1,000 Greatest Drivers: Terry Borcheller
Won almost every American sports car title in a five-year period.
This is very funny to me, especially for the names I underlined:
That is an ad for the 2006 24 Hours of Daytona, which was the first thing I found while doing research for Borcheller today. It was harder to find information about him than it should have been since his Wikipedia entry was kind of sparse and the fact that he peaked over 20 years ago means that a lot of the early Internet sites that did talk about him went under in the intervening period, but I found a lot of good information in newspaper archives. While I get that the 24 Hours of Daytona brought the world’s greatest drivers together more than any other race in this period and I acknowledge that Mears actually won this very race overall, this grab-bag of drivers that is a weird mix of genuine legends, generally mid-pack IndyCar drivers (Carpentier, Cheever, Fernández, Fittipaldi, Herta, Papis, Rice, even if some of them won sports car titles later, and even if a number of those are going to make the 1,000), and drivers who were primarily famous just for being famous is hilarious. I realize that Mears had probably the best races in his NASCAR career at the tail end of 2005 leading up to this race (and I definitely hadn’t written him off at this point by any means, to be fair) and Danica Patrick likewise in her 2005 IndyCar rookie season. I don’t think from a 2005 perspective people expected Patrick to end up being as mediocre as she ended up being, particularly since she did outperform Rice that year after Rice had won the Indy 500 the year before, but still… This is one of the most broad definitions of “champions” I have ever seen. Even Dario Franchitti (although he was already a legend) hadn’t won a title yet! By the way, I only count 33 “champions” there, bruh. Y’all lied, Grand-Am PR guys!
Here are the drivers I intend to cover next week:
March 23: Johnny Beauchamp (paid)
March 24: Gary Paffett (free)
March 25: Thierry Tassin (free)
March 26: Emanuele Pirro (paid)
March 27: David Coulthard (paid)
March 28: Léon Théry (free)
March 29: William Grover-Williams (free)
TERRY BORCHELLER………………..USA
Born: March 22, 1966
Best year: 2003
Best drive: 2001 12 Hours of Sebring
One of the top drivers during the early IMSA split period, 1983 World Karting Association national champion Borcheller won a mind-boggling five major sports car titles from 1998-2003, albeit in a rather shallow era. In his youth, he abused drugs and alcohol until becoming a born-again Christian in 1987. From then on, he simultaneously served as a racer, minister, and driving instructor, but for him, religion came first. While other drivers mocked his proselytizing and he believed it cost him sponsors, he remained fully committed, founding the Racin’ for Jesus ministry and frequently featuring religious messages on his cars.
Borcheller won his second professional start in a 1991 SCCA World Challenge race in Denver, but it took years for him to finally find a championship-caliber ride. When he did, he won the 1998 World Challenge championship in the T1 class and earned his first two class wins in the United States Road Racing Championship, which became Grand-Am in 2000. He then won that year’s Grand-Am GTO title before racing simultaneously on both the Grand-Am and American Le Mans Series sides of the split. He earned an unexpected class win at the 2001 12 Hours of Sebring in a Saleen over the heavily-favored Corvettes even though Saleen had only built 8,000 cars total while General Motors built millions a year. He even won the ALMS GTS title in his Saleen sponsored by comedian Tim Allen.
Borcheller next won the 2002 Grand-Am SRPII championship with seven class wins including his first 24 Hours of Daytona. In 2003, the SRPII cars were replaced with Daytona Prototypes, which became the premier class. Borcheller won yet another championship, winning six races alongside his 50-year-old teammate Forest Barber. Their first win came in the inaugural race at Barber Motorsports Park, where after Borcheller spun out and triggered the race’s final caution, he drove from 3rd and passed a dozen lapped cars in the last two laps. The superstar entry of Tony Stewart, Dale Earnhardt, Jr., and Andy Wallace led the 2004 24 Hours of Daytona for 17 hours, but Borcheller, Barber, Christian Fittipaldi, and Andy Pilgrim inherited the lead after Stewart had a suspension failure in the last 20 minutes. However, this marked the end of Borcheller’s imperial phase as after 2004, he went winless until the 2010 24 Hours of Daytona, where his teammates carried him. After retiring, Borcheller became president and chaplain at Motorsports Ministries.
Although nobody has much nostalgia for the Daytona Prototype era and I acknowledge that its early seasons generally had lackluster competition, I don’t downgrade Borcheller because he won numerous championships in a very short timespan and he proved he could win on both sides of the sports car split simultaneously. He was elite even if he was battling many elderly drivers, amateurs, and nepo babies. While he fell off quickly once Grand-Am became more competitive, I can’t dismiss what he did in his prime, even if for him it was something of an afterthought compared to his true calling.
Year-by-year: 1998: C, 2000: C+, 2001: E-, 2002: E-, 2003: E, 2004: C