1,000 Greatest Drivers: Raymond Sommer

A fitting driver for season's end.

Obviously I chose to write about Sommer today because he was arguably the best driver born on this date. You could make a case that António Félix da Costa has overtaken him, but I’m not sure that I would. Since da Costa is still a currently relevant driver, I’ve decided to wait to write about him even though he too is a lock on my list. However, this was also fitting since we are now approaching the end of summer since it is the last day of August.

Sommer may be the best driver of all time who I never see anyone writing about. I occasionally see discussions of some of the great Grand Prix drivers of the ‘30s like Tazio Nuvolari, Rudolf Caracciola, Bernd Rosemeyer, and Jean-Pierre Wimille. They certainly don’t get talked about to the same extent as any of the drivers in the same tier of greatness during the years F1 actually existed, but they aren’t forgotten. Sommer does seem to be almost entirely forgotten even though he definitely rubbed shoulders with all of those guys and was likely in their league. He literally owned and co-drove Nuvolari’s winning 1933 24 Hours of Le Mans entry and co-drove with Wimille in his 1936 French Grand Prix win as well, but because those races were sports car races and not actual marquee open wheel races, people consider them to be less prestigious. I am absolutely certain Sommer would have won a bunch of the big Grands Prix in his heyday had he chose to sell out and drive for the Nazi-backed Mercedes and Auto Union teams like Rosemeyer and Caracciola did instead of driving his own privateer entries, but the fact that he didn’t means that his legacy seems to be forgotten and that just sucks, man.