1,000 Greatest Drivers: Eddie Cheever

Less of an underacheever than I once thought.

It took me forever to take Cheever seriously. His win in the 1998 Indy 500 was the first IRL race I ever watched. While I’d watched the 1995 Indy 500, I skipped 1996 and 1997 for whatever reason. I actually don’t think it was split-related. I was primarily a NASCAR fan back then, but I wasn’t even following the NASCAR races regularly until the tail end of 1996 when nascar.com introduced its timing & scoring function and then I could “watch” the races that way. (I still fondly remember the timing & scoring for that year’s fall Martinsville race, when the headline read and I quote, “Oh, baby. The Hanes 500 is on!” Did they actually think that was cool? 11-year-old nerdboy me definitely did though…) I went to my dad’s apartment on weekends and he didn’t have cable, so the races I was still able to see were few and far between and it wasn’t until 1997 that I was starting to watch everything regularly. When I started becoming a massive race fan in 1997 and started watching RPM2Night instead of Wheel of Fortune every night at 7:00, it got me into F1 and CART and I watched a bunch of races that year. I never properly got into F1 like I should’ve after that even to the present day because in 1998, it moved from ESPN to SPEED Channel, a cable channel on packages neither of my parents could even come close to affording (it might not have even been available in Syracuse). But I did start watching a bunch of the CART races in 1997 and years afterward, and watching RPM2Night did not successfully get me into IRL or NHRA as much. I was certainly primarily a NASCAR fan, but I’d say I watched like 1/2 the CART races and 1/4 of the IRL races, and I don’t think I ever watched an IRL race until Cheever’s win.

I was not impressed because that was probably the shallowest field since the ‘30s (not that I really had any cognition of that at the time) and he was certainly greatly aided by the fact that Tony Stewart blew an engine when it looked like he was going to DOMINATE the race and Kenny Bräck ran out of fuel while leading, presaging that year’s Brickyard 400 when the same thing happened to Dale Jarrett! In retrospect, I’m a bit more impressed because he was sponsorless, he was involved in an incident on the opening lap, and he was the only owner-driver to win since A.J. Foyt in 1977. But he definitely seemed to have an ego that eclipsd his talent in much the same way as other overexposed drivers like Scott Goodyear and Michael Waltrip seemed to. You saw too much of him and he talked about himself far too often, hyping himself as some kind of mega-legend, and most of the people on the message boards where I posted in his heyday mercilessly made fun of him for being one of the IRL’s biggest stalwarts after copious F1 and CART races where he never won and hardly even led, and how he’d talk about the supremacy of oval racing despite only ever racing on road courses until he started in CART. At least that’s where I was in the late ‘90s and especially the early 2000s.

When I saw F1metrics rank him as the highest-rated American F1 driver as well as the #1 driver in 1982, I admit I was laughing hard. Yeah, sure. He’s better than Dan Gurney and Mario Andretti (admittedly, I have some stupid things in my models too and I believe my model also has Cheever over Andretti, because Mario is weighed down by his terrible late-period CART seasons against his son and Nigel Mansell). Okay, mea culpa. I’m willing to concede a little now. While I basically viewed him in his IRL days like I view Marcus Ericsson and I think their IndyCar careers were pretty much the same (a few wins that were mostly lucky/fortuitous, with Ericsson’s greater competition canceled out by the fact that Cheever was an owner-driver while Ericsson was driving for a dominant Ganassi team), the fact remains that I significantly underestimated the rest of Cheever’s career. While Ericsson is unlikely to even sniff this list, I was completely unaware for quite some time that Cheever had been a prolific sports car winner in the ‘80s, and I’m really impressed that he was delivering championship-caliber sports car performances in 1987 and 1988 at the same time he was competing in F1, a level of versatility that not many people were matching in that increasingly specialized era as usually drivers only competed in the World Sportscar Championship either before or after their F1 careers ended, not as much during. As I mention below, he was the main teammate for the WSC champions Raul Boesel and Martin Brundle both years, and only didn’t win those titles because he had to miss races due to his F1 commitments. Even though he won 3 WSC races in ‘87 and 4 in ‘88, I rate ‘87 higher because he also beat his F1 teammate Derek Warwick in ‘87 and then Warwick kind of waxed him the next two years.

His CART career I definitely find disappointing though. He was handed the former Pat Patrick team that Emerson Fittipaldi dominated the 1989 CART season and Indy 500 with and then finished 9th, 9th, and 10th in points in the three years after Chip Ganassi bought it. Meh. I realize Fittipaldi was a World Champion and Cheever was (I’ll concede) a slightly above average F1 driver, so some dropoff should be expected, but I think the cars were better than that, and Arie Luyendyk immediately replaced him and finished 7th, and Michael Andretti immediately replaced him and finished 4th. He still had his moments (CART and Indy 500 rookie of the year, top five the whole race in the 1992 Indy 500 and he was 2nd to Michael Andretti who later DNFed for a lot of it, the Nazareth race out of nowhere where he passed Jacques Villeneuve fo the lead before running out of fuel), but I can see why he became a joke among Americentric racing fans in much the same way Scott Speed did. The novelty of being the only American F1 driver (which Cheever was for a lot of his career) overrated him in the States, just like it overrated Speed, Alexander Rossi, and Logan Sargeant. Okay, fine, he was probably better than all those guys (maybe not Rossi), but that’s not saying a lot. But although he wasn’t great very often, he was at least good for an unusually long time and in a wide variety of series. Comparing him to Ericsson was ufnair as I guess his IndyCar relevance lasted longer, and unlike Ericsson, who basically did nothing outside of IndyCar, Cheever did a lot of things. Between setting the fastest lap in Indy 500 history, his sports car wins while simultaneously running in F1, outdueling Earnhardt for an IROC win (even if it’s dubious whether he ever deserved an IROC invite to begin with, he sure made the most of it), winning a GP Masters race against fellow retired F1 drivers who had bested him back then, and his various successes as an owner-driver, he consistently had enough flashes of brilliance for me to realize my earlier kneejerk reactions to him were unfair. I still don’t rate him as highly as the Eurocentric fans do though… And one of the really puzzling things is that his brother Ross Cheever is actually significantly higher in my model when considering that while in Super Formula (or, as it was then called, Japanese Formula 3000) he won 10 times, posted a 19-6 teammate record, and went undefeated against Jan Lammers, Johnny Herbert, and Michael Schumacher (admittedly 1-0 each). Should I actually list him? I dunno, maybe. But I’m guessing I probably won’t.

EDDIE CHEEVER……………………...USA

Born: January 10, 1958

Best year: 1987
Best drive: 2000 IROC Race #3 at Michigan International Speedway

The most experienced American F1 driver, Cheever is best-known for his open wheel exploits, but most of his wins actually came elsewhere. Born in Phoenix but bred in Rome, Cheever finished second in both the 1974 Karting World Championship and the 1977 Formula 2 season before advancing to F1 in 1980. In those years, he also won in the German touring car series DRM and his first of 11 World Sportscar Championship class wins (including nine overall).

After Cheever significantly outperformed semi-prolific F1 winners Michele Alboreto and Jacques Laffite at Tyrrell and Ligier, big things were expected in 1983 when he joined Alain Prost at Renault. Although he earned his best points finish (7th), he never led a lap while Prost dominated the championship until losing it in the final race, after which Renault fired both of them. Cheever would never land another competitive F1 ride and was even rideless in 1986, but he won a WSC race for Jaguar with Derek Warwick. They would be paired as F1 teammates at Arrows for 1987-1989. In 1987 and 1988, he continued in the WSC as the principal teammate for those years’ respective champions Raul Boesel and Martin Brundle, but F1 conflicts prevented him from sharing in those titles. Cheever’s nine podiums are tied for fifth among non-winners.

In 1990, Cheever switched to CART, becoming Chip Ganassi’s first driver. Ganassi had just bought out Pat Patrick’s team and received a massive buyout when Roger Penske poached Emerson Fittipaldi and Marlboro from Patrick, then successfully convinced Target to sponsor him, initially for free. Although Cheever won both the CART and Indy 500 Rookie of the Year awards, his CART career had few highlights except a top five run at the 1992 Indy 500 for Ganassi and a near-miss at Nazareth for A.J. Foyt where he ran out of fuel while leading on the penultimate lap after passing Jacques Villeneuve. Cheever defected to the IRL in 1996, setting the fastest Indy 500 race lap at 236.103 mph before starting his own team the following race. He won five races in consecutive seasons from 1997-2001 including the 1998 Indy 500, where he became the last owner-driver winner. His American career peaked in 2000, when he led the IRL in lead shares, finished third in points, and outdueled Dale Earnhardt to win an IROC race at Michigan.

As someone who was introduced to Cheever through his IRL years, it was difficult for me to recognize his greatness. While I certainly don’t regard him as highly as other analysts, because I think he had a low ceiling with few great seasons, he clearly had enough flashes in enough different series over a long enough timespan to wear me down, but I still find him overrated. In the ABC broadcast booth, he hyped himself as an all-time racing legend when he was merely a low-level great, but he was still better than his boothmate Scott Goodyear. I’m still somewhat underwhelmed by him, but I now understand him better.

Open wheel model: #369 of 931 (-.001)

Teammate head-to-heads: 28-27 (2-0 vs. Michele Alboreto, 1-0 vs. Gary Bettenhausen, 0-1 vs. Raul Boesel, 1-0 vs. Scott Brayton, 1-0 vs. Martin Donnelly, 1-1 vs. Robby Gordon, 4-5 vs. Ingo Hoffmann, 2-1 vs. Jacques Laffite, 1-0 vs. Robby McGehee, 0-1 vs. Danny Ongais, 2-0 vs. Max Papis, 1-3 vs. Riccardo Patrese, 1-4 vs. Alain Prost, 2-2 vs. Buddy Rice, 1-0 vs. Tomas Scheckter, 1-0 vs. Didier Theys, 3-0 vs. Robby Unser, 4-8 vs. Derek Warwick, 0-1 vs. Ricardo Zunino)

Touring car model: #159 of 1676 (.221)

Teammate head-to-heads: 6-5 (1-0 vs. Jean-Louis Schlesser, 2-2 vs. Marc Surer, 1-0 vs. Derek Warwick, 2-3 vs. Manfred Winkelhock)

Year-by-year: 1977: C, 1979: C-, 1981: C+, 1982: C+, 1983: C-, 1984: C-, 1985: C, 1987: E-, 1988: C+, 1989: C, 1990: C-, 1992: C-, 1995: C-, 1997: C-, 1998: C, 1999: C, 2000: C+, 2001: C-