the family values folks in the ‘90s, then the neocons in the 2000s, it’s baffling that nowadays they are unquestionably to the left of IndyCar culturally. When Santino Ferrucci called Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood “boyfriend teammates” last year, he seemed to get no pushback whatsoever except from social media, but NASCAR actually seems to be serious about condemning homophobia. When Craftsman Truck Series never-was Daniel Dye made fun of rising IndyCar star David Malukas, insisting he was gay because of the tone of his voice, he was swiftly suspended by NASCAR. While NASCAR bans the confederate flag, IndyCar rushes a race commissioned by President Trump onto the schedule. As someone who vastly preferred IndyCar not that longer and someone who also constantly read IndyCar fans on the comment sections of Racer Magazine posts or whatever look down on NASCAR and NASCAR fans as uncultured swine, this is certainly an unexpected turn and it makes me increasingly embarrassed to be an IndyCar fan to be honest. I’m still rather cynical about this both because I suspect nothing would have happened if Malukas was driving for anyone other than Team Penske (the only IndyCar team that also competes in NASCAR), and I suspect NASCAR was in part just trying to keep Penske happy here. There’s also the sponsorship element here. It is certainly a bad look for a driver like this to be racing the “Race to Stop Suicide” truck and it wouldn’t surprise me if sponsor backlash triggered a lot of this. But regardless of how it happened, I can’t say I disapprove. He didn’t really belong in the NASCAR national series on merit anyway…
I struggled to get home today. After visiting Mom in the nursing home, I frequently take the Mattydale bus from downtown Syracuse, stop at the Tops grocery store to pick up a few items, and then take the North Syracuse bus to my house. I only brought one bag with me and filled it with 20 pounds of groceries. The Mattydale bus is supposed to arrive at Tops at 5:28, but it was late and the North Syracuse bus (which is the last one of the day) ostensibly leaves there at 5:41. So when I got to the bus stop at 5:47, I thought I missed it and started walking. I then saw it beginning to blow past at about 6:00 but it stopped at a major traffic light, so I pretty unsafely crossed U.S. Route 11 to catch it and I’m glad I did. It took me about 40 minutes to get home from the North Syracuse but stop even though normally it takes me about 15 because I also bought a pizza and I was struggling to carry the bag and the pizza, and I had to sit everything down like 15 times on the way to hitch up my pants. I have reduced my waist size at the navel from 37” to 35” in the past three months, so almost all my pants are falling off, but I don’t want to get a new wardrobe until I’m down to 34”, which is probably where I should stop since I am 5’8”, so I had to constantly sit everything down so I don’t accidentally commit indecent exposure and it was probably the dorkiest I ever looked in my life (not that this was even the first time I carried more than I could manage home with me while constantly hitching up my pants, but probably the most embarrassing one). Maybe it’s time for me to go full Steve Urkel and buy some suspenders! But alas, that would be cultural appropriation. While I was always very smart and very weird, I feel there was a time around junior high/high school where I was at least more smart than I was weird. For the rest of my life, I was more weird than smart, which I guess is why I feel like I peaked in high school. Even though I was technically diagnosed with Asperger syndrome and not classical autism and it is assumed that anyone with a former Asperger’s diagnosis is a Level 1 autist, it’s moments like this that make me suspect I’m really a Level 2.
I can’t believe how difficult it was to find any biographical information about Leitzinger whatsoever. I scheduled him for this day because March 17 was the date of his first win at the 12 Hours of Sebring, but I finished a few minutes late. His profile on my master driver list was certainly dense enough that I was at least able to fill it in with a dazzling array of accomplishments, and I think I might be the first person to notice that he was the last driver to have an overall IMSA win in a solo drive as well as the first driver to win an IMSA race in 14 consecutive seasons (even if the names of the series where he was competing kept changing in those years). But normally, I like to at least throw a few personal anecdotes in, and this time I didn’t really feel like I had any. I still think this is pretty decent though.
