I mentioned that I competed on the YouTuber Silentt’s NASCAR Jeopardy! series the night before Mom came home on the nursing home on Tuesday. The episode went up just a few minutes ago and not only did I lead the game from start-to-finish, I set the highest score to date. I knew I’d do a hell of a lot better at that than LearnedLeague.
I have written 342 1,000 greatest driver posts before this one if my count is correct. I’d like to get to 400 this year and write 300 in 2027 and 2028 before I wrap up with some rewritten posts and determine the final ranking in 2029. That gives me a lot of intros that I need to fill, and rather than filling them with a lot of personal material or a lot of annoying, repetitive culture takes as has too frequently been my wont, I’m going to start using my intros to go through all my bubble drivers to sort through which of them deserve to make the list. I’ll certainly still post some personal posts, but with Mom returning from the nursing home and a lot of the crises from the past two years now over, I’m going to refrain from writing about that stuff as much, and even I’m losing interest in and growing tired of my culture takes. I’ll still write a little about my personal life, and I do still intend to write a review of Murphy Brown for the -8 people who care, but right now, I want to talk racing almost entirely. I have little to say about Kasey Kahne’s bizarre and inexplicable return except that was a thing that happened. Perhaps he thinks if he can win a Truck Series title, that’ll give him a stronger Hall of Fame case? It likely would, but I think he’s past the point of being competitive even at that level and he’ll ruin his 1.2 career average finish, but whatever. And I honestly still kind of think he’s going to make the Hall of Fame and everyone will be so pissed when it happens if they even think Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Carl Edwards and Harry Gant and Ricky Rudd are “lowering the bar”. And I had never even heard of this Kasey Kahne Friday meme and I still don’t get it what it really is. But granted, I was never really a meme understander even when they were first emerging in the 2000s.
As I have mentioned numerous times, I have a spreadsheet containing every driver who I think may have had a season worthy of being rated on my individual season scale at some point. I have already gone through all my Lock, Bubble, and Near Miss drivers, along with most of the current drivers who I didn’t yet find worthy of the Bubble in my Pending category. There are still thousands of drivers in my Decent and Marginal tiers that I have yet to go through, and I’m sure I’ll find a bunch more who I should’ve listed in those categories who aren’t on here yet, although I doubt I have anybody who will actually make the list who is not yet on the spreadsheet. Once I have finally gone through everybody who I think may have possibly scored at least one career point according to my career scoring metric, then I will finally trim down my lists so I have no more than 200 drivers listed for any given post-World War II season, no more than 100 drivers listed (but probably many fewer) for any given 1905-1941 season, and no more than 5 drivers listed for any season before 1905. A lot of the more recent seasons are overfilled, so I will have to remove a lot of drivers, which means a ton of drivers’ career scores will go down. What I’m about to do might help me make those decisions.
As I’ve mentioned before, I award 100 points to the #1 driver of the year, 70 for #2, 50 for #3, 30 for #4, 20 for #5, 10 for E (#6-#25), 5 for E- (#26-#50), 3 for C+ (#51-100), 2 for C (#101-150), and 1 for C- (#151-200) for all post-World War II seasons, 50 for #1, 30 for #2, 20 for #3, 10 for #4, 5 for #5, 3 for E, 2 for E-, and 1 for C+ for 1905-1941, and 10 for #1, 5 for #2, 3 for #3, 2 for #4, and 1 for #5 for pre-1905 (I kind of think nobody from the pre-1905 period should be listed at all unless they were relevant afterward, but there are a couple people I am considering from that pioneering era). I have decided 25 career points is necessary for lock status, 14 to make the bubble, 10 to make the near-miss tier, 5 to make the decent tier, and 1 to make the marginal tier. I’m starting to think I’m undervaluing the late ‘20a and the ‘30s a bit since a lot of those drivers I think should be in higher tiers than they are, and perhaps I should split the pre-World War II category in two eras to accommodate for this, since I do think the late ‘20s and the ‘30s had better competition globally than any era before that did.
I’m going to go through the 295 drivers who I have rated between 14-19 cumulative points through the year 2025 (this includes nothing from 2026 or else Jack Aitken might not be here), five drivers per day until I finish around the time I make the 400th driver post. That should take me to around early December to give me time to finish this year’s top 200 list. If I do not change my mind on any of the 906 drivers who have 20+ points (and perhaps I may; there are drivers I once considered locks who I now have even moved off the bubble after doing more research), that means these 295 drivers are competing for only 94 spots and I will have to make a lot of painful cuts.
Obviously, I still don’t feel I’ve done enough research to decide between all these drivers already, but I also know there are a lot of easy cuts to make and that’s what I want to focus on now. There are already people I have in this category who I am certain do not deserve it and those are the people I want to cut now. I will certainly still have over 1,000 drivers to consider, and that’s not even including people like Kimi Antonelli, Isack Hadjar, David Malukas, Chase Briscoe, Ty Gibbs, Laurin Heinrich, etc… who didn’t have enough points yet after last year, but I just want to go through the obvious cuts now to make the list more manageable, and since the number of drivers I have to go through is almost exactly five times the number of driver posts I want to make, I think this will work out well and keep me from writing more annoying posts as well.
For each driver, I’m going to list their total number of career points I have for them currently, summarize their accomplishments along with my strongest cases for why they should and shouldn’t make the list, and my verdict (which does not mean whether or not they make the list, but whether I Keep or Drop them from the bubble in this context). If I go by where I have the 1,000th driver ranked on the list, the actual bubble is at 17 right now. So chances are I will be keeping almost all drivers who I currently have over 17 points, and almost all of the drivers I will be cutting from the bubble will be in the 14-17 point range.
Átila Abreu (19)
Summary: A 19-time race winner in Stock Car Brasil/Pro from 2010-2023. He never won a title, but peaked with a second-place points finish in 2014, However, he did win a race in 12 different seasons including every year in the 2010s. He also won a couple class championships in Porsche Carrera Cup Brazil. His career might now be over after Scuderia Bandeiras, the team he ran, shut down in the middle of the 2026 season.
Case for: Stock Car Pro is a major league and the longevity is impressive. He was the highest-rated driver in the series in my model in 2014.
Case against: Despite his consistent performance, he never won a title and he definitely seems like a bit of a compiler. More significantly, all 11 of Abreu’s wins after 2016 came in reverse grid races.where the strting grids were not determined by speed. His .113 rating in my touring car model is solid, but could go either way, and he has fallen from .144 when I originally launched my model.
Verdict: Keep. Honestly, I’m starting to find my case against more persuasive than my case for at this point, but he is currently above my 1,000th place threshold of 17 points, so I’m not going to drop him from the bubble yet.
Rico Abreu (19)
Summary: Prolific sprint car winner who dominated the High Limit championship in 2025, which probably pushed him to the right side of the bubble. He also won the USAC Midget title in 2014. He has 25 High Limit wins, 21 World of Outlaws wins, 16 USAC Midget wins, 13 All Star Circuit of Champions wins, 2 Chili Bowl wins, and 1 NASCAR East win through 2025.
Case for: He has built up considerable longevity as a sprint car driver and the High Limit series now has similar prestige to the World of Outlaws. There aren’t many drivers who have USAC championships as well as winged sprint championships, and he and Sammy Swindell are the only drivers with both a major winged sprint car championship and a Chili Bowl win. He’s also one of only nine drivers with multiple Chili Bowl wins. He’s also still very much a relevant driver now who isn’t done winning.
Case against: Perhaps a High Limit championship is not as prestigious as a World of Outlaws championship before the High Limit/WoO split, but High Limit possibly had the stronger field since that was the series where perennial WoO champion Brad Sweet chose to compete. His NASCAR failure may be a strike against considering how great some other midget drivers like Kyle Larson and Christopher Bell became. Normally, I prefer to list USAC drivers who won in all three of the top divisions (Silver Crown, Sprint, Midget) rather than drivers who only won in Midgets.
Verdict: Keep. Not only has he met the 17-point threshold while still being very much a relevant driver, I find my case for much more persuasive than my case against. If he just had his midget career (USAC and Chili Bowl), I probably wouldn’t do it, but he makes up for the fact that he only won in one USAC division thanks to all his winged sprint (High Limit/WoO/ASCoC) wins, and the crossover between midgets and winged sprints is rarer than the crossover between the three USAC divisions. Bryan Clauson and Brad Sweet also came back from failed NASCAR careers to be stronger in dirt racing.
Christian Abt (19)
Summary: Son of Abt Sportline founder Johann Abt and father of Formula E winner Daniel Abt. While I find this particular family dynasty to be a highly overrated one, I do think Christian was best of the three. He won the 1999 Super Tourenwagen Cup championship (curiously abbreviated STW), which was an important touring car series in his heyday since many of the top German touring car drivers raced there in the seasons when DTM wasn’t running. Abt had 5 STW wins in his title season as well as an ADAC GT championship (Germany’s top domestic sports car championship) in 2009, but was seriously lacking in wins elsewhere with only three VLN class wins, two 24 Hours of Nürburgring class wins, and a single DTM win other than that.
Case for: That STW field he won the title against was pretty solid, he led the championship for the entire season, and he won the title in a semi-independent car. His touring car rating of .203 is higher than Átila Abreu’s and certainly more in line with a driver who would make the list than one who wouldn’t.
Case against: He was something of a two-year wonder as aside from his two championship seasons, he only earned one overall major league victory in his entire career. Although the STW competition was solid, it had diminished from previous years since several manufacturers (BMW, Nissan, and Peugeot) withdrew entering that year. While Abt led the points for the entire season, he only won once after winning four races in a row to start the season, and he won his title in court after he was intentionally wrecked by his championship component Uwe Alzen’s Opel manufacturer teammate Roland Asch before the championship was reversed in his favor.
Verdict: Keep. Honestly, as I write this, I find the case against to be stronger but at the moment I still have him over 17 points. Perhaps I am rating his relatively mediocre DTM seasons too highly…
Jack Aitken (14)
Summary: After a middling junior open wheel career and a single F1 start, he emerged as a bona fide sports car superstar starting in 2022 with six DTM wins, three IMSA wins including the 12 Hours of Sebring and Petit Le Mans, three European Le Mans Series wins, an NLS (formerly VLN) class win, and an ADAC GT win through 2025 alone. That was enough for him to make the bubble already, but he likely moves close to lock status after single-handedly winning the IMSA Prototype title this year, which he will clinch when he starts this year’s Petit Le Mans. He will probably be a lock by the time I’m done.
Case for: He has been a prolific winner in a bunch of different sports car series simultaneously. Despite not really factoring in the IMSA Prototype championship battles in 2024 or 2025, he had the best lead change percentage and ranked second in lead shares both years; in 2024, he also led in CRL and speed. Despite only finishing eighth in the DTM championship in both 2024 and 2025, he was the lead share leader in 2024 and the speed leader in 2025. Once he stopped competing in DTM to focus exclusively on IMSA, he won the 2026 title despite having rotating co-drivers.
Case against: There really isn’t much of one at this point. The only issues were a quite mediocre touring car rating (.002, but my models are all about consistency, and his dominance is always better than his consistency), lack of longevity, and never having won a championship. The consistency he showed in winning the IMSA title clears most of that up.
Verdict: Keep. This season pushes him well across the line, even if it probably doesn’t quite elevate him to Lock status.
Alex Albon (15)
Summary: A dominant karting star in the early 2010s, Albon was initially overshadowed by the better drivers of his generation, finishing second to Charles Leclerc in GP3 in 2016, third behind George Russell and Lando Norris in F2 in 2018, and getting absolutely steamrolled by Max Verstappen at Red Bull in 2020, after which he washed out of F1 and was viewed as a bust. His 2021 DTM season, when he was utterly dominated by major league rookie Liam Lawson, made him look even worse, but even though I was unconvinced he even deserved another F1 shot, he’s restored his cred since then at Williams, where he dominated Nicolas Latifi, swept Logan Sargeant, and has pretty much run comparably to Carlos Sainz, Jr., who wasn’t that much worse than Leclerc when they were teammates at Ferrari.
Case for: It’s all about his current Williams stint, where he stomped on Latifi and Sargeant and matched Sainz. The teammate comparisons are his biggest strength as he has rocketed from .059 in my initial open wheel model in 2021 to a far more credible .159 now (placing him right below Norris and right above Sébastien Bourdais for context). He’s now had enough longevity that a rating that high is difficult to dismiss (although admittedly, I don’t have Rinus VeeKay on the bubble yet and he’s right behind him, but maybe that’s a mistake).
Case against: Everything he did before 2022. I really kind of thought he was a bust when Lawson destroyed him in DTM when they were both rookies there, but I now acknowledge I was wrong. Verstappen swept him when he was at Red Bull, but now that we have more context on him, he pretty much sweeps every single teammate, so that isn’t as much of a disqualification as it once seemed like.
Verdict: Keep. Albon clearly has the talent of an F1 winner, and I do think almost all of the modern drivers at that level should make it. He’ll probably never get a car capable of winning again, but he beat Sargeant substantially worse in F1 than Oscar Piastri did when they were Formula 3 teammates, and his comparison with Sainz helps too. No, he was never as good as Verstappen, Leclerc, or Norris, nor will he ever be, but I feel he is now close enough and still enough of an ongoing concern that he should make it.
CHRISTIAN FITTIPALDI………..BRAZIL
Born: January 18, 1971
Best year: 2014
Best drive: 2014 Continental Tire Road Race Showcase at Road America
The nephew of world champion Emerson Fittipaldi and son of fellow F1 driver Wilson, Christian was one of his generation’s highest-rated open wheel prospects after winning the Brazilian Formula 3, Formula 3 Sudamericana, and Formula 3000 titles in rapid succession from 1989-1991 and beating Alex Zanardi, Damon Hill, and Laurent Aïello in the latter series. While he did outscore all his F1 teammates at Minardi and Footwork from 1992-1994, he joined his uncle Emerson in CART, believing he would never find a competitive F1 ride.
Fittipaldi finished fifth on his CART debut and second in his only Indy 500 before Gil de Ferran overtook him for the 1995 Rookie of the Year award by winning the Laguna Seca season finale. Nonetheless, Fittipaldi joined the powerhouse Newman-Haas team alongside Michael Andretti for 1996, where he remained for seven seasons. He finished fifth in the championship and led the most laps at Detroit that year, but the rest of his CART career was wracked by inferior equipment packages and injuries, most notably a broken leg at Surfer’s Paradise in 1997 and a subdural hematoma at Gateway in 1999. Fittipaldi only won twice in CART, inheriting the win at Road America in 1999 and Fontana in 2000 after Juan Pablo Montoya suffered a gearbox failure and beating Hélio Castroneves out of the pits before Castroneves subsequently crashed respectively, but that didn’t accurately reflect his talent.
After Andretti’s replacement Cristiano da Matta steamrolled him and a disastrous NASCAR attempt with Petty Enterprises, Fittipaldi’s career was left for dead, but he immediately bounced back by winning the 2004 24 Hours of Daytona. He finally began to fulfill his early promise when he hooked up with João Barbosa at Action Express Racing in 2013. Together they won the first two Prototype titles after Grand-Am and the American Le Mans Series reunited and nine Grand-Am/IMSA overall wins, giving Fittipaldi 11 in total. After another Daytona win in 2014, Fittipaldi passed Scott Sharp on the opening lap in back-to-back races at Indianapolis and Road America to win. In the latter race, Ricky Taylor spun Fittipaldi out of the lead, but he drove back from seventh to third before Barbosa cinched the win. Barbosa was usually faster, but Fittipaldi was close. He dropped back to part-time status in 2018 before retiring the next year, but a third Daytona win in 2018 was a nice send-off.
I probably wouldn’t have listed Fittipaldi just based on of his F1 and CART careers. Although some people regard Fittipaldi’s F1 career really highly (particularly Mike Hanlon, who shockingly ranked him 11th all time), I don’t but my model certainly underrates him because his CART teammates beat him all eight years in a career frequently interrupted by injuries (although he did average more points per race than Andretti in 1999). However, he finally fulfilled his potential in sports cars and it’s hard to ignore drivers with multiple IMSA overall titles and 24 Hours of Daytona unless their co-drivers completely carried them, which Barbosa didn’t.
Open wheel model: #482 of 934 (-.068)
Teammate head-to-heads: 35-60 (13-23 vs. Michael Andretti, 1-1 vs. Fabrizio Barbazza, 6-12 vs. Cristiano da Matta, 2-5 vs. Robby Gordon, 1-12 vs. Mika Hakkinen, 1-2 vs. Pierluigi Martini, 5-2 vs. Gianni Morbidelli, 6-3 vs. Minoru Tanaka)
Touring car model: #310 of 1676 (.138)
Teammate head-to-heads: 20-8 (1-0 vs. Regis Boessio, 1-1 vs. Renato David, 1-2 vs. Matheus Greipel, 1-1 vs. Wellington Justino, 3-2 vs. Felipe Maluhy, 1-1 vs. Tarso Marques, 9-0 vs. Rodrigo Navarro, 1-1 vs. Hoover Orsi, 1-0 vs. Giuliano Pilagallo, 1-0 vs. Jorg van Ommen)
Stock car model: N/A
Teammate head-to-heads: 2-6 (0-2 vs. Jeff Green, 2-4 vs. Kyle Petty)
Year-by-year: 1990: C-, 1991: C, 1992: C-, 1993: C, 1994: C, 1996: C, 1999: C+, 2000: C, 2004: C-, 2005: C, 2010: C-, 2012: C-, 2013: C, 2014: E-, 2015: C+, 2016: C, 2017: C, 2018: C-