That’s a reference to an obscure ‘90s TV show that I never watched, and it is true that I engaged with the media of that decade than any other, so I’ll randomly recognize that and miss things on much more popular shows like Gray’s Anatomy and Suits (see below) that came out after I mostly stopped paying attention to modern culture other than music.
I suppose it would’ve made more sense to paywall the driver more famous to today’s audiences (Briscoe) rather than the more obscure ones (Segrave and Campbell), but even if more people know who Briscoe is now and I certainly think he did enough to attain lock status, in the grand scheme of things he didn’t turn out to be that important historically, while Segrave and Campbell were talents on a more generational level, so I decided to leave this one up for free. Also, the Campbell and Segrave posts required a fair bit of research, while the Briscoe one I could have almost written in my sleep. There’s a reason why Segrave and Campbell were both knighted while Briscoe will never be, beyond just the fact that Briscoe is/was Australian (I guess he’s a naturalized American now) and the former two were British.
PACE CNY delivered the hospital bed, wheelchair, and walker today between when I finished the Campbell column and this one, and I also had a counseling session in between. All systems now seem to be go for Mom’s return. I also took the air conditioner out, so all I really have to do is probably move the space heater in the room where her bed is because she’s been really cold (one of her main complaints in the nursing room), move a laptop in the room so I can work and supervise her simultaneously, and bedeck her bed with some sheets and blankets.
I admit I had to laugh at this one:
Who on earth would confuse those two? They weren’t contemporaries, they didn’t compete in the same series, they had different driving styles, and they were both famous and successful enough to forge their own identities. Similarly talented? Sure, I guess so. I can totally see Chase Briscoe choking his only legit chance at a championship! Save this for the two Tim Richmonds, the two Jeff Burtons, or especially the two Andy Hillenburgs (I thought the ARCA champion/NASCAR driver/Indy 500 starter and the World of Outlaws star were the same driver for a looooong time).
Still haven’t watched the news recently and I think even if I did, I wouldn’t have heard about that British election. Had never heard of Count Binface (I was gonna say that sounds like a cartoon character and I looked it up and he basically is); I put Jeremy Corbyn but if those two had faced off, I’d have probably heard about it. I never really read much about the Old West, so I just put lasso, but I know lassoing cattle doesn’t kill them, and I guess I didn’t realize whatever the object was had to kill. I should’ve thought of Death of a Salesman because how many plays would have that many revivals? But I put Elmer Gantry. Almost everyone got Clerks. I did not think of Twinkies but it makes sense. Frampton was both rated the hardest question and got the lowest response rate because I guess he has zero relevance to anyone other than classic rock radio listeners, but I was one for a long time.
There were three questions that were marked unusually easy with average ratings of 1 or less, and then the other three had ratings of greater than 2. I missed all three of the easy questions. Little Red Riding Hood is embarrassing; I put Hansel and Gretel, which was the most common wrong answer. But I don’t follow soccer or post-monoculture television at all, so it doesn’t really bother me that I missed FIFA or Suits (I’d do so much better if it was just things known to the average person from my childhood). I put the World Bank and Burn Notice, which I don’t think were awful guesses. I embarrassingly put Bo Jackson for Question 3, somehow thinking he was primarily a track star rather than a football star although he did dabble in both. I forgot about the Plantagenets but that might have been what I was closest to knowing amongst my misses except Little Red Riding Hood; I put Saxony. And then I guessed right on the Chieftains, who I had vaguely heard of but never really heard.
This was probably my most winnable loss, and the one that most caused me to get relegated. I talked myself out of Guinness because they are Irish and not British and I figured that for that reason they wouldn’t be winning a Queen’s Award. Guinness was my first guess, but I switched to Foster’s, which wasn’t great, but at least Australia was under UK jurisdiction at that time while Ireland wasn’t. Without the Queen’s Award, I probably wouldn’t have gotten side-tracked. We correctly saw that Questions 4 and 5 were the hard ones, but this is actually one of the easiest math questions I’ve seen because at least Gaussian distributions are talked about a lot more than abscissas and ordinates. I’d never heard of the book in Question 5, so I had to guess on the act and put “walk through the Amazon blindfolded”. I wouldn’t have needed Guinness if I had rated Question 5 as easier than Question 1, but I assumed most people would know the month the Depression started. I think I did rate too often according to what I knew than according to what other people knew. I’m surprised anybody had “good game” higher than 0.
This round was hard for everyone as balkanization was the only thing at least half of people got right. I guessed Venice for Question 1 just because Ravinia sounded Italian. I think my first thought for Question 2 was Apocalypse Now but I knew that was Marlon Brando, so then I switched to The Elephant Man, although I don’t think that was from last year (I’ve watched none of them). Pocket makes sense but I didn’t think of it and put strike zone. I didn’t really think balkanization would be the easiest for everyone, not just for me. Maybe I’ve heard of Mondrian before, but if so it was only vaguely; I put Rembrandt. And I’ve sure as hell never heard of that streamer; I put Minecraft creator Notch, which was not a good answer.
My opponent auto-forfeited due to not submitting a response and my winless streak came to an end. Again, so depressed by the current hellscape that I don’t even care who the Cabinet members are. Pete Hegseth is who I wanted to put for Question 1, but I actually forgot his name, and I don’t think I’ve even heard of Sean Duffy, but I got it half right and put Sean Spicer, even though I know press secretaries seldom end up in the Cabinet if ever. However, I know enough about political history to have heard of all those anarchists. I’m embarrassed that I missed Question 3 but again, I was mostly too busy in college to watch television at all and I had almost entirely stopped. I love Snow Patrol’s “Chasing Cars” and I know it was one of the most important songs the show spawned, but I just don’t think of the show. I was trying to go about it the other way and think of a textbook and I just put Maguffey (sic) Reader. I put Bacchanalia for 4 and coloratura for 5 and I don’t think those were bad guesses.
RYAN BRISCOE……………..AUSTRALIA
Born: September 24, 1981
Best year: 2009
Best drive: 2008 ABC Supply/A.J. Foyt Indy 225 at the Milwaukee Mile
While never fulfilling his early promise, Briscoe performed respectably in both IndyCar and sports cars. After winning the Italian Formula Renault title in 2001, Briscoe became a test driver for the upstart Toyota F1 team before winning the inaugural Formula 3 Euro Series title in 2003 against Nico Rosberg among others. After not racing in 2004, Toyota placed him at Chip Ganassi’s IRL team for 2005 as an intended developmental deal for a future F1 career. However, Toyota gradually stopped funding their IRL teams to prepare for their impending NASCAR move, which resulted in an atypically slow Ganassi team. Despite leading the most laps at St. Petersburg and winning the pole at Sonoma, Briscoe’s tendency to overdrive and frequently crash his slow cars (most infamously in his season-ending, fiery, airborne crash at Chicagoland) caused Danica Patrick to beat him for Rookie of the Year.
Despite that inauspicious debut, he bounced back by giving Dreyer & Reinbold Racing its first road course podium in 2006 and winning twice overall for Penske’s Porsche American Le Mans Series team in 2007 despite competing in the ostensibly inferior LMP2 class, which when coupled with a fifth-place Indy 500 finish pretty much cemented Briscoe as Penske’s heir apparent upon Sam Hornish, Jr.’s switch to NASCAR. Many observers were skeptical, especially after Briscoe wrecked Patrick on pit road at Indianapolis. However, he passed Indy 500 winner and champion Scott Dixon to win the next week at Milwaukee, then added wins at Mid-Ohio and the non-points Surfer’s Paradise finale.
After Hélio Castroneves missed the start of the 2009 season due to his tax evasion trial, Briscoe unexpectedly became the team leader, winning thrice and taking a 25-point lead entering the penultimate race at Motegi. After pitting immediately before a caution, he would’ve resumed the lead and won, which would’ve allowed him to clinch the championship by merely starting at Homestead. Instead, he crashed leaving the pits in one of the worst championship chokes in motorsports history. He never really recovered as Will Power instantly overtook him on his full-time Penske debut in 2010 and Briscoe only won twice after that, giving him a fairly paltry seven points wins. After 2012, he only raced intermittently in IndyCar and was rarely competitive. By then, he’d returned to sports cars, where he was arguably better with 5 overall wins and 16 additional class wins in ALMS/IMSA, including three 24 Hours of Daytonas (one overall in 2020) and two 12 Hours of Sebrings.
Despite massively underachieving his early career hype, I still wouldn’t label Briscoe a bust. Although his IndyCar power run was extremely brief in a shallow era, his comeback after his dismal rookie season was unexpected and rather impressive. While Briscoe might not have been a lock for this list based on either his IndyCar or sports car career alone, the versatility he showed by winning in both over an extended period easily pushes him over the line. He was a low-level great, but he should’ve done much more.
Open wheel model: #338 of 934 (.019)
Teammate head-to-heads: 99-115 (1-0 vs. Mikhail Aleshin, 1-2 vs. Zsolt Baumgartner, 34-31 vs. Helio Castroneves, 4-0 vs. Lucas di Grassi, 4-15 vs. Scott Dixon, 16-3 vs. Katsuyuki Hiranaka, 4-1 vs. James Jakes, 5-11 vs. Tony Kanaan, 7-9 vs. Charlie Kimball, 4-5 vs. Robert Kubica, 1-0 vs. Jaques Lazier, 1-1 vs. Darren Manning, 3-5 vs. Kosuke Matsuura, 13-30 vs. Will Power, 1-0 vs. Ronnie Quintarelli, 0-1 vs. Justin Wilson, 0-1 vs. Bjorn Wirdheim)
Touring car model: #20 of 1676 (.397)
Teammate head-to-heads: 8-2 (3-1 vs. James Courtney, 1-0 vs. Mark Skaife, 1-0 vs. Garth Tander, 3-1 vs. Darren Turner)
Year-by-year: 2003: C, 2007: C+, 2008: C+, 2009: E, 2010: C+, 2011: C-, 2012: C-, 2013: C, 2015: C-, 2016: C+, 2018: C+, 2019: C, 2020: C