1,000 Greatest Drivers: Pietro Bordino
One of only two crossover winners between Grand Prix racing and IndyCar in the 1920s.
I didn’t post this yesterday because I was busy going through all the NASCAR Late Model Sportsman and Modified race winners in the years prior to the formations of the current series to provide seasonal grades for all these drivers based on their combined wins in these series (and I also considered any other series where these drivers competed). Last night and tonight, I’ve also been going through the Auto Racing Research Associates’ tabulations for each driver’s wins and jotting down how many wins all these drivers had per year. A lot of the drivers they selected seemed to be rather random, but they definitely focus on minor league stock car and modified grassroots drivers, particularly from the Northeast since a lot of them are affiliated with dirt racing Halls of Fame, including the one in Weedsport, NY one county away from me. This is a major blind spot for me, so I thought I’d jot down these drivers’ win counts but I really don’t know which grassroots minor league drivers to take seriously and which to ignore. There are a ton of drivers who have 100+ wins at the grassroots level, many of which I hadn’t even heard of and a bunch of which don’t even have entries on my 30,000+ driver, 190,000+ row master driver list because my list focuses mostly on results in series and not just who happened to win standalone races, which creates a different skew. Obviously, there are certain grassroots legends I would need to include here and I’d prefer to do that over some of the more marginal uninspiring-to-mediocre major league drivers currently sitting on my bubble (like Dick Brooks, Patrick Carpentier, Richie Ginther, Scott Goodyear, Mauricio Gugelmin, Jamie McMurray, Roberto Moreno, any of which I could probably dispense with and some of whom I want to). But I don’t exactly know which grassroots drivers to take seriously and which not to. My feeling is that if it’s somebody who won 400-500 races or more BEFORE 1990, it should probably be a yes, because back then you could make more money dominating minor league races and barnstorming standalone races than you could in major league series, so there was an incentive for many (I feel the same way about rally racers who only competed nationally and not internationally in this period). However, by the ‘90s when all the major leagues were televised and mega, I think minor leagues were gutted everywhere and became much less relevant. While I want to make sure I have Steve Kinser and Ray Hendrick and Richie Evans and Scott Bloomquist (who actually wasn’t a lock on my list because I just ignored that part of the world when I shouldn’t have) on the list, I also saw on the ARRA site that like Jimmy Horton and Stewart Friesen both have over 400+ cumulative wins. Those are both hard, hard sells to me based on what I know about their NASCAR careers. It’s going to take a while to know what to do with these kinds of drivers. This will obviously be one of the last three big hurdles I will have to clear before I finish in addition to understanding how to distinguish between sports car drivers who drove for the same team (particularly if they ONLY raced on multi-driver sports car teams - does Memo Rojas deserve it? Honestly couldn’t tell you…) and how to evaluate drag racers (where I’ve been all over the place…) But hopefully, any work I may do for ARRA will help me figure out which grassroots drivers to take seriously.
Now one day late or possibly two (I probably won’t finish editing this down until after midnight), I go back 100 years and discuss one of only two transatlantic drivers who won both a European Grand Prix and an American oval race in the same year. Jimmy Murphy, the other one, is the best driver of this period but Bordino is definitely pretty close.
PIETRO BORDINO…………………ITALY
Born: November 22, 1887
Died: April 15, 1928
Best year: 1922
Best drive: 1922 Italian Grand Prix
Bordino stands alone with Jimmy Murphy as the only transatlantic Grand Prix and IndyCar winners of the 1920s. Described by future world land speed record holder Henry Segrave as “the finest road race driver in the world”, his reputation was typically greater than his official results as he frequently had mechanical breakdowns while leading races. Bordino’s father was a caretaker at Fiat’s headquarters in Turin, which landed him riding mechanic roles for some major drivers, including Vincenzo Lancia, Felice Nazzaro, and Ralph DePalma before he started racing himself.
Although Bordino had started racing before World War I, he wouldn’t become a star until Fiat reentered racing in 1921, where he primarily focused on the French and Italian Grands Prix. In the latter, he started its first running and took the lead at the start before an oil pump failure. After his Fiat failed to meet 1922 Grand Prix specificataions, he defied expectations by taking his Fiat to America to race. At the time, the American competition was stronger because only Europe had to rebuild its industrial infrastructure after the war. That year, Bordino won two races on the then-ubiquitous wooden board ovals, a 25-miler in Los Angeles and a 50-miler in Santa Rosa. At Los Angeles, he beat both the defending and eventual Indy 500 winners Tommy Milton and Murphy respectively.
However, his European exploits weren’t done. He took the lead on lap 4 of the 1922 French Grand Prix but broke an axle and crashed while leading with two laps remaining, handing Nazzaro his final major win. Bordino avenged his loss by beating Felice by two laps in the Italian Grand Prix, although only eight cars started. Bordino started on the second row at the 1923 French Grand Prix and took a 41-second lead on the opening lap before a supercharger failure seven laps later, then led the first 44 laps of the Italian Grand Prix with a broken wrist before the pain made it too difficult to continue. Bordino faded from view after that, winning only two minor events on both sides of the Atlantic before Fiat withdrew after 1927, which prompted Bordino to switch to Bugatti. While practicing at the Circuito di Alessandria in 1928, he struck a dog, which sent his car airborne into the Tanaro River and caused him to drown.
While I don’t think Bordino’s prime lasted long enough to agree with Segrave, you can easily argue that he was the world’s best road racer in 1922 and 1923. However, the IndyCar crossover is what really stands out to me. IndyCar, which raced entirely on ovals then and mostly on wooden ones, was vastly different from Grand Prix racing, which only took place on road courses. Winning in both disciplines in the same year proves his versatility matched his dominance even if he didn’t sustain either for long. This rare crossover makes him one of the most underrated drivers of his time, in an era when even the more dominant drivers are mostly forgotten.
Year-by-year: 1913: C+, 1921: E-, 1922: 2, 1923: E, 1924: C+, 1925: C+, 1927: C+