Bubble Drivers: G

Still waiting to see if my mom will be released...

A few days ago, I finally finished filing months of all the paperwork that was sitting all over the place in the living room (although I still have some in my bedroom on a cart next to my bed) and I also cleared off my bedroom floor which was completely cluttered with stuff in preparation to schedule a home inspection to see if my mom will be able to come home. I think I’ve now cleared enough paths to anyone’s satisfaction but after calling and leaving messages with the senior care program PACE CNY twice in the last week, they haven’t gotten back to me yet so it’s just a matter of hurry up and wait and I hope she’s not gonna be holed up there another two months or something because she wants to be home and had told me numerous times before she’d rather be dead than in a nursing home and I had no idea she was going to be forced into one especially as lousy as this place due to her hoarding, I want her home personally, and I don’t want to keep racking up $15-$16,000 against the equity of our house every month either… I do hope if she does come that she’s not going to listen to politics on the radio nonstop and say slurs for hours, but she’s been a lot more pleasant this year than in 2023 or 2024, I’ll say that. I’ve been enjoying spending time with her more this year than last year, that’s for sure.

There’s this kid I frequently see at the Tops grocery store on the bus ride home from visiting Mom. Well, I say kid, but he’s probably like 25 or something. I can tell he’s struggling too. He usually wears a Hot Wheels cap and I saw him playing with some diecast cars one day, so I decided to spontaneously give him all my NASCAR diecasts from 1996-2001 because I no longer get any sentimental value out of them, in reaction to my mom’s hoarding I’ve grown more and more vehemently anti-consumerist, and the more stuff I can clear out of here to help facilitate her being able to come back, the better. (I still have my books and my cards, but I could see myself giving the cards away at some point too.) I thought he’d have much more use for them than I did and he was pleased. Don’t even know his name yet, but I did tell him about this book project.

Anyway, lots of drivers here and I’ve got to say this was a particularly strong group relative to most of the other “letters”. There are very few drivers here who I would say are absolute nos.

Mario Gayraud

1983: C+
1984: E-
1985: C+
1986: C+
1987: C
1988: C-

Cumulative points: 17

Gayraud won the Argentine TC2000 touring car championship in 1984 and won 14 races in that series from 1983-1988. I’m more inclined to say yes than no right now because I think TC2000 had stronger competition than Turismo Carretera in that era because that generation’s greatest driver (and maybe the Argentine touring car goat) Juan María Traverso was exclusively cometing in TC2000 and not in Turismo Carretera in those years, where he won two titles and 18 races, indicating that Gayraud was pretty close to his generation’s greatest driver, but obviously he did not have the same longevity as Traverso won at least Argentine touring car race all but one year from 1972-2004.

Bob Gerard

1947: C
1948: C-
1949: C
1950: C
1953: C-
1955: C-

Cumulative points: 9

Gerard won nine non-points Grand Prix/F1 races and a non-points British Saloon Car Championship race. That might seem deserving, but I looked up all the fields he won against and decided that the competition was too shallow to consider him, although I guess it’s mildly notable that he finished sixth in the first two F1 races as an owner-driver/privateer.

Zeca Giaffone

1980: C
1982: C
1983: C-
1984: E-
1986: C+
1987: C

Cumulative points: 15

The brother of 1981 Stock Car Brasil champion Affonso Giaffone, Jr., father of solid IRL driver/Brazilian truck racing legend Felipe, and uncle of short-lived IRL driver Affonso (it really bothers me how Affonso is the son of Affonso, Jr. but I guess I don’t understand something about Portuguese naming conventions), Zeca too won the Stock Car Brasil title in 1987. Weirdly, all 14 of his wins came from 1979-1986 so he actually won his title during a period of late-career winlessness. I think Felipe was definitely the best Giaffone, but I guess I’d take Zeca over his brother although I had to think about it. They were frequently teammates for their family-owned Giaffone Motorsport operation. In the four years they were teammates (1979, 1981, 1984, and 1985) Affonso beat Zeca 17-8 in finishes but they tied 5-5 in wins. However, even though as a result Affonso was much higher in my touring car model (.259 to Zeca’s .105) those five wins were Zeca’s only five wins and I don’t think I can take the driver who won 5 times over the driver who won 14 times even if the former was better than the latter when they were teammates.

Mauro Giallombardo

2010: C-
2011: C
2012; C+

Cumulative points: 6

Giallombardo, the 2012 Turismo Carretera champion, is actually the highest-rated driver of all time in my touring car model with a rating of .618. This meant I had the obligation to consider him for my list a little. The thing is he only had a total of 11 teammate comparisons and is so high in my model (even ahead of Jim Clark) because he sweeped a quite solid set of teammates. If you look at his actual record, however, he only had three wins in Turismo Carretera and two in Top Race V6 before being placed in an induced coma for a month after a crash in 2017; although he survived, he never raced again. But even prior to the wreck, it seemed like he was falling off as after finishing 5th in TC points in 2011 and winning the 2012 title, he never finished better than 10th in any touring car series over the next five seasons. Although there was definitely potential there, I basically have to conclude he’s basically Argentina’s Steve Park, and I awarded him the same number of points.

Antonio Giovinazzi

2015: C
2016: C
2021: C-
2023: C+

Cumulative points: 8

Giovinazzi’s F1 career was not inspiring and his Formula E career was even worse, although I did rate his 2021 when he came closer to matching Kimi Räikkönen than he did the other years. Giovinazzi is one driver where I actually think his minor league performances were better than his F1 performances, as he finished 2nd in points back-to-back years in 2015 and 2016 with six wins in European F3 and five wins in GP2 respectively. In 2015, he beat George Russell 24-6 in finishes and 6-1 in wins (admittedly, Russell is over four years younger) and in 2016 he won the most races, nosing out his teammate Pierre Gasly 5-4 in wins although Gasly beat him for the championship by eight points. Nonetheless, I think both those seasons are better than anything he did in F1. He’s obviously peaking now in the WEC where he and James Calado and Alessandro Pier Guidi are currently leading the Hypercar championship, but my question is how much is he actually contributing? Calado and Pier Guidi have consistently been two of the fastest sports car drivers for years and I think they are the main reasons for that team’s success. But I haven’t looked up any lap leader or lap time data for WEC this year, so I could be wrong. I’ll probably rate him this year, but we’ll see where he lands.

Léonce Girardot

1899: 3
1901: 3

Cumulative points: 6

Girardot won five early non-points Grand Prix wins from 1899-1901 including the 1901 Gordon Bennett Cup, but since I only award three points for third-place seasons prior to 1905, that won’t be enough for him to make the list.

Néstor Girolami

2012: C
2013: C-
2014: E-
2015: E-
2019: C-
2022: C+
2023: C-

Cumulative points: 18

Girolami was one of a number of 21st century Argentine touring car drivers who branched out of the typical Argentine touring car series to compete internationally. José María López was obviously the best of those, but Girolami and Esteban Guerrieri were in a fairly close battle for second place. Girolaami was better domestically as he won back-to-back TC2000 titles in 2014 and 2015 and even won a Stock Car Brasil race on his debut the latter season. However, even though Guerrieri has not yet won a title, I think he’s been bette with 14 wins in WTCC/WTCR/TCR World Tour to Guerrieri’s 10. More to the point, they were teammates from 2019-2022 and Guerrieri has a 36-22 advantage in finishes and 8-7 in wins. As a result, Guerrieri has a rating of .232 in my touring car model to Girolami’s .142. These factors explain why I have Guerrieri as a lock and Girolami as not a lock.

Timo Glock

2005: C+
2006: C-
2007: C-
2008: C
2009: C+
2010: C
2011: C-
2012: C-
2013: C-
2014: C-
2017: C+
2018: C+
2020: C+

Cumulative points: 25

Glock is I think one of the most underrated drivers in motorsports history. With a rating of .225 in my open wheel model and .292 in my touring car model, he is one of a grand total of six drivers with a rating of >= .2 in both along with Jim Clark, Peter Dumbreck, José María López, Edoardo Mortara, and Pascal Wehrlein. That’s some heady company as it includes an F1 champion, a three-time World Touring Car Champion, a DTM/Formula E champion, and a driver who was just as dominant in DTM and Formula E but never quite won the title. Having said that, Glock and Dumbreck never came close to winning a major league title in anything and they are the worst of this group, but Glock did a lot more than Dumbreck. As a Champ Car rookie in 2005, he pummeled third-year driver Ryan Hunter-Reay so hard that the future champion and Indy 500 win was fired before the season ended and couldn’t even find a ride for another two years. He then switched to GP2 (basically attempting to do what Colton Herta is doing now), won the title in his second season, nearly matched Jarno Trulli at Toyota and even scored a TNL in 2009 despite the team’s incompetence. Glock outperformed all four of his teammates including future Formula E champion Lucas di Grassi and future Formula E winner Jérôme d’Ambrosio before switching to DTM. Now I think my touring car model generally overrates DTM drivers because that series both has a higher level of competition than other touring car series as well as lacking field inversions, which means there is less parity from cheap gimmickry, which makes the top drivers in that series look better than they are relative to the top drivers in other touring car series. I don’t think I’d put Glock as highly as both of my models do, but I do think he was very good in both disciplines for quite some time. As a DTM driver he posted five wins and was particularly impressive in 2018 when he beat all three teammates including Porsche Supercup champion Philipp Eng and former DTM champion Bruno Spengler in their teammate head-to-heads. In 2020, he went winless but had his highest-rated season when he beat two-time DTM champion in his head-to-head that year. I decided that was enough to make Glock a lock.

Marcos Gomes

2006: C-
2007: C
2008: E-
2009: C+
2011: C
2012: C-
2013: E-
2014: C+
2015: E
2016: C+
2017: C+
2018: C+
2019: C-

Cumulative points: 42

I don’t know what my hesitation was here since the son of four-time Stock Car Brasil champion Paulo Gomes won the title himself in 2015 and at .198, Marcos has a higher rating than a lot of Stock Car Brasil champions including his father. I think it’s because he fell off so hard in the 2020s and I never had him on my current lists as a result. Nonetheles, his earlier seasons were impeccable even though he ended up only winning 13 races. He nosed out Daniel Serra, another future second generation champion to win the Stock Car Light title in 2006, then had a very Denny Hamlin-esque inflated fourth in points in his rookie season in 2007 before finishing second in points the next year. His records against other champions were also very impressive as he beat five-time champion Cacá Bueno 17-13 when they were teammates, tied Felipe Fraga 22-22 when they were teammates (and beat him 12-3 in his 2015 title season, the year before Fraga turned the tables and won the 2016 title), and beat David Muffato (probably the worst Stock Car Brasil champion) 6-1; that year Gomes finished 10th in points while Muffato was 29th! Okay, I’m impressed enough despite his falloff in this decade. I don’t know why I held off so long.

Jules Gounon

2016: C
2017: C+
2019: C-
2020: C-
2022: C+
2023: C

Cumulative points: 12

The son of F1 flameout Jean-Marc, Gounon is a highly-regarded and still relevant sports car driver with two GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup titles, a German ADAC GT title, an overall 24 Hours of Spa win, two Bathurst 12 Hour overall wins, and class wins in the 24 Hours of Daytona and Petit Le Mans. So why not a lock? Because I really didn’t like his advanced statistics. Unfortunately, the GT World Challenge series don’t publish lap time data, but IMSA and WEC do. In his 2023 IMSA GTD Pro season, Gounon and his teammate Daniel Juncadella may have led the way with a class-high four wins including the Daytona and Road Atlanta wins, but Gounon had 0.05 lead shares to Juncadella’s 0.17, neither driver had a TNL, and Gounon had a below-average speed percentile (42.77 to Juncadella’s 50.61). He still had enough wins that year in addition to winning two titles that I rated him anyway, but this gave me enough to pause to wonder whether he (and Juncadella even) were being inflated by their cars. I’ll gain a little more perspective on Gounon this season now that he is competing in DTM and will finally be eligible for my touring car model. He’s running close to Maro Engel who I have as a lock, which helps. I suspect he’ll be on my list by the time I’m done, but I think he needs to do more.

Héctor Gradassi

1966: C+
1967: E-
1968: C
1972: E
1973: E-
1974: E-
1975: E-
1976: E-
1977: C+
1978: C
1979: C

Cumulative points: 47

I do wonder whether I’m rating all these Argentine touring car drivers too highly because this is a scene that so many people (even people as knowledgeable as Marshall Pruett) instinctually dismiss, but considering that scene spawned legends like Juan Manuel Fangio and José María López (even though Agustín Canapino’s international foray in IndyCar was an embarrassment) and drivers like López and Esteban Guerrieri (see below) actually did better in international series than they did while competing domestically, I don’t think I’m overrating this scene too much. Obviously, that has nothing to do with my evaluation of Gradassi personally because he’d be a lock either way with four Turismo Carretera titles in 1972 and then consecutively from 1974-1976. He definitely peaked in 1972 with a seven-win season while his rival Nasif Estéfano won three times. The next year, he finished second to Estéfano who won five times even though he won the title posthumously. I ended up rating the other three titles lower both because he only won between 3-4 races and because I had the sneaking suspicion that if Estéfano hadn’t died, Gradassi might not have won any of those titles. But he did and it’s a solid record that I don’t think can be dismissed even if you are biased against this scene.

Stuart Graham

1974: E
1975: E
1977: C+
1978: E-

Cumulative points: 28

The former motorcycle racer started his career in cars with a bang as he won the Class D championship in the British Saloon Car Championship back-to-back years in 1974 and 1975 in his first two seasons. Both years, he had a season-high eight overall wins and finished third in the standings behind drivers who won less competitive classes, which tended to happen frequently there since obviously more drivers competed for overall wins than the less competitive class wins, but I’d still say he was the dominant saloon car driver of his time; he also won Britain’s most prestigious touring car race (the RAC Tourist Trophy) both years. In 1977, he won two more BSCC races along with two races in the French Touring Car Championship, then he committed to running the FTCC more seriously in 1978, where he won five times before retiring in 1980 to run a Honda dealership.

Justin Grant

2017: C
2018: C
2019: C-
2020: C
2021: C+
2022: C+
2023: C+
2024: C+

Cumulative points: 19

One of today’s top USAC drivers, Grant won the 2020 Silver Crown title and back-to-back Sprint Car titles in 2022 and 2023 with a career-best 11 wins in the latter series. Like his contemporary Logan Seavey, he consistently wins in all three divisions and he has been remarkably consistent from season to season with a combined 12, 12, 14, and 12 wins across the top three USAC divisions the last four seasons. I don’t think he’s quite had a year as good as Seavey’s 2024 yet, but a couple of his seasons are probably bordering on elite. Nonetheless, I granted Justin a couple more points than I did previously, raising his 2021 and 2024 seasons from C to C+ and dropping Maximilian Götz and Yuki Tsunoda respectively. Grant might be a lock before I’m done; even if he isn’t, he’ll still make the list.

Henri Greder

1963: E-
1964: C+
1965: C-
1967: C
1974: C
1975: C-

Cumulative points: 14

An eclectic driver with wins in rally cars, sports cars, and touring cars, I liked his 1963 European Rally Championship season a lot as he tied for the most wins at a time when the ERC was the premier rally series. I didn’t like his sports car years much as despite some class wins in the Targa Florio and 24 Hours of Le Mans, I mostly judged his World Sportscar Championship class wins to be too many laps off the pace of the overall winners to rate most of them. Greder did win one title in the French Touring Car Championship in its first season in 1974, but the competition was much lousier than it would be in later years. I’m really on the fence here, but if you ask me right now, I’d say no.

Masten Gregory

1953: C+
1955: C-
1956: C+
1957: E-
1961: C
1962: C
1965: C+
1966: C-
1969: C-

Cumulative points: 21

One of many Formula One drivers from this era who was actually better in sports cars, Gregory earned three overall World Sportscar Championship wins including an overall Le Mans win in 1965 along with five more in class, five overall SCCA wins and two more in class as well as the standalone 1962 Canadian Grand Prix when it counted as a single-driver sports car race. As an F1 driver, he won one non-points event at the Kanonloppet but neither of the two champions entered in that race (John Surtees and Graham Hill) finished. Gregory had two top ten points finishes in F1 in 1957 and 1959. I really like his 1957 season because he finished in sixth points and gave the Scuderia Centro Sud team three of its five best finishes along with an overall WSC win in the 1000 kilometers of Buenos Aires, but his 1959 is pretty terrible since he only finished ninth in points while his teammate Jack Brabham won the title. Nonetheless, he had an above average rating in my open wheel model of .072 and I’m more inclined to say yes.

Allan Grice

1975: C+
1976: C+
1977: C
1978: C
1979: C-
1980: C
1982: C
1983: C+
1984: C+
1986: C+
1987: C
1990: C+
1991: C-

Cumulative points: 30

Grice never won a proto-Supercar Australian Touring Car Championship mainly because he only ran the full ATCC schedule once, but he nonetheless won 12 races in 85 starts, which isn’t that much worse a percentage than Peter Brock’s 48 wins in 295 starts. Grice did win the biggest Australian touring car race, the Bathurst 1000 (which was not yet a part of the ATCC schedule) twice and he was the linchpin of the team both times, driving 137 of the 163 laps in 1986 and he was also the team leader over three-time British Saloon Car Champion Win Percy in 1990 because Percy had a shoulder injury. Despite his lack of ATCC titles, he won four minor ones: the Sun-7 Series in 1976, the AMSCAR title in 1982, the Australian GT title in 1984, and the South Pacific Touring Car Championship in 1986. I don’t really think he ever quite had an elite season, but overall, he certainly had a career worthy of recognition.

Harald Grohs

1975: C
1981: C+
1983: C
1984: E-
1985: C+
1986: C
1987: C+
1988: C

Cumulative points: 22

Similar to Grice, Grohs never won the premier German touring car championship DTM although he won two races there and six races in its predecessors DPM and DRM along with assorted other wins throughout a very long career. Like Grice, he won a couple minor league titles, the German DRT in 1983 and the Porsche Carrera Cup Germany in 1995. He also finished second in the World Sportscar Championship and won three races there, but I think his teammate Rolf Stommelen was better, and two races in the European Touring Car Championship (but ditto with his teammate there Helmut Kelleners). Since he was winning well into the ‘90s when he was in his fifties, including his Porsche Carrera Cup title, a four-win season there the next year, and a 24 Hours of Daytona win in 1997, I thought about rating many of those years. Ultimately, the reason I decided not to is that his touring car rating of -.069 is pretty bad and I didn’t want to make him a lock. While all but one of his rated seasons prior to 1985 had an above-average rating, every single rated season after 1985 had a rating below -.1, so I ended up not rating most of those seasons because I figured the competition must have been terrible.

Romain Grosjean

2007: C
2008: C-
2010: C-
2011: C
2012: C+
2013: C+
2014: C-
2015: C+
2016: C
2017: C-
2021: C+
2023: C-

Cumulative points: 23

Grosjean is definitely overhyped and probably overrated, but I still think he deserves to be on the list. Much like his contemporary Nico Hülkenberg, he had an all-time great-looking minor league trajectory with a staggering seven titles from 2003-2011: Formula Lista Junior 1.6 in 2003, French Formula Renault in 2005, Formula 3 Euro Series in 2007, GP2 Asia in 2008 and then again in 2011, Auto GP in 2010, and GP2 in 2011. Since he won practically everything there was to win in his early years, almost anything would’ve ended up looking like a disappointment in comparison. His F1 career started out all right as he was only barely slower than Kimi Räikkönen as a rookie in 2012 and he even won the Race of Champions. He had his best points finish the next year in 2013. Although Räikkönen beat him worse, Grosjean did have a fastest race that year, making him I think the only post-1995 F1 driver with a fastest race and no wins. After that, he mostly stagnated and I don’t like his Haas years at all since Kevin Magnussen beat him in points three out of four seasons and in speed three out of four seasons even though Magnussen is the most average driver in my open wheel model. I honestly think his peak might have been his 2021 rookie season in IndyCar when he somehow got an absurd near-championship-caliber speed percentile of 72.71, beating Ed Jones by 36.75 percentage points (even worse than Scott Dixon beat Jones in his 2018 championship season). But there again, he was somewhat disappointing as he had the speed to win and then didn’t. His 4 natural races led, 2 TNL, and 2.06 lead shares in 2023 are actually really good and he actually had a higher speed percentile than both Colton Herta and Kyle Kirkwood as well. I knew at the time that replacing him with Eric Marcusson was a mistake and boy, was I proven right (even I, an Ericsson detractor, didn’t think Ericsson would be that bad). You could make a case I should have rated his 2023 higher, but I guess I downgraded it for narrative reasons because he cracked under pressure while his career was on the line. His numbers were certainly there that season though. I know he’s trying to get back into IndyCar and I wouldn’t be against that, but I’m also not sure whether IndyCar actually needs him. It feels all he ended up contributing was being the catalyst for Josef Newgarden’s heel turn.

William Grover-Williams

1928: C+
1929: 3
1931: E
1932: C+
1933: C+

Cumulative points: 26

Grover-Williams won eight Grands Prix from 1928-1933 including many of the higher-prestige ones: the 1928 French GP, the 1929 French and Monaco GPs, and the 1931 Belgian GP in a shared drive with Caberto Conelli. Those races certainly didn’t have modern competition, but I account for that by giving pre-World War II seasons fewer points and I do consider him a lock since I rated him third for 1929. Sadly, he was executed by the Nazis less than two months before World War II ended in Europe.

Esteban Guerrieri

2010: C-
2011: C-
2016: C-
2017: C+
2018: E-
2019: E-
2020: E-
2021: C-
2024: C+

Cumulative points: 25

Guerrieri was a top open wheel prospect for several years, winning a season-high six races and averaging the highest points per race in the Formula Renault 3.5 Series in 2010 in the year Daniel Ricciardo was there, then he finished second as an Indy Lights rookie to Josef Newgarden in 2011 (and he wasn’t much less dominant), but then he finished second again in 2012 to Tristan Vautier, which is a lot more embarrassing. He stalled out as an open wheel driver because at that point he was 27 and nobody was interested in him in any major league open wheel series, but after a brief stint racing Argentine touring cars, where he was okay, but not particularly special, he switched to the World Touring Car Championship and its successor series WTCR and TCR World Tour, where he ended up being far better internationally than he had been domestically, as opposed to Girolami who was better in the Argentine domestic series than internationally. In 2018, he broke out with a third place points finish, beating future two-time WTCR champion Yann Ehrlacher who finished 10th, and two-time BTCC champion James Thompson/two-time DTM champion Timo Scheider who split races in the third Münnich Motorsports Honda and combined for 60 points to Guerrieri’s 267. After that, he beat Girolami substantially in 2019 and 2020 and beat him narrowly in 2021 before Girolami kind of trounced him in 2022. Guerrieri nonetheless bounced back with a fourth-place points finish last year and he’s still competitive today sitting second in points behind Ehrlacher. Ultimately, even though he’s not yet won a title in anything since Formula Renault 2000 Masters in 2003, I think he’s done enough for lock status. As I mentioned with regard to Girolami, I have to rate Guerrieri higher for being better in the international series even though Girolami was better domestically.

Jean Guichet

1961: C+
1962: C+
1963: C+
1964: E-
1965: C+
1966: C

Cumulative points: 19

Guichet won four World Sportscar Championship overall wins including the 1963 Tour de France, 1964 24 Hours of Le Mans, and 1965 12 Hours of Reims in addition to seven class wins. With a lot of these sorts of drivers from this era, I’ve been downgrading them particularly if they only won class wins and finished many laps off the pace for the overall win, especially if only one or two cars finished the race in that driver’s class, which was frequent at the time. However, Guichet was more legit than most as he won back-to-back Le Mans class wins in 1961 and 1962 co-driving with privateer owner-driver Pierre Noblet (who only had one other class win ever) and finished third and second overall, even though he was competing against more heavily financed factory entries. In 1964, he finally got a factory Ferrari ride and won Le Mans overall with Nino Vaccarella. He didn’t last long after that and fell off quickly after 1966, but I’d still say he was successful enough to call him one of the best sports car drivers of the ‘60s, particularly one of the best drivers who exclusively raced sports cars (and didn’t also compete in open wheel, rally, or touring car series).

Alex Gurney

2007: E-
2008: C+
2009: C
2011: C+

Cumulative points: 13

I did not originally have Gurney on my bubble list, but after I did Jon Fogarty and saw that Gurney had almost as many laps led as Fogarty, I figured I needed to. My initial feeling was yes on Fogarty and no on Gurney, but I was starting to wonder whether I needed to reconsider that. Ultimately, I did end up rating Gurney a lot lower on a season-by-season basis since he only led 87 laps and won 0 poles in their 2009 title season compared to Fogarty’s 166 laps led and six poles (I rated Fogarty E-). In 2010, Fogarty led 101 laps to Gurney’s 4 so I didn’t rate him at all, then in 2012 and 2013 he only led 57 and 14 laps, so I didn’t rate him those years either. Gurney primarily looked close because he did lead more laps in 2007 and 2008, but his other seasons except for 2011 were much worse than Fogarty’s, and the fact that Fogarty thrahsed Gurney in the Atlantic Championship before their Grand-Am careers started and also won 24 poles to his 5 has left me in the same place where I started. Yes on Fogarty, no on Gurney. The late period IMSA split isn’t an era of sports car racing most people look at with any particular fondness to begin with, they were relatively short lived especially in sports car racing when drivers have incredibly long careers, Gurney was worse, and they never won a 24 Hours of Daytona. I don’t think they both deserve it.