1,000 Greatest Drivers: Jean-Pierre Wimille

I ended up skipping both Timo Bernhard and Tony Brooks (who I had planned for the last two days). I visited Mom again for the first time in a week on Wednesday, and I also decided to go to bar trivia again. I still haven’t won yet, but our team ended up finishing fifth in the bar, so we did not qualify for the Syracuse tournament. It didn’t help that I skipped two weeks ago because I was sick, and last week because my mom exposed me to COVID without me realizing that I’d apparently given it to her after catching it on the bus or something. It didn’t feel like COVID to me since it was way less severe than the virus I’d had in November. She has almost gotten over it, and although I thought she had lost her brand-new dentures again, she ended up finding them in her hair while I was there. Good. I was worried the nursing home threw them out again.

It looks like Onondaga County Community Development is just about ready to select a contractor to construct a ramp. Hopefully, the snow will have melted enough to facilitate that. I think it might, since we’re going to have two weeks straight with highs in the 40s. I rescheduled the meeting with my Unique Peerspectives case manager, or whatever she is called, for tomorrow, so I’m looking forward to that. I also signed up for a counseling session on Thursday, so hopefully I can talk to somebody in real life about my issues, rather than either a chatbot or people on here who don’t need to hear it.

Okay, I didn’t finish this in time for his birthday, but Wimille was too important and also, in my opinion, too obscure to justify skipping. I tried to put more emphasis on his war service, since that honestly interests me more than his career does. I suppose it’ll be controversial that I decided to rank his pre-war years higher than his post-war years. I realize he peaked as a Grand Prix driver in the last years of his life, but my justification for that is mainly because I think generally the competition level in the ‘30s was higher in Europe than in the US. I think the US had stronger competition in the ‘40s, because it took a while for Europe to rebuild its infrastructure after World War II while the Americans didn’t need to. That’s basically the same reason I rank the American IndyCar drivers in the ‘20s generally higher than the Grand Prix drivers of that decade, also. Wimille sort of got fortunate to dominate those last years to some extent because most of his rivals had either died or gotten too old by the time the war ended to compete with him, so I don’t find that the strongest period. Even though my open wheel model is post-war, I only included drivers who made F1 starts, so he isn’t in it. But I am sure he would be very, very high if he had. I think I also like his 1939 better because that was one of the few years when he won in both sports cars (including as an owner-driver at Le Mans) and open wheel, in a year that was shortened because of the onset of the war in Europe, no less. But I am personally more interested in him as a war hero than as a driver, to be honest.

JEAN-PIERRE WIMILLE………..FRANCE

Born: February 26, 1908
Died: January 28, 1949

Best year: 1939
Best drive: 1939 24 Hours of Le Mans

One of the world’s greatest drivers before the formation of Formula One, Wimille was one of the few European drivers who dominated both before and after World War II, with 17 major Grand Prix wins from 1932-1948 (although some of those came in sports car races), and two 24 Hours of Le Mans overall wins in his only starts. The son of Auguste Wimille, a motoring and aviation journalist for the Petit Parisien newspaper, he broke out in 1931 when he finished second in the Monte Carlo Rally and sixth in the proto-F1 European Championship.

Wimille’s first two Grand Prix wins came for Bugatti in 1932, but an injury in the Grand Prix of Comminges put him out of commission for a year and a half. When he returned in 1934, he became a Bugatti factory driver for a team managed by 1920s legend Robert Benoist. However, by the mid-’30s, the German Auto Union and Mercedes teams were overwhelmingly dominant while the French teams couldn’t compete. Although Auto Union offered him a ride, he declined it for political reasons. Instead, he and Benoist pivoted to sports cars. They won the 24 Hours of Le Mans together in 1937, after which Benoist retired. Wimille won Le Mans again as an owner-driver in 1939 with Pierre Veyron, before WWII interrupted his career.

Wimille served in the French air force except during the Vichy period, when he designed a fully electric three-seater road car that was ahead of its time but would never be mass-produced. In 1943, Benoist recruited him to a British spy agency to assist the French Resistance. Benoist and fellow Grand Prix pioneer William Grover-Williams were both killed by the Nazis, but Wimille escaped through a window and hid in a stream until they left. He won the main event of a 1945 triple-header that marked the return of European racing. He then switched to Alfa Romeo, winning eight races from 1946 to 1948 and becoming the undisputed team leader after his teammate Achille Varzi’s death. Sadly, Wimille was killed when he crashed into a tree while practicing for the 1949 Buenos Aires Grand Prix, either because he was trying to avoid spectators or because the glare from the sun hindered his vision.

Wimille is maybe one of the biggest what-ifs in motorsports history. Not only did injuries, his refusal to race a German car, and World War II limit his success in his prime, but he also would’ve had a strong chance at winning the first World Championship had he not died the previous year. He had been vastly outperforming the inaugural World Champion Nino Farina while they were teammates at Alfa Romeo, and Farina didn’t become the team leader until after his death. Nonetheless, he impresses me more than almost any of his peers since he had much more versatility and longevity than almost any of his contemporaries. Considering he was both a racing hero and a war hero, he should be a little better-known than he is.

Year-by-year: 1931: C+, 1932: E-, 1934: C+, 1935: E-, 1936: 4, 1937: 3, 1939: 2, 1946: 4, 1947: E, 1948: 4