1,000 Greatest Drivers: Filipe Albuquerque

Comes closer than any other driver on my list to having a name that rhymes with turkey.

Okay, that was a reach, but it was either that or a “Weird Al” reference and I don’t particularly like that song. I realize he doesn’t pronounce his last name the same way Americans pronounce the New Mexico city. I didn’t pick him for today because it’s Thanksgiving but because it is the anniversary of his greatest win at the 2010 Race of Champions where he beat both that year’s F1 champion Sebastian Vettel in the semifinals and that year’s WRC champion Sébastien Loeb in the finals. As always with sports car drivers, I may push any of his seasons slightly up or down in my tier ratings once I have done more research into lap times for pre-2021 seasons. In his case, since he is a current driver, I should be able to eventually find lap times for most of his major league races to more easily compare him to his teammates and determine which years he was doing work and which years his teammates were. While I think he’s definitely one of the best sports car drivers this decade since he is one of relatively few who has wins in WEC, IMSA, and the European Le Mans Series and has come quite close to winning championships in all three series, this was not one of his better seasons. After three second-place points finishes, he dropped to sixth this year. I definitely think his co-driver Ricky Taylor was the leader of the Wayne Taylor team by far this year since he had more lead shares than the other three WTR drivers combined, but Albuquerque did have a slightly faster speed percentile than Ricky. I might change this, but right now I’m thinking E- for Ricky, C for Albuquerque, C+ for Delétraz (because he also had the ELMS title), and probably not listing Jordan since he had a below average speed percentile. Happy Thanksgiving.