I’ve decided to award more career points for the seasons 1923-1939. I’ve been thinking about this for a while because I felt like a lot of the 1930s were lower than they should be, since that decade was a lot more competitive than the previous ones. I already mentioned I might be doing this. I decided 1905 would be my first pivot point, where I shift from the 10-5-3-2-1 scale to the 50-30-20-10-5-3-2-1 scale because that year was the first IndyCar season, and 1906 was the year of the first “modern” Grand Prix, and 1946 would be my second pivot to the 100-70-50-30-20-10-5-3-2-1 scale I use for all post-World War II seasons because there were substantially more auto racing series competing after the war than before, and this is leading up to the foundation of Formula 1 and NASCAR. However, I am going to add a separate pivot starting in 1923 since that was the year of the first 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the emergence of the sports car racing ecosystem re-energized racing competition in Europe, which took some years to recover after the devastation of World War I. It also neatly fits since it’s exactly halfway between the period from 1905-1941, so I’m going to award 70 points for a #1 season, 50 for #2, 30 for #3, 20 for #4, 10 for #5, 5 for E, 3 for E-, 2 for C+, and add 1 point for C for the years 1923-1939. (Not for 1940 and 1941, which I’m leaving at the 1905-1922 scale since obviousl there was racing in the US but not in Europe).
With these changes, there are category shifts for a number of 1920s and 1930s drivers. The notation I will be using is Lock for drivers with 25 career points, Bubble+ for drivers on the top end of the bubble with 20-24 points, Bubble- for drivers on the bottom end of the bubble with 14-19 points, and Near Miss for drivers with 10-13 points.
Drivers who shifted from Bubble+ to Lock after these changes:
Luigi Fagioli
Ray Keech
Attilio Marinoni
Emilio Materassi
Guy Moll
Kelly Petillo
Bubble- to Lock:
Manfred von Brauchitsch
Tony Willman
Bubble- to Bubble+ (in other words, these drivers move out of the current list of drivers I am going through):
Prince Bira
André Boillot
Antonio Brivio
John Cobb
René Dreyfus
Len Duncan
Eddie Hearne
Bill Holmes
André Lagache
Duke Nalon
Bob Sall
Louis Unser
Charlie Wiggins
Jimmy Wilburn
Billy Winn
Near miss to Bubble+:
Baconin Borzacchini
George Eyston
Enzo Ferrari
Hermann Paul Müller
Near miss to Bubble-:
Tim Birkin
Shorty Cantlon
Bartolomeo Costantini
John Duff
Fred Frame
Marcel Lehoux
René Leonard
Dave Lewis
Lou Moore
Carlo Maria Pintacuda
André Rossignol
Dick Seaman
Bob Swanson
Ernie Triplett
Looking at these names, I like the new placements better than the old ones and I think they are closer to having the ring of truth. I’ve already written posts for two of these drivers (Emilio Materassi and Billy Winn) under the assumption that they would meet my 25-point threshold but they didn’t. Even after this change, Winn is only at 24, but I feel too many of these drivers should have been higher than where I had them, and these positionings are more accurate to their historical importance. The one I really feel I don’t agree with is Enzo Ferrari, which means I’m going to have to lower that top five season I gave him, because I don’t think his importance as a driver as opposed to a car company founder/team manager is significant enough, but if there are any individual drivers I feel need to be adjusted, I can do that later. As a whole, these placements are more accurate and I’ve fixed my systemic issue.
After these changes, 17 drivers move out of the group I am currently evaluating and 14 move into it, meaning this Bubble- group reduces by three drivers from 295 to 292, but they are competing for fewer spots. Since I already felt I was undervaluing the 1930s, I would have kept essentially all these drivers for future evaluation anyway, so now let’s move to some more debatable cases.
A.J. Allmendinger (18)
Summary: Allmendinger is one of four drivers whom I view as almost interchangeable. He, John Andretti, Johnny Mantz, and Chuck Stevenson all have very similar cases as they were both Cup Series and IndyCar winners as well as usually being somewhat accomplished in other series as well, but it’s also easy to argue that none of those drivers were more than very good in any single discipline. As for Allmendinger, he was a decent but fairly middling Champ Car driver until 2006, when he was fired by RuSPORT before being abruptly hired by Forsythe Championship Racing and winning five of the next seven races. He parlayed his Red Bull collection into a NASCAR career, where he won 3 Cup Series races and 18 in what is now the O’Reilly Series. He also earned an overall win at the 2012 24 Hours of Daytona.
Case for: He was more versatile than most NASCAR drivers of his generation, and he is one of very few drivers who have above-average ratings in both my open wheel model and my stock car model. Surprisingly, he’s actually higher in my stock car model. He remained solid over a very long time as a low-level NASCAR career compiler.
Case against: Allmendinger is very much a “jack of all trades, master of none” type driver and he never had a very high ceiling. Although his 2006 season was great, his earlier Champ Car seasons were mediocre against subpar competition, and his 2013 stint for Penske was even worse. As a NASCAR driver, he had a lot of decent seasons but few that even rose to the level of very good. There was a brief moment when Allmendinger was winning lots of Xfinity Series races on road courses when NASCAR announcers were trying to hype him as one of the best NASCAR road racers ever, which is hilarious since he was mostly merely okay on them until after Juan Pablo Montoya and especially Marcos Ambrose’s departure, he was competing against scrubs in Xfinity, and Shane van Gisbergen almost immediately after that showed us what true greatness is.
Verdict: Keep. I think he sustained enough of a presence with enough success for long enough that he should probably make the list, but I’m willing to be talked out of it.
George Amick (14)
Summary: Amick was a rising IndyCar star in the ‘50s who finished 4th, 3rd, and 2nd in three consecutive seasons from 1956-1958, finished second on his Indy 500 debut in 1958, and won 20 midget races, including the Turkey Night Grand Prix in 1957, until he died on the last lap of the only IndyCar race at Daytona in 1959 before they stopped racing there in the wake of his death, after which a later-scheduled race there that season was replaced by NASCAR’s Firecracker 400.
Case for: He obviously had championship-caliber potential, and since he kept finishing one position higher in the championship each year, I suppose it’s possible he could have won the 1959 title. After finishing second as a rookie at Indy, he might’ve been an eventual winner as well.
Case against: After three seasons with 100 laps led, he seemed to be falling off even before his death to some extent with only 18 in 1958 despite the second-place points finish. For all his midget wins, he never actually finished better than 7th in either the AAA or USAC Midget championships, but I suspect that may be because he didn’t run full-time schedules there. IndyCar competition in the ‘50s was not very good.
Verdict: Drop. Ultimately, Amick seems to have more in common with other drivers I have in the near-miss category like Jules Bianchi and Bobby Marshman. They certainly had the talent to make the list, but I think they needed more longevity for the level of dominance that they had, and I’m also not sure how much longer Amick would have been a top contender once IndyCar entered the Rodger Ward/A.J. Foyt era.
Gunnar Andersson (17)
Summary: Andersson won the European Rally Championship twice in 1958 and 1963, which was the most prestigious rally championship in the world until the World Rally Championship was introduced in 1973. He also won the Swedish Touring Car Championship, one of the world’s first in 1959. He earned four ERC wins (but curiously went winless during his 1963 title season), three STCC wins, and a British Saloon Car Championship class win.
Case for: Since I think all the WRC champions should be listed, a guy who won multiple ERC championships (which was in that day a forerunner of the WRC), probably should as well, especially because he also won another title.
Case against: That is not a lot of wins and obviously the ERC did not have modern WRC-caliber competition. I’m going to have to do more research to properly assess whether Andersson’s competition was sufficient to make the list, but the level of success probably was.
Verdict: Keep. This is one I might not have sorted out until I’ve finished my rally drivers’ model, but I probably can’t make any accurate teammate comparisons for somebody who competed in this era, so he may be one of the last drivers I make up my mind about.
Ove Andersson (15)
Summary: Another early Swedish rally driver with no known relation to Gunnar. He raced during the transition period when the most prestigious rally series switched from the ERC to the International Championship of Manufacturers (abbreviated ICM) to the WRC. Andersson won one WRC race, four IMC races in 1971 alone (including the Monte Carlo Rally), two ERC races, single races in the German and South African Rally Championships, and two European Touring Car Championship class wins, including the 24 Hours of Spa.
Case for: It mostly comes down to his 1971 IMC season, where he dominated with four wins in nine races, but there was only a manufacturer’s championship and no driver’s championship that year (hence the name). The fact that he bridged the gap across a bunch of championships also helps his case. His 17-5 record against his rally teammates who also competed in the WRC is excellent.
Case against: His one blockbuster season was probably better than the rest of his career combined, and that could be argued to be a result of his dominant Alpine-Renault chassis. There are always the standard issues that some rallies have stronger competition than others and as with the other Andersson, I haven’t done enough research on his era’s competition.
Verdict: Keep. I definitely need to do more research before eliminating any rally drivers at this point, but I don’t think he’d be one of my first cuts from that world. In fact, despite how many points I awarded him, I kind of like his profile more than Gunnar’s.
Emil Andres (15)
Summary: Andres had one IndyCar points win and one non-points win and four consecutive top ten points finishes from 1946-1949, including a third in 1946. He also won the 1940 Midwest Big Car (sprint car) title, two sprint car wins and one non-points one, and one midget win. He ranked fourth in laps led in 1947 and 1948 with over 100 laps led in both seasons.
Case for: I think the only thing I’ve got is that he had three TNLs in 1947, tied for the most that season. That’s not a very persuasive case to me, especially since he only won once, and he didn’t even die early like Amick did.
Case against: Three of his top ten points finishes were eighth or worse and he went winless in his third-place season (even over that ridiculous 77-race schedule). His open wheel rating of -.109 is bad (although it’s an extremely small sample size). Although he did win a major sprint car championship while Amick did not, a one-win championship season in 1940 (when most of the world is either at war or already gearing up to go to war) is not exactly inspiring. He didn’t make my top 100 IndyCar drivers list, while Amick did.
Verdict: Drop. Andres is the first easy cut. If I’m even going to drop Amick, who had more IndyCar wins, more consistent points finishes, a lot more sprint/midget wins, and a tragic end to his career while he was on the rise, Andres had no hope. It’s to the point that I had to ask myself what he was even doing here. The driver he is most similar to is Myron Fohr, who finished second in the 1948 and 1949 IndyCar championships, won four races despite a terrible Indy 500 record before he disappeared and was completely forgotten about, but even he was better, even he made my top 100, and even he isn’t going to make this list.
