Bubble Drivers: V-Z

Okay, that was exhausting, but now I'm finished.

I promised that I would complete all the remaining drivers I had initially listed on my bubble tier by tomorrow’s NASCAR Cup Series finale at Phoenix and here it is (I managed to just get it done before the season-ending Xfinity Series race as well). There were not any U drivers left in my bubble tier after Louis Unser (who I already covered months ago) so this just contains the final 44 drivers whose names start with V-Z. After having gone through all these drivers, I have 713 drivers in my lock tier and 253 in my bubble tier, which definitely gives me wiggle room to play with since I now have 34 spots to fill even if I include all the drivers I currently have on my list, but honestly, there are a lot of them I have doubts about as well. There are even a couple of ostensible locks I haven’t gone through that I might eventually drop. I especially have significant doubts about these: Emil Andres, Marc Basseng, Lucien Bianchi, Dick Brooks, Patrick Carpentier, Leo Cella, Rob Collard, Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat, Don Devendorf, Darel Dieringer, Mario Gayraud, Richie Ginther, Scott Goodyear, Henri Greder, Maurício Gugelmin, Amos Johnson, Pierre Kaffer, Dave Marcis, Hiroshi Masuoka, Jamie McMurray, Andreas Mikkelsen, Tommy Milner, Ritomo Miyata, Franck Montagny, Roberto Moreno, Bob Morris, Luigi Musso, Osamu Nakako, Mike Nazaruk, Dennis Olsen, Al Pombo, Marshall Sargent, Vern Schuppan, Patrick Snijers, Nelson Stacy, Didier Theys, Louis Unser, Hans-Joachim Walter, Alexander Wurz, and Sobiesław Zasada. In a lot of these cases, my head instinctively says no but my season-by-season numbers say yes. I’m sure I’m still going to prune a number of these drivers as well because if you asked me whether Ginther, Goodyear, or Marcis for instance deserved it, I would probably say no but my own numbers say differently. It’s likely I’ll find drivers I haven’t gone through yet to replace some of these people with. But for the time being they’re in.

Somehow, even though I was so sick last week, my mom apparently didn’t catch the virus from me. She was very sick, but it’s apparently because she was constipated perhaps after the medication they gave her to heal her second urinary tract infection. I was unable to speak to her for about a week because the ringer on her phone wasn’t working. I had also left the ramp application form in a drawer in her room figuring I would come in the next day and have her sign it, but then I got sick. I finally had her sign the form on Tuesday but by the time I had arrived to the Onondaga County Civic Center to drop it off it was closed and I ended up sending it via email two days later. I also called another agency who might be able to build a ramp more quickly and I discussed potentially financing a repair for my leaky roof as mandated by my mom’s homeowner’s policy with my bank. They told me I’d have to get an estimate from a roofer and I’m going to try to do that and maybe arrange for somebody to pick up my mom’s disabled car in the next week or two. While I was in the nursing home on Tuesday, I took the initiative to call the comany that makes the nursing home phones and ask how to turn the ringer on again. They told me it wasn’t possible and just sent another phone to her room, which arrived yesterday. I then took the initiative to unplug that phone and plug the new one in yesterday, which I probably was not authorized to do but I want to still be able to talk to her on the days I can’t come in, and I probably will be doing that in a few minutes after finishing this post before the Xfinity race starts. She was definitely doing a little better yesterday and I took her to the Halloween party/concert that day. So this was a better week I guess than the last few and at least I managed to get this done too.

My next column will be my NASCAR year in review at some point next week, and then I’m going to do similar columns for IndyCar, Formula E, DTM, BTCC, WEC, IMSA, the European Le Mans Series, the TCR World Tour, Supercars, and F1 probably in approximately that order. I might not do DTM if I can’t find the lap times for each race, which for that season I often can’t. Doing all these series in advance will allow me to nail down most of my list so I can focus on just writing it over the month of December.