1,000 Greatest Drivers: Tom Sneva/Kenny Bräck/Alexander Rossi
Well, this week kind of rocked.
Last Tuesday, I finally got the form notarized for a lien to be placed on Mom’s property for a ramp construction and roof repair. Obviously, the ramp construction is the first thing that needs to be done for my mom to be able to come home from the nursing home, and the roof has been leaking for a few years because apparently part of a tree got stuck inside it, so my mom was actually dropped by her homeowner’s insurance. Hopefully, after this construction is done (which is expected to be in the early weeks of July) I’ll be able to reapply for homeowner’s insurance and Mom will be able to come home. I suspect they’re going to require other things like a wider path into the bathroom for her wheelchair to fit through. When I went to my credit union to get the form notarized last Friday, they wouldn’t do it because I didn’t have my health care proxy with me. It looked like they weren’t going to do it on Tuesday either until I adroitly raised my voice and mildly expressed anger at their officious bureaucratic crap. It was way more complicated than it should be to get this notarized when Mom isn’t allowed to leave her floor of the nursing home, even though I had both the power of attorney and health care proxy forms signed and notarized last year. Nonetheless, I got it done and I handed it to the guy at Onondaga County Community Development so construction can begin.
Only a few minutes later, a guy came out to pick up Mom’s car to take it to Habitat for Humanity after I decided I would donate it there, which is something I’ve been struggling with for months. I finally had a contractor one of my high school friends knew drag it out of the garage last week, but I couldn’t find the title until the weekend, but I finally had that taken away also. They did manage to start it again, but I know Mom won’t be driving again and at this point probably neither will I. I wanted to clear the space in the garage to move things Mom had hoarded from other rooms into the garage, so I can order a deep clean before she comes home so hopefully one of the in-home care agencies will agree to take her on because last time I invited one in, they claimed there were bed bugs in the carpet. I don’t believe there were bed bugs in the carpet (it was dirty, but at that point I couldn’t even afford a working vacuum cleaner), but at least now I feel like I have the capacity and wherewithal to do a deep clean to try to impress one of the in-home care agencies.
A month or two ago, I also received an offer for a $300 bonus if I signed up for an M&T Bank account by May 30, so I decided to walk down there and do that after I had both those things taken care of today, and I did. While I was walking to the bank to set up my account, I got a phone call from one of the people at Access CNY (the disability agency that Unique Peerspectives, the peer group I’ve been attending a lot lately, is affiliated with) and she’s going to try to get me set up with a new primary care physician. I’d been seeing the same doctor on and off since I was a little boy in the ‘80s, but he retired a few years ago, his replacement left after a year, and their office (which was walking distance from my house) was shut down and they moved to an office 3 miles away that’s kind of a dangerous walk. I’ve made it before but I’d rather not, so I think I’m going to switch to a doctor’s office that is more accessible by bus downtown. After I expressed that I wanted to have something done about my IBS and ARFID symptoms, my therapist told me I should get a physical and I probably haven’t had one for years, and hopefully getting a new family doctor will allow me to find someone to help me with my ARFID. I also just noticed this week that I had finally reduced my waist from 37” to less than 34” at the navel since December, marking probably the first time my waist has been less than half my height/I haven’t been overfat since 2009 or something. I don’t really think I’m any healthy since I still eat almost exclusively IBS-triggering processed glop, but at least I was eating less of it.
Finally, I have gone on a run at trivia the past couple days out of nowhere. My team won bar trivia last night and doubled nearly everyone else’s score because only I got the final answer right. It was about board games so maybe my past Scrabble interest indirectly helped me there even though the answer was chess. I’m still doing LearnedLeague, which restarted last week, and today, I think I got all six questions right for the first time. Then while watching Jeopardy! tonight, I got my all-time highest Coryat score of $25,000, which was the first time I broke $20,000 since I started tracking that. I don’t really know where all that came from all at once.
And yet, despite all that, I’m still deeply unhappy overall. Obviously, there’s the fact that if/when Mom comes home again, I’m going to basically be trapped in the house again for the rest of my life both because she’s constantly afraid I’m going to be attacked whenever I leave and also because I obviously have to keep her under something close to 24/7 supervision at this point. I’m willing to make that sacrifice since she had told me numerous times she’d rather be dead than in a nursing home and I feel that Adult Protective Services tricked us by forcing her in there for hoarding. I’ve always taken that very seriously and I want her back home even if it might not be in my own best interest. Granted, I probably would also be able to be paid for some of the hours I’m watching over her on whatever nights/weekends the in-home care agencies don’t operate if/when she returns home. Yes, all the in-home care will be charged to the estate and I will certainly lose it after she dies. At this point, I just don’t really care and I need to get my credit up enough after I stopped paying my bills a couple years ago (yes, I have started repaying them) so someone will rent to me after I am evicted from the house after Mom’s death. What I don’t want is for Mom to get addicted to listening to news radio and screaming racist tirades, but I think being in the nursing home caused her to break that habit and she’s been more pleasant in the last year or so than she has the years before. She also had started writing an opera in the ‘80s based on the fantasy book The Green Kingdom but never finished. The last year before she was institutionalized, she asked me to help with that and I really didn’t and I felt tremendous guilt about it. Granted, I had no musical training except six years of chorus growing up (unless you think playing the computer keyboard is at all analogous with playing the piano keyboard), but if she has any energy left for that, I’d like to see if I can help her see that to its conclusion. My ultimate dream is to hopefully learn enough about in-home care so I can land some other kind of helping position based on this to complete my final 2 years, 4 months of Public Service Loan Forgiveness.
I’m also still really, really lonely but I’m trying to work on that: visiting Mom, calling her all the days I don’t visit, going to the peer support groups and counseling and bar trivia, but none of it is really making me feel as fulfilled as I want to. Nonetheless, I’m probably in a better place now than I was one year ago and definitely in a better place than two years ago…
I know I’m behind on my Indy 500 driver entries, and I’m going to try to finish all of them by the month of May, which will require three today and then two on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I probably won’t get them all done, but I’m going to try. In this post, I discuss one driver I believe to be overrated (Sneva), one driver I believe to be vastly underrated (Bräck) and one driver who used to be overrated before he kind of fell into obscurity in recent years (Rossi). Granted, these are all still obvious locks, mind you, but I personally think Bräck’s 2001 knocks me out more than any season the other two ever had, although I guess Sneva probably takes it on longevity. I really do not understand why Bräck failed to make the list of 100 used to determine The Greatest 33 Indy 500 drivers. He had no business making the 33, but he and Buddy Rice were the only winners after 1946 that did not make the 100, and that seems flatly ridiculous. Of course everybody made fun of Marco Andretti and Danica Patrick making the list of 100 at the time and I get it, but frankly, those weren’t even the worst selections. There are several drivers on there who make even less sense than Marco and Danica and I would start with these: Fred Agabashian, Cliff Bergere, Johnny Boyd, Art Cross, and Chet Miller. All the drivers I just listed there didn’t win and led a grand total of 96 laps, and I don’t see how any of them had the historical importance to be listed in lieu of stats like Janet Guthrie and Danica were (yes, I know Agabashian, Boyd, and Cross were great midget drivers, but not great enough I think for even my list). One of those should’ve been dropped for Bräck. Indy historians seem to think just starting the Indy 500 is something akin to military service where the more races you start, the more you’ve contributed even if you don’t actually do anything in the races you start. (Granted, at least you’re usually not committing war crimes in racing.) This kind of attitude is definitely radicalizing me against listing a NASCAR driver like Dave Marcis for example.
TOM SNEVA………………………….USA
Born: June 1, 1948
Best year: 1983
Best drive: 1983 Indianapolis 500
The first driver to break the 200 mph barrier at Indianapolis, Sneva began racing go-karts at age 14. A multi-sport athlete, he played college basketball at Eastern Washington State College, where he earned an education degree. He then served as a math teacher, physical education teacher, and bus driver at Sprague High School, where he worked during the school year while racing during the summer. Six USAC sprint car wins in 1973 made him the last major IndyCar driver before Tony Stewart to cross over from sprint cars before USAC’s 1974 ban on rear-engine sprint cars made them no longer compatible with modern IndyCars.
In 1974, Sneva quit teaching to pursue a full-time IndyCar career. After being the fastest rookie Indy 500 qualifier that year, Roger Penske hired him in 1975. 15% of his body was burnt after he crashed into the catchfence at Indy, but he only missed one race and won his first race at Michigan later that year. In 1977 and 1978, he gave Penske his first two IndyCar titles in the last seasons before CART broke off from USAC. Sneva’s record-setting qualifying lap came in 1977 en route to a second-place finish; he again finished second from pole in 1978. However, Penske shockingly fired him after the latter season. While some speculated this was because he went winless, Penske stated it was actually because they differed over the team’s direction.
Sneva spent a couple seasons at Jerry O’Connell’s mediocre Sugaripe Prune team, becoming the first last-place starter to lead laps and finish second at Indy in 1980 and earning the team’s last win at Phoenix. However, his true heyday started when he joined George Bignotti and Dan Cotter’s operation in mid-1981. Sneva won twice every year through 1983 and avenged Penske in the 1983 Indy 500 by running down Al Unser’s Penske to win despite Unser’s son blocking for him. In 1984, he moved to former McLaren manager Teddy Mayer’s team, winning his final Indy 500 pole and his last three races including his only street course win at Caesar’s Palace, giving him 13 wins in total. However, CART’s increasingly road-course-heavy schedule and the introduction of radial tires significantly hurt Sneva, who crashed in five of his seven last Indy 500s. After retiring, he served as an IRL color commentator and co-founded the 500 Club, a Glendale, Arizona golf course.
Relative to most other USAC and CART champions, Sneva’s legacy seems rather middling. He largely lacked the ability to be both consistent and dominant at the same time, as evidenced by his surprisingly low teammate rating. Additionally, his performances wildly oscillated between seasons and despite a top ten in the 1983 Daytona 500, he wasn’t as versatile as many of his contemporary IndyCar stars either. He was probably fortunate to be the youngest driver to successfully transition from sprint cars as the previous generation’s stars aged. While he might not be an all-time great, his affable personality and outspoken interviews nonetheless made him a fan favorite.
Open wheel model: #434 of 931 (-.040)
Teammate head-to-heads: 16-12 (4-2 vs. Mario Andretti, 1-0 vs. Geoff Brabham, 2-1 vs. Kevin Cogan, 4-1 vs. Howdy Holmes, 1-0 vs. Jan Lammers, 0-5 vs. Rick Mears, 0-1 vs. Mike Mosley, 0-1 vs. Johnny Parsons, 4-1 vs. Ed Pimm)
Year-by-year: 1973: C-, 1975: C, 1976: C-, 1977: E-, 1978: C+, 1979: C+, 1980: E-, 1981: E, 1982: C+, 1983: E, 1984: E, 1985: C, 1986: C
KENNY BRÄCK…………………SWEDEN
Born: March 21, 1966
Best year: 2001
Best drive: 2001 Miller Lite 225 at the Milwaukee Mile
The first driver to win both the Indy Racing League title and the Indy 500, Bräck competed in Formula 3000, the then-most prestigious F1 feeder series and won the 1996 season finale at Hockenheim on track to win the championship before a controversial post-race disqualification for dangerous driving handed Jörg Müller the title. After Bräck attracted no F1 interest for 1997, he made an unusual switch to the all-oval IRL, where he replaced the injured Davy Jones at Galles Racing. Despite an infamous pace lap crash at the 1997 Indy 500, he was fast enough that A.J. Foyt hired him for 1998. That year, he became the first IRL driver to win three consecutive races, overcoming a 73-point deficit to Scott Sharp to win the title.
After winning the 1999 Indy 500, he had nothing left to prove in the IRL and switched to Bobby Rahal’s CART team. In 2001, he led all drivers with 4 wins, 621 laps led, and 7.16 lead shares (the fourth-most in CART history). He led the championship for most of the season against what I consider the best IndyCar field ever. At Milwaukee, he passed Michael Andretti for the lead twice at a track where Andretti won five times. After winning the first race after 9/11 at the Lausitzring, he made a gallant outside pass on Gil de Ferran on the penultimate lap at Rockingham before de Ferran reprised Bräck’s move on the last lap. Although Bräck still technically held the points lead, he was clearly demoralized and de Ferran eliminated Bräck from the championship three races later.
After de Ferran defected to the IRL in 2002, Bräck became the prohibitive championship favorite at Chip Ganassi Racing but bad luck and stupid crashes resulted in a disappointing season. He next reunited with Rahal in the IRL in 2003, but his season was overshadowed by a devastating crash at Texas, where contact with Tomas Scheckter sent him into the catchfence then back onto the track. Despite countless injuries, his 214g impact set a Guinness world record for the largest g-force a human survived. Amazingly, he returned for one final race in the 2005 Indy 500 and even set the fastest qualifying speed before retiring after the race. Afterward, Bräck occasionally entered historic races and rally races, even winning gold at the 2009 X Games against Travis Pastrana.
For all Bräck’s success, he seems weirdly disrespected. When the Indianapolis Motor Speedway announced its 100 drivers to determine “The Greatest 33” in 2011, Bräck was one of only two post-1946 Indy 500 winners to be snubbed. Not only are his advanced numbers in 2001 truly electrifying, few other drivers have ever matched Bräck’s balls of steel. He arguably fought the hardest in CART’s Handford Device races at Michigan and Fontana, won the pole at Texas in the 2001 race that was canceled due to too high g-forces, then survived one of the worst crashes ever. He might be the most underrated driver of the entire split period.
Open wheel model: #155 of 931 (.138)
Teammate head-to-heads: 31-15 (6-2 vs. Billy Boat, 1-0 vs. Robbie Buhl, 4-4 vs. Scott Dixon, 1-0 vs. Marco Greco, 4-3 vs. Bruno Junqueira, 15-5 vs. Max Papis, 0-1 vs. Jeff Ward)
Year-by-year: 1996: C, 1998: C+, 1999: C+, 2000: C+, 2001: E, 2002: C+, 2003: C-
ALEXANDER ROSSI………………….USA
Born: September 25, 1991
Best year: 2019
Best drive: 2019 Rev Group Grand Prix at Road America
The first true rookie to win the Indy 500 in 88 years and the first American F1 starter since Scott Speed in 2007, Rossi initially looked like a perennial IndyCar championship contender before fading into obscurity in the 2020s. As Marussia’s reserve driver, he was initially tapped to replace the comatose Jules Bianchi at the 2014 Russian Grand Prix, but his F1 debut wouldn’t come until 2015, when he made five late-season starts for the team. That year, his second-place points finish and three wins in GP2 tied Eddie Cheever’s all-time records for American drivers in F1’s top feeder series until Jak Crawford won four races in 2025. With no full-time F1 ride for 2016, he switched to IndyCar in a team co-owned by fellow ex-American F1 driver Michael Andretti and Bryan Herta. Unexpectedly, he won the Indy 500 on fuel mileage, becoming the first driver to win the race in his first full-time major league season since Louis Meyer in 1928.
In 2017, Rossi unambiguously overtook Ryan Hunter-Reay as Andretti team leader, winning from the pole at Watkins Glen before emerging as a championship contender the next two seasons. He won a career-high three races in 2018, but his longshot championship challenge ended when he clipped his teammate Marco Andretti’s wing on the opening lap at the Sonoma season finale. Although he finished second in points in 2018 and third in 2019, his 2019 was much better primarily because he barely lost any speed from 2018 while all three of his teammates were over 10 percentage points slower in speed percentile; Hunter-Reay was even 26 percentage points slower! Despite Andretti’s slower cars, Rossi delivered his most dominant performances ever, winning Long Beach by 20 seconds and Road America by 28 seconds.
At this point, Rossi seemed to be an inevitable future champion but starting in 2020, he seldom even had enough speed to lead races. Colton Herta overtook Rossi as Andretti team leader and Rossi never really recovered. His only real highlights were winning the 2021 24 Hours of Daytona and an Indy road course race in 2022, but he never finished better than 9th in the championship after 2019. Since switching to McLaren in 2023 and Ed Carpenter Racing in 2025, he has largely faded to journeyman status.
Rossi’s sudden decline is somewhat perplexing. The only real explanation I have is that IndyCar in the 2010s didn’t have very strong competitive depth as the decade was mostly dominated by aging split-era ex-CART and Champ Car drivers. In this period, Josef Newgarden was the only emerging driver who seemed to pose a long-term significant challenge to the veterans while most Indy Lights drivers busted. It appears that the weak 2010s fields made Rossi look better than he was and he simply couldn’t compete with younger drivers like Álex Palou, Pato O’Ward, or Herta. I still think his 2018 and 2019 seasons were great, but in hindsight, I better understand how he ended up becoming a flash in the pan.
Open wheel model: #202 of 931 (.107)
Teammate head-to-heads: 249-153 (50-19 vs. Marco Andretti, 1-0 vs. Townsend Bell, 1-0 vs. William Buller, 2-0 vs. Conor Daly, 10-3 vs. Devlin DeFrancesco, 2-8 vs. Antonio Felix da Costa, 2-1 vs. Luca Filippi, 6-7 vs. Romain Grosjean, 6-5 vs. Esteban Gutierrez, 3-4 vs. Rio Haryanto, 14-18 vs. Colton Herta, 11-4 vs. James Hinchcliffe, 42-33 vs. Ryan Hunter-Reay, 2-0 vs. Callum Ilott, 1-0 vs. Tony Kanaan, 12-5 vs. Jordan King, 1-0 vs. Kyle Larson, 1-0 vs. Fabio Leimer, 8-7 vs. Carlos Munoz, 6-20 vs. Pato O’Ward, 3-1 vs. Theo Pourchaire, 7-4 vs. Christian Rasmussen, 7-4 vs. Felix Rosenqvist, 8-4 vs. Takuma Sato, 6-0 vs. Nolan Siegel, 3-1 vs. Will Stevens, 33-5 vs. Zach Veach, 1-0 vs. Stefan Wilson)
Touring car model: N/A
Teammate head-to-heads: 0-4 (0-1 vs. James Courtney, 0-1 vs. Warren Luff, 0-1 vs. Jack Perkins, 0-1 vs. Scott Pye)
Year-by-year: 2015: C-, 2016: C-, 2017: C+, 2018: E, 2019: E, 2020: C, 2022: C, 2024: C-