1,000 Greatest Drivers: Jimmy Bryan
His first win came for the only female IndyCar championship-winning owner.
I originally had Bryan’s best year as 1954 because it was the start of his power run and his winningest season and most dominant in terms of laps led, but I ultimately went with 1956 because he showed more versatility by winning both the IndyCar title as well as his first major league stock car race, not to mention that 1956 has less competition from F1 drivers than 1954 does. I spent a while on this, particularly because I knew he deserved to have some top five seasons considering he’s almost the only driver to dominate in an era of IndyCar racing that seemed to be otherwise dominated by a series of never-ending flashes in the pan after Ted Horn’s death in 1948 and before Rodger Ward/A.J. Foyt’s rise in 1959-1960. However, I haven’t ranked any of the top fives prior to 1960 so I have sort of to do this in my head on the fly, although I think I like the placements I chose for those years.
So many of the arguably weakest IndyCar champions and Indy 500 winners come from the ‘50s, including Johnnie Parsons (he had a lot of wins, but look at the number of DNQs he had!), Henry Banks (who I believe never made a pass for the lead in his entire career despite winning a title… I might unironically rate him lower than Buzz Calkins as the worst champion; at least Calkins had to outduel Tony Stewart), Lee Wallard, Chuck Stevenson, Sam Hanks, and Pat Flaherty. This era of IndyCar had an insane amount of parity… except for Bryan and to a lesser extent Tony Bettenhausen, who did win two titles and utterly dominated in 1951, although even his second title came in a winless season. I bet even if you’re an IndyCar expert, you might not know that there was both a female Indy 500-winning car owner (Maude Yagle in 1929) and a different IndyCar championship-winning owner (Bessie Lee Paoli, whose last win was Bryan’s first). Paoli had won the championship with Stevenson the year before in ‘52 so I had to mention it, especially since I’m not sure whether I’m going to list Stevenson or not. Four IndyCar wins and a Cup win, but really short-lived, so I decided to mention Paoli here just in case I don’t list Stevenson.
One of my paid subscribers suggested I’ve been releasing my columns too quickly and I should be releasing them at a slower rate, like maybe 3 or 4 a week. What do you think? Do you think I should slow down my writing? You can contact me at sean.wrona@gmail.com or @racermetrics to reply, although I might discuss this further when I’m discussing my November driver schedule in a few days in what will likely be my next free post.
