Bubble Drivers: L
Take the L out of lover and it's over.
That is an actual lyric from the chorus of The Motels’ “Take the L”, which I’ve always found one of the most charmingly stupid lyrics of the ‘80s after I learned about it from a Robert Christgau review. Right up there with “I before he except after she” and “Marconi plays the mamba”, but I think that might win.
I’m not going to whine about anything today ‘cause I’m sure you’re all sick of that. Yesterday was not so bad. After the nursing home lost my mom’s dentures of sixty years, they promised that they would have her fitted for a new set of dentures, but considering all the bad press they’ve gotten for neglecting their patients, I honestly thought it would never happen. However, perhaps New York Attorney General Letitia James ordering reforms at Van Duyn has made stuff happen as both Mom and the head nurse told me that she’d had a dental appointment to be fitted for new dentures.
There was also something else weird that happened this week when apparently one of the nurses took away the teddy bear she won at bingo last week, which she deeply loved and was one of the only things giving her joy lately. When I asked the nurses about it, they claimed that she had supposedly “stolen” it even though I saw the M.C. of all the concerts and cultural events at Van Duyn give it to her after she won. So when I ran into him before yesterday’s concert, I explained what had happened and he decided to give her two more bears. It was certainly a small grievance (especially compared to the dentures or their not releasing her) but I’m pleased by his kindness. I took the spare bear home in case they steal the other one.
Mom’s new roommate, who replaced Susan Mintonye after she died, has been a lot less likable. She often cranks the television excessively loud to the point I can barely hear myself talking when I’m in there. The television is on the other side of the room from my mom so she effectively has no say whether it’s on or off, although she hasn’t done that as much in recent weeks. Even the housekeeper called my mom’s new roommate “evil” right in front of all of us because she had dripped pee on the floor and was trying to force the housekeeper not to wash her side of the floor. Nonetheless, I got some laughs yesterday when she was listening to the History Channel on the TV. Now I dropped my cable plan in 2022 right after losing my job relaying calls for the deaf and hard of hearing and I had never even really watched that channel when I had cable, but I knew it had a reputation of almost all the programs revolving around aliens and Hitler, but I did not recognize the extent of this. Right before I left, there were a couple shows on about how aliens built several noted prehistoric structures and it was probably the first time I laughed in weeks. After hearing the host utter the phrase “ancient astronaut theorists” about ten times in a fifteen-minute period without breaking, I became convinced he deserved an Emmy.
On the bus ride home, I watched a toddler throw down a toy truck on the ground. I picked it up and handed it back to his mother, who then put it in his stroller. I guess because she didn’t hand the truck directly back to him, he then hit her in the face after which she relented and handed him back the truck before he threw it on the ground again. At this point, another person took it and didn’t give it back to him. All that was scary, but I was pretty oblivious as I was mostly just continuing to read Robert Putnam’s The Upswing. I had already considered Bowling Alone to be my favorite book, but I think this one’s even better.
There are 19 L drivers here, but there are 42 M drivers to go through, so I might only write one column next weekend because that letter might have more drivers to go through than any other letter. (Oh wait, there are also 42 Ss…)
André Lagache/René Leonard
1921: C+
1922: C+
1923: 5/E
1924: E-/E
1925: E/E
1926: E-/E-
Cumulative points: 14/11
I decided to group them together because Lagache and Leonard shared almost all their major wins, including winning the inaugural 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1923 together, then winning the second 24 Hours of Spa two years later and earning a class win at Spa the following year. The competition certainly was not what it would become because in 1923, Le Mans had only a 33-car field with almost entirely French drivers and less international interest than in later decades. More recently, the standard field size for Le Mans was at least 55 cars (this year, there were 61). However, I think winning the first 24 Hours of Le Mans is probably a significant enough accomplishment that it should be recognized, even if they didn’t have nearly as many sports car wins as the top sports car drivers from later decades, the competition was significantly weaker, and generally, the American drivers were better than the European drivers in the 1920s. I decided to go with Lagache over Leonard and assumed he was the team leader because he set the fastest lap at Le Mans in both 1924 and 1925, and he also won one of the most prestigious sports car races in France, the single-driver Coupe Georges Boillot in 1925 and 1926 while Leonard only won it once in 1924. I did bump up Leonard’s 1926 because he also won the 12 Hours of San Sebastian with a different co-driver in what was arguably his biggest win without Lagache. Although he had no wins in 1921 and 1922, I decided to rate Lagache in those seasons because he finished third and second in the Coupe Georges Boillot in those years and because I wanted to keep him on the bubble, but it’s hard for me to argue that they both deserve it, so I’m going to go with Lagache only.
Robert Laly
1924: C+
1925: C+
1926: C+
1927: E
Cumulative points: 6
Another French sports car contemporary of Lagache and Leonard, Laly won three 24 Hours of Spa class wins in 1926, 1927, and 1929 in addition to a Grand Prix win at the prestigious Coppa Florio in 1927. He finished second to Lagache in the Coupe Georges Boillot but actually posted the fastest time, which confuses me. Although he never won at Le Mans even in class, he was very fast as he was running second when he had an engine failure in 1924 and then his co-driver Jean Chassagne likewise had an engine failure in the last hour in 1927 while they were leading. While definitely one of the best French sports car drivers of his era, I do find all these drivers fairly niche in an era when generally the American IndyCar drivers were stronger than anyone. And I think the correct hierarchy for these three drivers is Lagache > Leonard > Laly. Lagache is probably the only one of them who deserves it.
Jan Lammers
1978: C
1980: C+
1983: C+
1984: E-
1987: E-
1988: C
1989: C+
1990: C
1992: C-
1994: C-
1995: C-
1998: C-
2002: C
2003: C-
2005: C
Cumulative points: 34
Now here’s a sports car driver with more substance. Lammers started out as an open wheel prospect, tying for the 1978 European F3 title with Anders Olofsson against a strong field that included Teo Fabi, Derek Warwick, Arie Luyendyk, and even Alain Prost and Bobby Rahal, but I don’t think all those drivers were part time. Although his F1 career was not very good, he did win a race in the BMW M1 Procar Series against Alan Jones and Nelson Piquet, who finished 1-2 in both series simultaneously with Jones winning the F1 title and Piquet winning the BMW title. Although I had to rate his season much lower since his open wheel performances were bad, he finished very close to Jones (77-69) in a tight battle for second in the championship. Afterward, he won back-to-back Renault 5 Turbo Eurocup championships, beating lock/highest-rated touring car driver of that year Dany Snobeck in 1983, then winning seven races to successfully defend his title the next year. That year, he also won his first of five World Sportscar Championship wins including the 1988 24 Hours of Le Mans. He technically also shared in the 24 Hours of Daytona win that year also, which was his first of seven IMSA/Grand-Am wins including a second Daytona win in 1990. Finally, he also won back-to-back FIA Sportscar championships in 2002 and 2003 before re-emerging as Tony Stewart’s teammate in the 2005 24 Hours of Daytona where they were leading before DNFing in the last half hour. Not the most legendary sports car driver perhaps, but legendary enough.
Simo Lampinen
1963: C+
1964: C+
1966: C-
1967: C
1968: C-
1969: C
1970: C
1972: C-
1975: C+
1976: C
Cumulative points: 20
Although Lampinen never won a World Rally Championship event, he was the first driver to win four Finnish Rally Championships in 1963, 1964, 1967, and 1975. While that is technically a minor league, Finland has been arguably the most successful country in rally racing with seven different drivers combining to win 16 World Rally Championships and he did outperform some of them domestically even if he didn’t make international crossovers very often. He did win seven European Rally Championship rallies (some of which doubled up as Finnish Rally Championship events) and a 1965 24 Hours of Le Mans class win to further prove his versatility.
Oscar Larrauri
1982: C-
1985: C+
1986: C
1987: C+
1989: C+
1991: C-
1992: C
1994: C-
1997: C-
1998: E
2000: C-
Cumulative points: 28
Larrauri had kind of a weird career in that he holds one of the highest ratings ever in my open wheel model at .317 (only barely behind Lewis Hamilton) thanks to a single year in European F3 when he steamrolled future sports car/touring car great Emanuele Pirro against a field that had many eventual sports car/touring car stars but very few open wheel stars. He then replaced Lammers as champion in the renamed Europa Cup Renault Alpine V6 Turbo championship in 1985 before spending most of his mid-career overachieving for sports car teams that were rarely competitive for wins. Although he only won once in the WSC and never in IMSA, he also won two Porsche Carrera Cup Germany wins, four Interserie wins, and a Japanese GT (now Super GT) win before he switched to touring cars in the short-lived South American Super Touring Car Championship, where he won titles in all three years he contested the championship in 1997, 1998, and 2000. However, I think his 1998 is vastly better than the other two years because he won six races that year as opposed to three the other two years. Moreover, there really weren’t many other notable drivers in the series in 1997 and 2000 except for Osvaldo López who was 49 and 52 in those years and probably won’t make my list anyway. On the other hand, 1998 is another matter because 12-time Stock Car Brasil champion (including that year) Ingo Hoffmann and future 5-time Stock Car Brasil champion Cacá Bueno were both competing in the SASTCC that year and not the other years. Hoffmann was in fact Larrauri’s teammate but Larrauri won the title in a year Hoffmann himself won a title elsewhere. That was good enough for E in my book, but his other two seasons don’t come even close in my book. Nonetheless, he’s a lock.
Danny Lasoski
1999: C+
2000: C
2001: C
2002: C+
2003: C+
2004: C+
2006: C+
Cumulative points: 19
The Dude seems a bit overhyped to me especially relative to his contemporary Mark Kinser who I covered last time. Not only did Kinser win two titles to Lasoski’s one, he also nearly doubled him in wins (203-122) and while Kinser had the most wins four times, Lasoski never had the most wins in a season and only won eight races in his 2001 title season. He was a little more dominant the next three years when he finished second to Steve Kinser every year consecutively, but he never quite overtook him until 2006 when he won the one-off National Sprint Tour title when that series broke off from the World of Outlaws for that year only. Perhaps part of the reason for his overhype was because he also won an IROC race at Texas in 2004, but that was largely because his last-place finish at Daytona allowed him to start on the pole at Texas, so you could argue his win had more to do with aero push than skill. Nonetheless, he was a prolific enough winner that I think I should list him, but I wouldn’t quite call him a lock.
Walter Lechner
1982: C
1983: C-
1985: C
1986: C-
1987: C-
1989: C-
1994: C-
Cumulative points: 9
Lechner won a record six titles in Interserie, the European clone of Can-Am, but I’m almost more impressed with what he did in his minor league 1982 European Formula Super Vee season when he blew out a field that also included locks Marc Duez and Arie Luyendyk. How seriously I took Lechner essentially came down to how seriously I took Interserie, but although the series had a lot of talented champions (especially Leo Kinnunen, Klaus Niedzwiedz, Bernd Schneider, and Manuel Reuter), in most of his best seasons, there was nobody that good competing and the competition was kind of garbage, especially in an era when even the original Can-Am was no longer relevant. Although he did beat great drivers in the championship occasionally, he also lost to terrible ones, including Louis “John Winter” Krages, who despite his overall 24 Hours of Le Mans and 24 Hours of Daytona wins and his 1984 Interserie titles, has a dreadful teammate record of 3-100 and rating of -.365 in my touring car model. Don’t get me wrong: Lechner was definitely better than Krages, but even in one of his better seasons (1985) when he finished third in DRM points about halfway between Hans-Joachim Stuck and Krages in points, Stuck won seven times and even Krages won while Lechner went winless. Overall, although there were occasionally some very god drivers in Interserie, I have to consider much of his Interserie dominance almost akin to road racing ARCA. Lechner was probably most successful as a car owner, winning 12 Porsche Supercup titles from 2005-2023 (although the last two of those were after Lechner’s death).
Christian Ledesma
2003: C
2004: C+
2005: C
2007: E-
2008: C
2010: C
2012: C
2013: C
2014: C
Cumulative points: 22
Another prolific Argentine touring car driver, Ledesma won the TC2000 title in his second season in 2004 and the 2007 and 2013 Turismo Carretera titles. His 2007 season was his peak as his six-win season there was the most since Roberto Mouras’s eight-win 1985, which suggests maybe I should actually bump that up to E, which would make him a lock. I think I held off making him a lock because I didn’t think he was the leader of his team for long enough, although granted, he had some great teammates like Matías Rossi and Agustín Canapino. Because he didn’t cross over to race in some other series like Stock Car Brasil or the WTCC/TCR World Tour, he isn’t in my touring car model and I think that might be biasing me against him slightly, but I’m still pretty sure I will list him.
Marcel Lehoux
1928: C+
1929: C+
1930: C+
1931: E-
1932: C+
1933: E
Cumulative points: 9
Lehoux won 11 non-championship Grands Prix, which suggests maybe he should be a lock, but I looked at how competitive the fields for all his wins are, and most of them were extremely shallow. Lehoux did not win any of the major Grands Prix, with his highest-prestige ones being two Moroccan GP wins (one of which in 1924 didn’t even count as an “official” Grand Prix, and both of them had terrible fields) and a Pau GP win in 1933, a year he won three times. He also won one noteworthy race at the Monza GP also in 1933, during the weekend when Baconin Borzacchini, Giuseppe Campari, and Stanislaw Czaykowski were all killed. Ultimately, I don’t think his dominance is quite enough to overcome the weakness of the era.
David Leslie
1985: C-
1986: C-
1987: C+
1992: C+
1993: C+
1995: C-
1996: C+
1997: C+
1998: C
1999: C+
2002: C
2003: C-
Cumulative points: 26
Leslie was a reliable, consistent veteran of British domestic racing, with four World Sportscar Championship wins from 1985-1987 and a runner-up points finish behind the perennial champion Gordon Spice before he pivoted to the BTCC in the ‘90s. Although he only won nine races there, he had an exceptionally strong teammate record of 101-44 and beat every single teammate he ever competed against except Laurent Aïello in 1999, who earned a one-and-done 10-win championship season there, although Leslie still finish a pretty close second in points with three wins. His other teammates included big names like 15-time winner Anthony Reid (although Reid did blow out Leslie in wins), nine-time Le Mans winner Tom Kristensen, three-time BTCC champion Matt Neal, and BTCC/ETCC/WTCC/WTCR champion Gabriele Tarquini (although granted, the sample sizes against those three drivers were quite small). I do think he was a career compiler and never an elite driver, but he also never posted less than a .1 rating in my model from 1992-2003 (excluding 2001 when he did not compete), so I thought he deserved it, especially since the ‘90s were generally regarded as the BTCC’s competitive peak.
Brian Lewis
1930: C+
1932: C+
1933: C+
Cumulative points: 3
Lewis, a British baron, won two 24 Hours of Le Mans class wins and three non-points Grand Prix wins. I decided to rate him all three of those years because he did finish third at Le Mans overall each year and he also won his first of three consecutive Grand Prix wins in the Mannin Moar that year, but the competition was pretty negligible except for eventual world land speed record holder George Eyston who finished 3rd in 1933. Explicitly billed as an amateur driver, I have no idea why I had him in this category.
Piero Liatti
1987: C-
1990: C-
1991: C
1995: C-
1996: C+
1997: C+
1998: C
Cumulative points: 13
Although Liatti only won one World Rally Championship event, that came in the biggest rally of them all in Monte Carlo. He also won the 1991 European Rally Championship before his WRC career began, and he didn’t do terribly in his WRC starts for Subaru but he certainly didn’t come close to Colin McRae. Liatti is similar to the fellow Italian rally racer Andrea Aghini I covered several weeks ago, but I’m going to tentatively say yes on Aghini and no on Liatti because Aghini won two Italian Rally Championships and Liatti did not, and Aghini also won the Race of Champions and Liatti did not.
Richard Lietz
2006: C+
2007: C+
2008: C+
2009: C+
2010: E-
2011: C-
2012: C+
2013: C
2014: C+
2015: E-
2016: C-
2017: C+
2018: C
2019: C+
2024: C+
Cumulative points: 43
I knew he was probably a lock and I don’t know why I was so resistant (maybe because his last years weren’t his best?) Lietz won four major sports car titles in his career, the Internatiaonal GT Open in 2007, back-to-back European Le Mans Series titles in 2009-2010 (of which the 2010 title is way more impressive since he and Marc Lieb beat F1 stars Jean Alesi and Giancarlo Fisichella 87 points to 66 for the title), and the 2015 World Endurance Championship LMGTE Pro title. He also earned overall wins at the 24 Hours of Spa, the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, and even the Petit Le Mans despite competing in the ostensibly slower GT class along with six Le Mans class wins and two Daytona class wins. This is sort of the opposite of Lewis as I can’t figure out why I didn’t have him as a lock all along, especially since I already had his most closely linked teammate Marc Lieb as a lock.
Thomas Lindström
1985: C+
1986: C-
Cumulative points: 4
Lindström was a short-lived flash in the pan in the European Touring Car Championship, where he won six races and the championship in 1985 and three races in 1986 with co-drivers Gianfranco Brancatelli in 1985 and Johnny Cecotto and Ulf Granberg in 1986. Brancatelli and Cecotto were clearly better drivers and I didn’t even have Brancatelli on this tier (although I probably should have), so he quickly became one of the most obvious nos since at least Cecotto and Brancatelli had important careers by themselves as solo drivers while Lindström did not.
Jason Line
2004: C
2005: C
2006: C+
2009: C+
2011: C+
2012: C-
2014: C
2015: C-
2016: C+
2017: C-
Cumulative points: 21
Aptly named for his drag racing prowess, Line is very similar to Matt Hagan who I previously covered in this tier. Through the 2024 season (the last which I entered on my global driver list), Line had three NHRA Pro Stock titles and 50 wins to Hagan’s four Funny Car titles and 52 wins. Both even have five marquee race wins with Line winning the Winternationals five times and Hagan winning that race four times and the U.S. Nationals once. Since they are very similar, I knew I had to give him a similar number of points, although given his one fewer title, two fewer wins, and my opinion that Pro Stock is probably marginally less prestigious than Funny Car, I ended up giving him one fewer point than Hagan’s 22, but he should be safe.
David Loring
1990: C-
1991: C-
1992: C+
Cumulative points: 5
Loring won sixteen IMSA races from 1986-1992 including class wins at the 24 Hours of Daytona and 12 Hours of Sebring in 1988, and three more consecutive Sebring wins from 1990-1992 in the GTU class along with the 1992 championship. I ultimately decided the competition levels in the IMSA Lights class where he competed in 1986-1988 and the IMSA GTU class from 1990-1992 weren’t deep enough to strongly consider him, although maybe this is inconsistent with what I did for Amos Johnson, so I may have to reconsider that. In the 1988 IMSA Lights season where Loring won four times, only one of the drivers who won races in the class had a Wikipedia page, which is not always telling (there are a few great drivers who don’t) but the fact tht the only driver who did (Dominic Dobson) wasn’t good suggests that the class was terrible, as does the fact that Parker Johnstone won three straight titles there shortly after this. The GTU class was a little better, but I’m only really impressed by his 1992 title season because while driving for Leitzinger Racing, he was actually beating both Bob and Butch Leitzinger more often than not and his class win at Sebring that year was with John Paul, Jr., giving him his first win after his imprisonment. That is worthy of some cred, but just beating Butch Leitzinger one season wasn’t enough for me when he competed against hardly any other legends otherwise.
Henri Louveau
1946: C-
1949: E-
Cumulative points: 6
Louveau was the second winner of a race in Europe after World War II ended on September 9, 1945 in the Coupe de la Liberation, but I obviously don’t rate any accomplishments for that year and his only other Grand Prix win came in a shared drive with the far superior Raymond Sommer in 1946 and his open wheel rating of -.116 was pretty bad. What most interested me was that Louveau finished second in both the 24 Hours of Le Mans and 24 Hours of Spa overall to Luigi Chinetti in 1949, who I ranked third that year. Chinetti and Louveau were clearly the team leaders because they each had different teammates in both races, and Louveau in his Delage made up two laps of a three-lap deficit to Chinetti’s Ferrari, but I don’t think that one great drive is enough to list him.
John Love
1962: 5
1964: C
1965: C
1966: C
1967: C+
1968: C
1969: C-
Cumulative points: 32
Although I don’t love awarding white guys for racing in apartheid South Africa, I unfortunately think Love is a lock. His first title came in the British Saloon Car Championship in 1962 (now BTCC), where he earned class wins in all seven races he finished during the only season he competed full-time. That year, he also won his second race in the long-running South African F1 championship before winning six straight titles there from 1964-1969. Although that series hardly had the same caliber of competition as the international F1 championship did, his performances were pretty solid in context. Although he seldom raced outside of Africa, he consistently entered the African F1 championship and non-championship races in his heyday. In 1967, he nearly delivered one of the greatest upsets in F1 history, inheriting the lead after Denny Hulme had to pit for brake fluid until he pitted himself thinking he needed fuel. It turned out he wouldn’t have run out of fuel and his car slowed due to a misfire and not a fuel outage, which relegated him to second place. That was still a very impressive drive for the slow cars he tended to have in actual F1 races, and yeah, I think he’s a lock even though it makes me kind of sick to my stomach.