So named because I’m going through three consecutive drag racers today who havae very different cases.
I’ve been struggling this week to try and arrange for Mom’s Social Security checks to once again be deposited into her bank account. Although the Van Duyn business office told me that after they discharged her, they would automatically revert back to being direct-deposited in the same bank account, that is apparently not the case. So, after playing phone tag for hours and hours with the business office, the national Social Security number, and the local Syracuse Social Security office, there were a zillion issues. First, they wouldn’t give me any information because even though I have a power of attorney, I never filed it with them. Then, they wouldn’t give Mom any information because even though she remembered her name, Social Security number, date of birth, place of birth, and mother’s maiden name, she forgot her address (indeed, she usually forgets that she even bought this house), and it didn’t matter that she remembered the other five out of six items. I tried to log in to her Social Security account online, but it was unwilling to let me log in unless I provided backup codes. Apparently, they started requiring backup codes at some point a couple years ago since the last time I logged in, so I couldn’t log in for her at all now because I had never set backup codes to begin with and there was no other way of authenticating her (especially because my mom’s cell phone was stolen in the nursing home). I’m getting sick of multi-factor authentication in general, to be honest, as someone who was never down with the phonification of all the processes we used to handle in less cumbersome ways. I wanted to do this either on the phone or online since I didn’t want Mom to have to go to the Social Security office when I know that she’s been incontinent. However, after jumping through hoops, having to set up a printer to scan in her license, having to half-lie and say her license was valid (since it wasn’t expired, even though she failed her vision test) just to get a chance of getting back into her Social Security account, and then having to go through two video chats with her through ID.me because the back side of the license I scanned in got cut off when I scanned it, I finally got her logged in and realized that Van Duyn was still listed as her representative payee. I was told finally yesterday that we could not get the representative payee changed without going to the Social Security office, so I’ve scheduled for PACE CNY to pick her up on one of her buses and take her to an appointment two weeks from now for her to get access to her Social Security account, but if they decide her cognition is insufficient, I might have to be made the representative payee myself.
Over the past couple days, I didn’t get a post done, but I did finish calculating speed percentiles for all IMSA drivers this season as well as determining all the on-track lead changes for all four classes, but I still want to look at the video footage and make sure those are all real lead changes. Admittedly, since there are four classes and most of the lead changes are on restarts, many IMSA restarts don’t appear on video every year, but I usually can tell from the lap times which ones are legit. I’ll probably try to finish my IMSA table over the next week before I move on to the BTCC and DTM tables (if I can find DTM lap data for this season, which I’m not sure I can) since those series are also ending this weekend.
Kevin Bartlett (15)
Summary: Boy, do the Aussies really overrate this guy! A Wheels Magazine poll from 2004 ranked him the 15th-greatest Australian driver of all time (and they even included the New Zealanders who competed in Australian domestic motorsport). Obviously, this is before the emergence of Jamie Whincup, Shane van Gisbergen, Scott McLaughlin, Will Power, and Oscar Piastri, but I still kinda find it laughable. Bartlett won the Australian Drivers’ Championship (at one time the most prestigious Australian title) twice in 1968 and 1969 and won 13 races in that series, along with two Tasman Series wins, a win in the 1974 Bathurst 1000, a win in the 1965 Sandown 6 Hour, three wins in the Australian Touring Car Championship (what is now Supercars) including a second-place points finish in 1980 and a third-place in 1982, and four Australian GT wins.
Case for: I did admittedly just rattle off 24 wins across open wheel cars (the Australian Drivers’ Championship), sports cars (Australian GT), and touring cars (ATCC, Bathurst, and Sandown). He had more versatility than most of the other Australian Drivers’ Champions (who tended to only win in that series), and he won the Macau Grand Prix too. He was the only Australian Drivers’ Champion to eventually win in what is now Supercars until 1984/1985 champion John Bowe.
Case against: I think Bartlett’s case comes down mostly to how seriously I take the Australian Drivers’ Championship and I don’t take it seriously at all. Although it wsa ostensibly designed to be Australia’s premier domestic series and many of those drivers competed against and won titles against essentially the same pool of drivers, they simply weren’t competitive with the international open wheel talents. It’s telling that the two Aussie World Champions Jack Brabham and Alan Jones did not really compete for championships there, and also that many of the ‘60s/’70s Australian Drivers’ Champions competed in the Tasman Series, but none of them actually won there until 1970 after the F1 drivers left. The three proto-Supercars wins certainly help his case, but in 1980, there was only one other list-worthy driver who ran full-time (Peter Brock), and in 1982, there were only two (Brock and Dick Johnson). He also made an IndyCar crossover and was pretty abysmal, DNQing from the Indy 500. His open wheel rating of -.272 (albeit based on a small sample size) is also very bad. Hilariously enough, he was on the panel that decided that Australian greatest drivers list, which is no doubt why he was so inflated (although he’s still better than Spencer Martin who was ranked one position above him).
Verdict: Drop. I simply don’t think the competition in any of the series where he competed was strong enough for as few major league wins as he had. The difference is that I don’t take the Australian Drivers’ Championship as seriously as the Aussies themselves do, and the ATCC career wasn’t nearly strong enough to compensate.
Marc Basseng (14)
Summary: German sports car driver who primarily raced at the Nürburgring, where he is tied with Arno Klasen for the fourth-most overall wins in VLN/NLS series history (he also won 15 more in class). At the 24 Hours of Nürburgring itself, he won once overall in 2012, a year he also won the last FIA GT Championship. He also had eight 24 Hours of Nürburgring class wins, three 24 Hours of Spa class wins, and a 24 Hours of Daytona class win in 2007. He also won both Pro-Am and Amateur GT World Challenge championships, four FIA GT wins, two ADAC GT wins, nine GT World Challenge class wins, and a European Le Mans Series class win.
Case for: I just rattled a hell of a lot of wins there and he has won somewhere all but two seasons from 2004-2026 inclusive. Since VLN/NLS now has a 50-year history, being one of the top five all-time winners makes a strong case for him, and he has the most overall wins of any NLS driver who also won the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, so he mostly wasn’t feasting on lesser classes that were easier to win. Unlike a lot of drivers in this discipline, he was not just limited to wins in Germany.
Case against: He only won once in his FIA GT title season, which most would argue might be his greatest accomplishment, and I think his teammate Markus Winkelhock was better. The fact that his other two titles came in Pro-Am and Amateur classes gives me pause. He never placed highly in the VLN/NLS championship, but admittedly, that’s because the drivers who end up winning championships there tend to be drivers who win weak classes by larger margins. His -.143 touring car rating is very bad, mainly because Rob Huff beat him 18-2 in the 2013 World Touring Car Championship, but that was Basseng’s only season in the series where Huff was defending champion. There’s also the usual issue of which sports car driver contributed what, and I’m not sure he has any noteworthy solo wins.
Verdict: Keep. I find my case for more persuasive this time and I think I need to give him more points, probably especially for his 2012 season when he did win the FIA GT title, the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, and 2 VLN class wins. The fact that he was the winningest VLN/NLS driver to also win the race that the series supports says a lot.
Whit Bazemore (14)
Summary: Consistent career compiler in the NHRA Funny Car division, with ten consecutive winning seasons from 1997-2006 and 20 career wins, ranking 14th all time.
Case for: I know he was highly rated by drag racing aficionados and 20 wins is a solid number, but as I write this, I really don’t see it. Maybe if he’d won in some other series.
Case against: Bazemore never won a title, never won more than four races in a season, and only won more than two three times. Although he won two U.S. Nationals, he never won the other major event, the Winternationals. Since I am including Top Fuel, Funny Car, and Pro Stock drivers, and I will probably also include some from outside the NHRA too, I think going as deep as the #14 all-time winner in any of these is overkill, unless they were significantly more dominant in their time.
Verdict: Drop. There really wasn’t much of a case here to begin with.
Raymond Beadle (14)
Summary: Probably best-known now as Rusty Wallace’s car owner when he won the 1989 championship (but even then he seems to be one of the most obscure NASCAR championship-winning owners), Beadle was another Funny Car driver. Although his 14 NHRA wins are actually fewer than Bazemore’s, he was a lot more dominant in his era with three consecutive NHRA Funny Car titles from 1979-1981 as well as three IHRA titles in 1976, 1976, and 1981.
Case for: Even though Beadle won fewer races than Bazemore, it’s worth noting that the NHRA schedule had a lot fewer races on it in Beadle’s era than in Bazemore’s. While the NHRA was always the most prestigious drag racing series, in Beadle’s era, a lot of the NHRA stars also competed in two other leagues, the IHRA and AHRA simultaneously. Because the IHRA is collapsing as we speak and is very poorly-archived, I have not yet researched how many total wins Beadle has (since I’d probably have to make wild guesses from newspaper archives to do it), but if you count his total wins, it has to be more than Bazemore. Ultimate Racing History has records of 18 IHRA wins and 4 AHRA wins and those records may not even be complete.
Case against: Honestly, when I originally rated him, it was because of the lack of NHRA wins. But now better understanding the full extent of his career, I don’t see one anymore. I was ignorant about all the IHRA stuff until very recently and I haven’t integrated that into my points calculations yet. When I do, he will be closer to if not at lock status.
Verdict: Keep. Kind of a no-brainer the more research I do.
Jack Beckman (18)
Summary: The third consecutive Funny Car driver in this group, his 41 NHRA Funny Car wins rank 7th all time. He won the 2012 championship and peaked in 2015 with 7 seasons. Not only does he have more wins than Bazemore and Beadle combined, he is the only one of the three to earn multiple U.S. Nationals and Winternationals wins. Although old age has never been a hindrance for drag racers, it’s noteworthy that he didn’t win his first race until he was 40 and he has still won two races at age 60.
Case for: Honestly, if you look at all the names directly above (Matt Hagan, Tony Pedregon) or below him (Cruz Pedregon, Don Prudhomme, Del Worsham, Kenny Bernstein), it seems like he’s in strong enough company to make it. He has set 10 of the last 23 speed and/or elapsed time records in the class.
Case against: I probably awarded him too few points because it seems like people take drag racing far less seriously than they did when I was a kid in the ‘90s and it’s dismissed more these days, especially after they reduced the racing distance from 1/4 mile to 1,000 feet in 2008.
Verdict: Keep. I think I am too biased against modern drag racers more for reasons of prestige than the level of competition. Drag racers were all over RPM2Night when I watched it as a kid, but now it seems like far people talk about their equivalents on racing shows now, but a decrease in prestige does not necessarily indicate a decrease in competition. I haven’t docked drivers from the IndyCar and IMSA split eras for dominating eras that had a loss in prestige even if the races were sometimes just as competitive, so to be consistent, I probably shouldn’t be doing that here either.
GEORGE FURY………………AUSTRALIA
Born: January 31, 1945
Best year: 1986
Best drive: 1989 Australian Touring Car Championship Race #7 at Winton Motor Raceway
One of Australia’s most versatile and underrated drivers, Fury was the only driver since Colin Bond to be championship-caliber in both rally and touring cars and was the linchpin in developing Nissan’s touring car operation. Born in Hungary before fleeing to Australia in the wake of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, Fury began competing in rallies, usually with local lecturer Monty Suffern navigating. After his first win in the 1973 Akademos Rally, Fury loaned a Datsun to compete in Australia’s prestigious Southern Cross Rally in 1974, eventually becoming a Datsun factory driver, tying Ross Dunkerton for the 1977 Australian Rally Championship, becoming the first Australian Southern Cross Rally winner in seven years in 1978 (and repeating in 1979), then winning a second ARC title in 1980. Although Dunkerton won five titles to Fury’s two, Fury was clearly better since he beat Dunkerton 8-2 head-to-head.
Around the time Datsun rebranded as Nissan, they withdrew from rallying and pivoted to touring cars, bringing Fury with them. Using his iconic Blueburd chassis, he finished second on his Australian Touring Car Championship debut in 1982. The next season, he led the championship all season despite going winless due to an odd points bonus for cars with smaller engine displacements until his team boycotted the season finale at Lakeside. Fury won both his first ATCC race and the pole for the Bathurst 1000 in 1984, where he set the fastest lap time for seven years, and became the first polesitter with a Japanese car and a turbocharged engine. Most Australians regard this very highly, but I don’t, since his car owner, Fred Gibson, admitted to cheating.
After sitting out 1985 while the team developed the new Nissan Skyline, Fury exploded in 1986, with five ATCC wins and four Australian Endurance Championship wins, including his first Sandown 500. However, despite winning the most races in both championships, he lost them to Robbie Francevic and Jim Richards, respectively. However, he only won twice more in the ATCC (including forcing Peter Brock into a mistake at Winton in 1989) and once at Sandown before Mark Skaife replaced him. Unable to find a full-season touring car ride for 1990, he returned to the ARC and won two rallies before he ran out of money, then earned his final Sandown win later that year. He retired in 1991 to a quiet life farming and driving a school bus in Talmalmo.
Although Richards and Skaife receive most of the credit for Nissan’s Australian touring car dominance, and I do rate them higher, Fury arguably played a bigger role in elevating Gibson’s team, even though they released him immediately before their trifecta ATCC titles. Despite never winning a title and a surprisingly lackluster touring car rating, his 1986 season demonstrated championship-caliber speed. He might not have made my list based on either his rally or touring car career alone, but his success in both clearly makes him worthy. He certainly deserved better than Wheels magazine ranking him as only the 50th-greatest Australian driver.
Touring car model: #698 of 1676 (-.013)
Teammate head-to-heads: 20-26 (0-1 vs. Colin Bond, 1-1 vs. John Bowe, 4-1 vs. Fred Gibson, 0-1 vs. Tony Longhurst, 0-12 vs. Jim Richards, 3-0 vs. Gary Scott, 3-0 vs. Terry Shiel, 2-4 vs. Mark Skaife, 7-6 vs. Glenn Seton)
Rally model: N/A
Teammate head-to-heads: 11-4 (1-0 vs. Rauno Aaltonen, 0-1 vs. Greg Carr, 8-2 vs. Ross Dunkerton, 1-0 vs. Yoshio Iwashita, 1-0 vs. Shekhar Mehta, 0-1 vs. Timo Salonen)
Year-by-year: 1976: C-, 1977: C-, 1978: C, 1980: C, 1983: C+, 1984: C, 1986: E, 1987: E-, 1989: C, 1990: C