Bubble Drivers: C
I'll dispense with the habitual whining and get down to business this time.
I know I’ve been annoying people with the personal stuff, so I’m going to cut that out for the moment and just focus on what I created the blog for. I had gone through most of these drivers a few days ago. The exception was Jerry Cook because I noticed that he supposedly had 342 wins according to most online sources but only 60 wins on The Third Turn, and then that was later reduced to 48! I couldn’t tell which was correct and I basically decided that if it was closer to 342 wins than he should be a lock and if it was closer to 60 or 48, well then…
Yesterday, I caught up on my NASCAR lead change data for 2025. At some point in the next week, I’ll try to finish my NASCAR table and link it here. On to the drivers!
James Calado
2013: C-
2016: C
2017: C+
2018: C+
2019: E-
2021: E-
2022: E-
2023: C
2024: C-
Cumulative points: 27
As with all sports car drivers (see also the next two who follow), I may tweak this if I calculate lap time/lap leader data to determine which sports car teammates were doing more or less work, but it’s hard to argue that Calado shouldn’t be a lock with three WEC GTE Pro titles and since he’ll probably add a Hypercar title on top of that this season, that should easily push him over the line.
Dane Cameron
2012: C-
2014: C
2015: C+
2016: E-
2017: C+
2018: C-
2019: E-
2021: C
Cumulative points: 22
Cameron also has a lot of titles and I definitely like his 2016 and 2019 IMSA Prototype title seasons, but his 2014 title came in the much less competitive GTD class and he was so far off his co-driver Felipe Nasr last year that he lost his ride and missed my list despite winning the title. Still, he should make it, especially since he looks good for a fifth IMSA title in the admittedly very shallow LMP2 class.
Jamie Campbell-Walter
1999: C
2000: C+
2001: C+
2002: E-
2007: C-
2013: C
Cumulative points: 16
Campbell-Walter is probably too far in the past for me to ever have access to lap times and lap leader data from his era, but he won back-to-back British GT and FIA GT titles in 1999 and 2000 alongside Julian Bailey. I don’t know who the team leader was, but I have to figure he was an important contributor as he won FIA GT with four other co-drivers from 2001-2003 including Nicolaus Springer (who doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page) and the forthcoming Tom Coronel.
Erik Carlsson
1959: E-
1960: C
1961: C+
1962: E-
1963: C+
1964: C+
1967: C
Cumulative points: 23
A prolific rally winner, Carlsson won ten rounds of the European Rally Championship when it was the most important rally championship. Although he never won the ERC title, he had three second-place points finishes and back-to-back Monte Carlo Rally wins in 1962 and 1963.
Oscar Castellano
1983: C
1984: C+
1985: C
1986: C
1987: C
1988: C+
1989: C
1990: C
1991: C
Cumulative points: 20
Castellano won three consecutive Turismo Carretera titles from 1987-1989, but I decided not to make him a lock because unlike many of his fellow Argentine touring car drivers, he didn’t compete in any of the many other series that those drivers tend to compete in simultaneously and I also think the late ‘80s was a really shallow era for that series.
Leo Cella
1963: C+
1965: E-
1966: E-
1967: C+
Cumulative points: 16
A versatile driver with 17 wins in rally cars, touring cars, and sports cars in his short career, he most notably won the 1966 Italian Rally Championship, Targa Florio class wins in all four of these years, and a class win at Le Mans in 1966. This is feeling a little shaky though and he might be somebody I bump down to the near miss category.
Eugène Chaboud
1938: E
1946: C-
1947: C+
Cumulative points: 7
Chaboud won the 1938 24 Hours of Le Mans in the entry he co-owned and co-drove with his teammate Jean Trémoulet. After the war he also had three non-points Grand Prix wins including the 1946 Belgian GP, but his open wheel rating of .003 isn’t great and honestly, I overrated him.
Tom Chilton
2004: C
2005: E-
2006: C
2008: C
2009: C-
2010: C+
2011: C+
2013: C
2014: C
2016: C-
2017: C+
2018: C+
2019: C
2020: C-
Cumulative points: 32
The lesser-known but much better elder brother of F1/IndyCar driver Max, Tom won 16 British Touring Car Championship and 6 World Touring Car Championship wins in his long, successful touring car career. He was never much of a championship threat and his -.004 rating is not great, but I made him a lock anyway mainly because not that many BTCC drivers of that era made successful crossovers to the WTCC, where they had to learn different cars and tracks.
Marcos Ciani
1950: E-
1951: E-
1952: C+
1955: C
1956: C
1957: C
1958: C+
1959: C
1960: C
1961: C-
1964: C+
Cumulative points: 30
A 17-time Turismo Carretera winner, I decided to make Ciani a lock even though he didn’t win the title even though I didn’t make Castellano a lock with his three straight titles because Ciani competed there when the series was much more relevant. He was a contemporary of the brothers Juan and Oscar Gálvez who combined to win all but one title from 1947-1961 and they are considered the series’s two all-time greats (Oscar even beat Juan Manuel Fangio for the 1947 and 1948 titles before he switched to F1 and then Juan eventually proved to be better than his brother). Since Ciani was that competitive of the Gálvez brothers, I’m more impressed by him than Castellano, whose 27 wins came against substantially weaker fields (especially since that era’s major Argentine touring car legend Juan Maria Traverso wasn’t competing in Turismo Carretera in those years).
Bryan Clauson
2009: C
2010: C+
2011: C+
2012: C+
2013: E-
2014: C+
2015: C
2016: C+
Cumulative points: 24
Although his NASCAR and IndyCar careers weren’t very good, his sprint car career was amazing. I couldn’t quite give him enough points for lock status, but he will make the list. Back-to-back USAC Midget titles in 2010 and 2011 followed by back-to-back USAC Sprint titles the next two years allowed him to win the first three overall USAC titles in 2010-12, and he added a Chili Bowl later in 2014. Rest in peace bro.
John Cobb
1932: C+
1935: C+
1938: E
1939: E
1947: E
Cumulative points: 18
Primarily a driver chasing world land speed records, he set that record thrice in 1938, 1939, and 1947. I decided to give all world land speed record-setters an E grade from 1905-1941. For the postwar years, I typically only awarded Es to drivers who set multiple land speed records in the same year. Cobb did not do that, but I tentatively gave him an E for 1947 anyway mainly because he held that record for almost 17 years and also because quite frankly, there wasn’t a whole lot of racing out there in 1947.
Roberto Colciago
1995: C-
1999: C+
2000: C+
2001: E-
2002: C+
2003: C
2006: C-
2009: C-
2017: C-
Cumulative points: 20
Mostly a legend of relatively minor touring car series, Colciago won the Swedish Touring Car Championship back-to-back years in 2001 and 2002, the Italian Touring Car Championship in 2006,, the Italian Endurance Championship in 2009, and the TCR Italy Championship in 2016. None of those is a major league exactly, but the STCC was one of the most prestigious second-tier touring car championships and I decided to rate his 2001 season as elite because he won 7 races there as well as 2 more in the top-tier European Super Touring Championship (which eventually became the World Touring Car Championship a few years later).
Rob Collard
2003: C-
2005: C
2009: C
2010: C-
2012: C+
2015: C
2016: C
2017: C
Cumulative points: 15
Collard won two British GT titles (one last year with his son Ricky) and 15 British Touring Car Championship but I’m really not that impressed by him. His rating of -.029 is not good, he never finished higher than 5th in the BTCC, and he only had a single season with a rating greater than .1, that being his 2009 when he had a rookie teammate in future four-time British GT champion Jonny Adam, who he only barely beat in points anyway. I don’t really think he belongs on the list and I might dock him a few points later.
Érik Comas
1987: C-
1988: C-
1989: C
1990: C+
1991: C-
1992: C+
1994: C
1996: C+
1997: C
1998: C+
1999: C+
2000: C
Cumulative points: 26
Believe it or not, Comas was actually the highest-rated F1 driver in my open wheel model in 1992 and he made the top 100 on the F1metrics list also, so it wasn’t just me. After losing the 1989 Formula 3000 title to Jean Alesi on a tiebreaker, he won the next year’s F3000 title. He also won a minor class of the French Touring Car Championship in 1987 and more notably, back-to-back Japanese GT500 (now Super GT) titles in 1998 and 1999. A vastly underrated talent.
Bernard Consten
1958: E-
1962: C
1963: C-
1967: C
Cumulative points: 10
Similar to Leo Cella, Consten crossed over back and forth between rally and sports cars, winning three European Rally Championship races in 1958 and the 1967 French Rally Championship along with 6 World Sportscar Championship class wins in the years in between including Le Mans and Sebring class wins. The reason I am more inclined to say no than yes is because he was never really in any kind of contention for overall wins and all his WSC class wins were numerous laps off the pace.
Jerry Cook
1965: C-
1966: C-
1973: C
1975: C
1976: C-
1979: C
1980: C-
Cumulative points: 10
Much like Hershel McGriff, Cook is one of the most hideously overrated drivers in NASCAR history. I wasn’t sure where I was going to fall on him because although he is listed all over the place as having a supposed “342 wins”, when I looked up all those Modified seasons on The Third Turn, the first time that site had him listed with 60 wins and when I looked it up again a few days ago, it had been reduced to 48. This from a guy who was (erroneously) hyped as a legitimate rival to Richie Evans. Still, I wanted to do more research to determine whether the 342 or the 60/48 is closer to correct. Surprise! It’s the latter. I subscribed once more to newspapers.com to try and deduce his win titles for his championship seasons, and as far as I can tell they are: 1971 - 3, 1972 - 0, 1974 - 2, 1975 - 10, 1976 - 5, 1977 - 3. I dredged up an article from 1971 where Bugs Stevens was complaining that he lost the title even though he won 26 times while Cook only won 3. The next year, as best as I can tell, he won no races. In 1974, he won the title despite two wins while Evans won 20 and Geoff Bodine won 19.
Is this really worth rewarding? It seems what Cook did is that he simply entered more races than anyone else, which allowed him to compile points over way more dominant drivers like Evans, Bodine, and Stevens because they didn’t enter as many races. I’m not going to say Cook was bad: I still came up with 84 Modified wins and 11 Late Model Sportsman wins based on my best guesses from poring through newspaper archives. But there were a lot of Modified races back then: in his winless 1972 title season, there were 190. As a result, there were a lot of drivers who won a lot of races. I have more verified wins for Al Pombo (164), Stevens (139), Al Tasnady (127), Marshall Sargent (116), Ed Flemke (114), Howard Kaeding (113), Jackie McLaughlin (88), and almost as many as Fred DeSarro (75), Lou Lazzaro (72), Paul Radford (71), Tommie Elliott (69), George Kent, Jr. (66), and Charlie Jarzombek (61). Have you heard of any of those drivers? Most likely unless you are a devotee of the Modifieds, you have not since only two of them even won championships. The only reason Cook won six titles is because he ran entire schedules and many of these similarly talented drivers did not, and once Evans was running full-time he consistently thrashed Cook. The only reasons Cook made the 50 Greatest Drivers list and the Hall of Fame in my opinion are because nobody before me bothered to properly look up drivers’ win counts as if the championship is the only thing that matters and also because of his service to NASCAR as director of the Modified Tour after his retirement. He doesn’t deserve it.
Eduardo Copello
1965: C-
1966: C+
1967: E
1968: E-
Cumulative points: 22
A two-time Turismo Carretera champion who had a shorter run than either Castellano or Ciani but a much higher peak as he won 11 races and the title in 1967, 6 races in 1968, and a second title in a minor class in 1970. I decided the latter was too minor to rate, but I did rate his 1965 and 1966 seasons when he won a combined 12 races in Turismo Nacional.
Tom Coronel
1997: C-
1998: C-
1999: E
2001: C
2004: C
2005: C-
2006: C
2007: C-
2008: C
2009: C
2011: C+
2012: C
2013: C
2014: C
2016: C-
Cumulative points: 34
A former teammate of the previously-covered and similarly-named contemporary Tom Chilton, Coronel had a lot fewer wins than Chilton (only 7 in the World Touring Car Championship/Cup), but he had a higher rating in my model as he tended to (relatively) overachieve in weaker cars while Chilton underachieved in stronger cars. They’re nonetheless very similar, but I prefer Coronel, especially because he won a Formula Nippon/proto-Super Formula title in 1999 (a year he ranked third overall in my open wheel model) and Chilton never did anything like that.
Bartolomeo Costantini
1924: C+
1925: E-
1926: 5
Cumulative points: 8
Costantini won five Grand Prix races in 1925 and 1926 before he retired to manage the Bugatti racing team until 1935. It was too short of a run for me and not dominant enough when considering how weak pre-World War II competition was, especially when considering I tend to think the US drivers were better in the ‘20s than the Europeans.
Fabian Coulthard
2005: E-
2009: C-
2011: C-
2012: C
2013: C+
2014: C+
2015: C+
2016: C-
2017: C
Cumulative points: 21
He won 13 Supercars races, but he was never really anything resembling a title contender, and his 2018-2020 seasons when he finished 9th, 4th, and 6th in points and won 4 races while his teammate Scott McLaughlin won all three titles and 40 races were pretty embarrassing. Nonetheless, I do like his earlier seasons when he demolished Jason Bright at a time when his career was no longe looking bright, and I especially like his 2005 season, when he won a mind-boggling 18 races to win the Porsche Carrera Cup Australia title and Jim Richards was still there and relevant, so that’s saying something. Admittedly Richards was 57, so it might not be saying a lot.
Tyler Courtney
2017: C+
2018: E-
2019: E
2020: C
2021: E-
2022: C
2023: C-
2024: C
Cumulative points: 30
One of the best drivers of all time without a Wikipedia page, Courtney is one of only two drivers along with the aforementioned Clauson to win the most races in the top three USAC divisions combined four years in a row. Clauson did it six years straight from 2009-2014 before Clauson’s four in a row from 2017-2020. I actually think Courtney is better but I understand if you disagree because he didn’t become a star until after Clauson died. In 2021, not only did Courtney win his first of back-to-back All Star Circuit of Champions titles, but he also became one of two drivers in history along with Kyle Larson to win a race in all three USAC divisions and the World of Outlaws in the same season.
Chris Craft
1966: C-
1968: C+
1969: E-
1970: C+
1971: C
1973: C+
1977: C
Cumulative points: 19
Craft won four overall wins and 21 more in class in the British Saloon Car Championship (later BTCC), 4 British Sports Car Championship wins and 1 more in class, the 1973 European Sportscar Championship, two BSCC class championships, an Interserie win, and two World Sportscar Championship class wins. His touring car rating is mediocre and his open wheel rating is one of the worst of all time though.
Peter Cunningham
1988: C-
1989: C-
1990: C-
1995: C-
1996: C-
1997: C-
1998: C+
2001: C-
2005: C-
Cumulative points: 11
Sort of the sports car equivalent of Jerry Cook, Cunningham won a lot of titles including a record seven in the World Challenge championship, two in its predecessor SCCA Escort Endurance series, and an SCCA RaceTruck championship. The World Challenge series did have some prestige for a while because it got aired on the SPEED channel/FS1 a lot, but the series didn’t seem to really spawn as many elite sports car talents as you’d think and wasn’t as much of a successful IMSA feeder as I thought it was. When I looked at most of his championships, I had barely heard of most of the drivers he was competing against, which was not a great sign. Although he did win four IMSA class races in 1998 including a 24 Hours of Daytona class win, overall I felt like his competition wasn’t strong enough to reward him for this and I basically view him more or less like how I view Ernie Francis, Jr. (although I would say World Challenge when Cunningham was dominating it was slightly more relevant than Trans-Am when Francis was dominating it, but only slightly).