1,000 Greatest Drivers: Mel Kenyon

I admit I'd never seen the word "grommet" before until researching him.

Although I’ve certainly entered all the sprint and midget car winners for major tours on my master driver list except for the years before USAC was formed in 1956, I still don’t feel like I know much about dirt racing. I knew enough to know that Kenyon as the winningest midget driver of all time belonged on this list of course, but I hadn’t really read about his injury or his scrappy Indy 500 underdog performances. Now that I have, I’m very impressed. I still tend to be more impressed by the sprint and midget car graduates who succeeded in the top tiers of NASCAR and IndyCar than those who stayed in USAC their entire career, and I also tend to be more impressed by drivers who win in all the USAC divisions as opposed to drivers who win in just one like Kenyon did. Nonetheless, Kenyon is a big exception to these general rules as the sheer numbers he put up as well as the fact that most of his best seasons came after his grisly Langhorne crash explain why he is one of the few midget car drivers who I felt deserved to have E-rated seasons despite basically only competing in midget racing. Maybe he’s the only one.