1,000 Greatest Drivers: Jim Richards

Once voted the second-greatest Australian driver of all time despite not being Australian.

It’s hard to pare down a driver who won at least eighteen titles and over 150 wins to 500 words, but it honestly didn’t take me as long as I thought it would. Jim Richards still might have a claim as the best New Zealand driver although at this point I probably have to rank Scott Dixon higher and you could make cases for Scott McLaughlin, Shane van Gisbergen, Bruce McLaren, and Denny Hulme over him too but I probably wouldn’t yet at this point. While there have actually been a lot more drivers than you likely think who have won multiple titles simultaneously in the same year, it’s a lot harder to find drivers who won three titles in the same season, particularly if you require that they all have to be at the major-league level and exclude things like Lando Norris winning the third-tier minor leagues Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0, Formula Renault 2.0 NEC, and Toyota Racing Series all simultaneously in 2016 (although I probably would rate that as his best season before his F1 career began). Admittedly, the AMSCAR title was nowhere near as prestigious as the ATCC and Australian Endurance Championships and was sort of minor since it was a series that raced only at a single circuit in Amaroo Park, but plenty of the ATCC stars competed there simultaneously, so I would liken this more to the Nationwide era of NASCAR’s Xfinity series where plenty of NASCAR Cup Chase contenders also competed there full-time but not all of them. His AMSCAR success was still an important part of his legacy although the series is now forgotten. This marks the second of three straight ATCC/Supercars champions I will be covering in a mini-“Australia Week”. Tomorrow’s driver Mark Winterbottom is not as legendary as Marcos Ambrose or Richards, but still a champion nonetheless.