1,000 Greatest Drivers: Jamie Green

He outscored Hamilton and Rosberg combined in the F1 feeder series, but never got an F1 ride.

There really weren’t any significant drivers in motorsports history who were either born or died on September 23, so I had to be more creative on this one and find a driver who achieved a major accomplishment on this date. I settled on Green because September 23, 2007 was the date of his first DTM win. Furthermore, Green’s birthday of June 14 is the date of next year’s 24 Hours of Le Mans and I’ve decided I want to write about Le Mans stars only in the week leading up to that race, so I felt this was a good place to fit Green in.

For all the hype Supercars gets as the supposedly definitive touring car series, I think top-to-bottom that DTM had the best touring car competition most years and probably still does today even though it’s now regarded as not being a touring car series, especially in terms of having fewer bad drivers than any other touring car series (in the 2018 season, Green actually finished last in points). While I do think DTM drivers are overrated in my touring car model to a certain extent mainly because the series does not have races with field inversions like both the World Touring Car Championship and British Touring Car Championship did, I still think the series was deeper considering it became the destination series for drivers like Green who probably should’ve been in F1 but weren’t, and when you consider that many F1 stars such as Mika Häkkinen, Jean Alesi, Heinz-Harald Frentzen, and Ralf Schumacher finished their careers there and were often beaten (sometimes significantly) by the DTM full-time stars who never made it to F1 like Green, I’m even more impressed. I don’t care that he never won a title.