1,000 Greatest Drivers: Wilbur Shaw
Would oval racing still exist without him?
The beauty of this one is even if I fail to finish the write-up by the end of October 30 (the date of Shaw’s death), he was born on Halloween so I’ll clearly be celebrating him whenever this is released. Shaw is a driver I have to be careful when evaluating, because I think the intangibles of his career and how he literally saved IndyCar racing from going out of business at the end of World War II and arguably saved oval racing clearly makes him one of the central figures in racing history. Couple that with him becoming only the second driver to win three Indy 500s and it’s easy to see why some people consider him one of the goats of IndyCar racing.
However, I have to say that IndyCar competition was at arguably its all-time nadir in the 1930s. You look at the winners of that era and besides Shaw it’s mostly a list of huhs and whos. 1931 winner Louis Schneider would probably be my vote for the worst Indy 500 winner ever, and Fred Frame, Kelly Petillo, and Floyd Roberts might all be contenders for my bottom ten. Many people compare the “junk formula” era where the cars were dumbed down to a more stock formula to the early IRL, and I would say the talent level was likely similar. While I think there are periods when the American IndyCar scene had a similar level of competition to the European Grand Prix/F1 scene (particularly in the ‘20s, the ‘60s, and the early ‘90s) the ‘30s is definitely one of the worst and shallowest periods along with the ‘50s and the early IRL. It’s obvious to me that the competition was far deeper in Europe in the ‘30s, which is why I am rating Shaw’s seasons not as highly as you might think. To name just one example, IndyCar driver Jimmy Murphy actually won the French Grand Prix in the ‘20s, while in the ‘30s Grand Prix drivers Tazio Nuvolari and Bernd Rosemeyer utterly dominated the Vanderbilt Cup IndyCar events. Shaw’s best season ends up being 1940 by default because there was racing in the US and not in Europe that year because the US hadn’t entered the war yet, but that’s kind of a technicality.
