1,000 Greatest Drivers: Lucas Luhr/Pancho Carter
On roof replacements, ramps, retirements, Rahal, and Rick.
Well, Onondaga County Community Development finally finished replacing the roof on Friday morning (actually before I submitted my previous post) and the work on the ramp will be starting today. Now that the ramp work is about to start, I’ve started the process to get my mom enrolled in PACE CNY again so she will be allowed to come home with their in-home care services, but it looks like there’s still a little phone tag here between the woman at PACE and the fourth-floor social worker at Van Duyn, so this may still take a while. The deep cleaning is scheduled on August 5, so almost all these things that have been at the forefront of my mind for almost a year now are getting done and now it’s time to focus on my own health and getting a physical as my counselor recommended. I haven’t even had a primary doctor for years since the office I went to closed.
Alex Bowman announced that 2027 will be his final NASCAR Cup Series season, and I’m almost surprised that Hendrick Motorsports is willing to wait so long. I get Jimmie Johnson being allowed to have three winless seasons to end his career when considering that he was the most successful driver in the team’s history and he still fought for a couple race wins. However, other drivers like Ken Schrader, Terry Labonte, and Kasey Kahne got a hell of a lot of leeway as one could argue that, like Bowman, they should have been fired years before they left the team (maybe not Schrader) and in fact Kahne is the only one of those drivers who was actually fired to begin with. Hendrick was the only team ever to offer a lifetime contract (to Jeff Gordon) and it feels like no other team has ever shown more loyalty to their “guys”. While you don’t want to be a firing squad like McLaren in IndyCar who seems to be fundamentally unsatisfied by anyone except Pato O’Ward, no matter how good they are, Hendrick has seemingly erred too far in the other direction and been way too tolerant of mediocrity to the point of complacency. Some people in my circles have said that Alan Gustafson should have been fired as Chase Elliott’s crew chief a long time ago because Gustafson has clearly not been producing as fast cars in the Next Gen era as he did in the Gen 6. His Gen 6 setups were often fast enough to overcome his bad pit calls, but that happened much less often in this era. I wonder if Hendrick’s extreme loyalty to his guys is also being felt in the engineering department and that explains why they’re struggling to keep up with Toyota this year. As someone who sees himself as a pro-labor guy, I kind of like a team that refuses to fire anyone on principle. But is this maximizing their chances of winning? I would argue that it is not. Don’t get me wrong: Bowman is my second-favorite driver. I like his introverted personality, the fact that he’s shown more open vulnerability than anxiety that we’ve seen from a lot of other drivers, and the gallant drives he sometimes delivered while sick or hurt. But even I thought he should have been fired. Carson Hocevar has now overtaken all the Hendrick drivers to be the highest-ranked Chevy driver in points and while I’ve always rated Hocevar, that should not be happening. I guess I’m glad he got a final season and if the object is to wait until Connor Zilisch becomes available rather than promoting Corey Day now, I guess I get it. Even as slowly as Xfinity/O’Reilly graduates adapt to Cup these days, I think both of them would do better than Bowman even tomorrow. Bowman’s ten years at Hendrick may make him one of the weakest drivers ever to spend that long at a top-tier team. I’m not gonna complain about it too much because I like him, but I really expected more from him than we got. And although when I started my research for my 1,000 greatest drivers list several years ago, I was pretty sure Bowman would be on it. Now, it looks almost certain that he will be the winningest driver who will not.
The other big silly season story was that Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing in IndyCar sold its charter to Dreyer & Reinbold Racing, which will be surprisingly reentering IndyCar full-time even though its team namesake Dennis Reinbold died a few weeks ago. This leaves Mick Schumacher rideless unless D&R decides to keep him, which I doubt that they will. Personally, I have been none too impressed by any of the Rahal drivers after Christian Lundgaard left and even though Graham Rahal used to be good (and on paper is having his best season in years because he’s been ridiculously lucky), I don’t think any of their drivers currently are must-haves in the field. I realize Schumacher has been faster on ovals than I thought he would be, but I’ve mostly been irritated by him. As a Malukas fan, I’ve got to say I was annoyed when he won his first pole at Phoenix and all the social media conversation I saw about it was raving about Schumacher qualifying fourth on his oval debut just because of his famous last name and because he used to race in F1. Malukas was as usual fast in the race while Schumacher got slower and slower as the race progressed and fell to 18th. He did finally get his first top ten last week at Nashville and has shown faster on the ovals than I expected (especially considering how awful the Rahal cars are and how awful the eponymous Graham Rahal was at Nashville), but even with that and both his fellow rookies Dennis Hauger and Caio Collet crashing, he’s still behind them in points. Considering Schumacher’s been a major league driver for years and those other two have not, I haven’t been very impressed. And I was also a little annoyed when Schumacher spun out Santino Ferrucci even though Ferrucci is my least favorite driver, too, just ‘cause a lot of the reaction I was seeing was people celebrating the schadenfreude of watching bigots suffer. While I don’t think this will be Ferrucci’s final season, it does seem likely that his career is winding down and that he will never win a race even though he’s better than a bunch of drivers who did win races. You got what you wanted, Ferrucci hecklers. Rejoice and be glad! And now that Paul Tracy isn’t in the booth anymore, he isn’t really getting overpraised anymore either. So, I’m really indifferent about Mick continuing. If he gets another ride, cool. If he doesn’t, cool. There are better options. Unfortunately, it looks like D&R’s likely option Conor Daly isn’t a great one. I will admit that Daly is a top ten driver on pretty much every oval now, which is more than I ever expected him to do, and I guess for a team like that it doesn’t really matter that he’s basically comatose on road courses. Methinks Mick should go back to sports cars. (Linus Lundqvist over both please.)
What an awful year it’s been for the NASCAR writing community. Not only did we suffer the loss of arguably both NASCAR’s greatest print (Steve Waid) and online (Matt McLaughlin) columnists, but now Waid’s co-host from The Scene Vault podcast (my favorite racing podcast), Rick Houston, is suffering Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. I tend to listen to music and TV podcasts more than racing ones, so I’m still a few years behind on The Scene Vault and I haven’t listened to it much in the last year, but I’m gonna try and start catching up over the past few months while I still can. For all I’ve praised the podcast, I never subscribed to it on Patreon so once I heard the news, I decided to subscribe to Rick, again while I still can. He’s an awesome human being and a hell of a nice guy and a great writer an archivist. I interacted with him a bunch of times on Twitter before I got locked out of my account and renounced it, and I also wrote to him asking for ideas of how to break into the NASCAR writing industry. He told me about the online fantasy sports/gambling writing scene and that’s what led me to pursue the opportunity with RotoBaller, which led to me joining the Fantasy Sports Writers Association and so on. I quit the RotoBaller gig to focus on this (which I am almost making as much money from already) and my full-time paid work, but I really appreciate how Rick helped give me my start as a more serious racing writer. He needs your prayers and support.
I don’t have much to say about the Brickyard 400 except that my expectations for it after last year’s race were so low that as bad as the race was, for me it at least exceeded expectations. At least there were two natural lead changes between Corey Heim and Denny Hamlin this time. That beats last year’s zero, and that’s about all I have to say about that.
LUCAS LUHR………………….GERMANY
Born: July 22, 1979
Best year: 2011
Best drive: 2003 24 Hours of Le Mans
One of the most successful sports car drivers of the early 21st century, Luhr spent most of his career in the American Le Mans Series, where he earned a record six championships and 50 race wins. After winning the Porsche Carrera Cup Germany title as a rookie in 1999, Luhr turned pro as a Porsche factory driver in 2000. He initially teamed up with the previous year’s PCC Germany champion Dirk Müller and became an instant superstar by earning a class win at Sebring in his first ALMS start for Dick Barbour Racing. He also finished second overall in a GT car in the 2001 24 Hours of Daytona.
However, Luhr’s greatest successes would come with teammate Sascha Maassen. Together, they earned three more Sebring class wins consecutively for Alex Job Racing from 2001-2003, making Luhr only the third driver after Olivier Gendebien and Bob Holbert to win four straight. They also won back-to-back ALMS GT titles in 2002 and 2003, and Luhr himself also earned the class pole and win at Le Mans both years. His 2003 pole time was actually four seconds faster than his 2002 time even though the size of his air restrictor was reduced.
Luhr and Maassen next won the FIA GT N-GT championship in 2004 and Roger Penske’s first ALMS class win and title in 2005 and 2006 respectively. He also won the 2006 24 Hours of Nürburgring before switching to Audi in search of an overall Le Mans win. Although he won another ALMS title in 2008, a crash at Le Mans in 2009 effectively ended his Audi tenure. In 2011, he bounced back by winning his second FIA GT title, four ALMS races, and another 24 Hours of Nürburgring. That year, he and Klaus Graf teamed up at Muscle Milk Racing, where they won the last two overall ALMS P1 titles and 14 more races in 2012 and 2013 against negligible competition. At Road America in 2012, Luhr and Graf recovered from four laps down to lose in a photo finish. In 2015, he won the 24 Hours of Spa and one IMSA race before his arrest for urinating in a parking lot in 2016 effectively ended his relevant career.
This odd “jump the shark” moment doesn’t take anything away from his nine championships from 1999-2013. I would argue that he was easily more accomplished than any of his teammates. Oftentimes, sports car drivers rise and fall with their manufacturers, but Luhr’s wins with Porsche, Audi, Honda, and BMW demonstrated his versatility. The main strike against him is that besides pissing his career away, he never won the 12 Hours of Sebring overall, which sports car purists typically regard more highly than ALMS titles. On the other hand, his sheer volume of wins easily compensates for that, and the Nürburgring and Spa wins are arguably more important. His career may have spontaneously combusted sooner than it should have but he was undeniably one of the best sports car drivers of his era.
Touring car model: N/A
Teammate head-to-heads 3-3 (2-3 vs. Mike Rockenfeller, 1-0 vs. Patrick Simon)
Year-by-year: 1999: C+, 2000: C+, 2001: E-, 2002: E, 2003: E-, 2004: E, 2005: C+, 2006: E-, 2008: E, 2011: E, 2012: E-, 2013: C+, 2015: C
PANCHO CARTER……………………USA
Born: June 11, 1950
Best year: 1978
Best drive: 1981 Michigan 500 at Michigan International Speedway
The son of Duane Carter, the 1950 AAA Midwest Big Car champion and a former IndyCar driver, Pancho easily eclipsed Duane’s accomplishments in both disciplines by becoming the first driver to win the USAC Silver Crown, Sprint, and Midget titles in addition to winning an IndyCar race in a subpar car even though the skill sets necessary to be successful in both significantly diverged during the intervening decades.
Carter won his first midget championship on his USAC debut in 1972. His first sprint car title came in 1974, a year he also won Indy 500 Rookie of the Year. He added another sprint car title in 1976, winning a then-record 12 races that year and 10 the next, but failed to defend his title. Utterly fearless on the Salem high-banks, Carter became the first driver to win four consecutive Joe James/Pat O’Connor Memorials from 1974-1977. However, an IndyCar testing crash at Phoenix in 1977 resulted in two broken arms, a doubly-fractured pelvis, a cracked hip, and a damaged bladder. Despite such gruesome injuries, he improbably won the Silver Crown title and 7 races across all USAC divisions in 1978 including his first two races back and earned a top ten IndyCar points finish.
After sweeping the Triple Crown, he largely stopped entering dirt races. However, after CART became the primary IndyCar sanctioning body in 1979, the series pivoted sharply to road racing and his withered leg hindered him on road courses, making him somewhat unsuited for the full schedule. Nonetheless, he won the inaugural Michigan 500 in a dramatic upset in 1981 for privateer owner Alex Morales. Since the championship disproportionately weighted 500-mile races, this propelled him to third in points. He also finished 5th in 1980 and 10th in 1983, giving Morales his only top ten points finishes. His last flashes of brilliance came for Galles Racing in 1985, when he won the pole at Indianapolis and was scored the winner at Sanair until being stripped of the win for illegally passing his Morales replacement Johnny Rutherford under caution. He had a scattershot career afterward, but never really recovered from an unsuccessful NASCAR pivot in 1986. He remained active as an IndyCar spotter into the 21st century, most notably for Sam Hornish, Jr., Dan Wheldon, and David Malukas.
Carter’s USAC greatness is beyond dispute, but the big what-if is how strong a CART driver he would’ve been without the Phoenix crash. I have my doubts because he skipped the one IndyCar road course race in 1977 at Mosport before the crash. However, if he had made that pivot to the road course-majority schedule and not been injured, he likely would have attracted top team interest and been one of the best CART drivers of the ‘80s. As it was, he fizzled out perhaps sooner than he should’ve, but his ability to recover from a crash that would’ve ended the careers of lesser men and overachieve for half a decade with a second-rate team after that is still worth celebrating.
Open wheel model: #386 of 931 (-.011)
Teammate head-to-heads: 15-9 (5-2 vs. Geoff Brabham, 2-2 vs. Jimmy Caruthers, 1-2 vs. Josele Garza, 1-0 vs. Jerry Grant, 1-0 vs. Lee Kunzman, 2-0 vs. Roberto Moreno, 1-0 vs. Vern Schuppan, 2-3 vs. Bill Vukovich II)
Year-by-year: 1971: C-, 1972: C+, 1973: C+, 1974: C+, 1975: C+, 1976: E, 1977: E, 1978: E, 1979: C-, 1980: C+, 1981: C+, 1982: C-, 1983: C