On Friday evening, Mom decided she wanted to leave her hospital bed and join me in the living room, and she said she wanted to sleep on the couch in the living room. I had gone off to use the computer in the living room instead of my laptop a few times, particularly when I turn the news on for her. I know she wants to listen to it sometimes, but I don’t want to listen to it or especially her screaming at it, so sometimes I switch to the living room on those occasions. When she came out to the living room, I thought it was unsafe for a number of reasons. I remember that it was really hard for me to get her off the couch the last couple years, she was home. Back then, she still had strength enough to use her canes, but she no longer does, so I have to hold her hand most of the time and I wasn’t sure I could get her off the couch by myself. Additionally, the living room is not as warm as the front room and it got down to the mid-30s that night, and Mom’s electric blanket was set up on her hospital bed. I tried to turn the space heater on but I heard weird noises emanating from it so I turned it off quickly. I did turn the heat up from 78° or 81° or something, but I knew how cold Mom was in the nursing home when it was even 72° out and I wasn’t sure how to keep her from being cold while sitting there. She even had her feet sitting on the coffee table and I was very concerned about her falling. I stayed out there with her for hours when I honestly wanted to go to bed to make sure she didn’t fall, and I didn’t fall asleep until 4:30 or something.
Mom didn’t fall, but I did wake up four hours later, and she had shat all over herself, and it took me an hour to wipe her off, and I was still paranoid I didn’t do a good enough job. While I was wiping her off in the bathroom, I ended up hitting my back hard against the shower door handle, and it produced a pretty large cut. I know I should probably get a tetanus shot, and I know that I’m very unlikely to do so anytime soon due to the copay, not wanting to leave Mom at home any more than I have to, and desperately needing to go to both Monday’s meeting at the Social Security office to hopefully have Mom be able to get access to her social security checks again, my Wednesday follow-up appointment with the gastroenterologist after I left the ER early, and her Thursday appointment with PACE CNY that has now been delayed twice. And then, probably because of the sleep deprivation, I had another huge round of diarrhea to boot. Today was not as bad, although I need to make headway on my paid work. Anyway, here are the remaining C drivers in this bubble group, and maybe I’ll have some thoughts about Talladega in my next column.
Bartolomeo Costantini (15)
Summary: Constantini won five pre-World Championship Grands Prix in the 1920s for Bugatti, one in 1925 and four in 1926, before he abruptly retired at the end of that season and became Bugatti team manager.
Case for: Costantini won the 1925 and 1926 Targa Florios back-to-back when that was considered one of the most important sports car races in the world and featured many Grand Prix talents. In his 1926 win, he led start-to-finish and beat the first European champion Ferdinando Minoia by 10 minutes and Jules Goux by 15. He also beat Goux at the Spanish Grand Prix by 16 minutes and by 11 minutes in the Milan Grand Prix. Goux and Minoia were both also driving for Bugatti, and they were hardly washed up at the time since Goux won both the French Grand Prix and the European Grand Prix that year and Minoia’s championship was five years later in 1931, but Costantini beat Goux 3-2 and Minoia 3-0.
Case against: Costantini had one good year, followed by one great year, before he retired. Is that enough when drivers like Goux had a lot more longevity and versatility? Going out on top certainly helps his legacy, but is there enough there? It doesn’t help that you could easily argue he only has four wins, not five, because the Targa Florio essentially double-counted as the Coppa Florio. In the two races Goux beat Costantini, it was significantly worse: 36 minutes at the San Sebastián Grand Prix and 15 laps at the French Grand Prix.
Verdict: Keep. I currently have Goux ranked 4th and Costantini ranked 5th for 1926, but I’m now wondering whether I should switch them. I had Goux ranked higher because his wins came in the more important Manufacturers’ World Championship races while Costantini’s did not and he had a larger cumulative margin of victory, but Costantini winning the head-to-head suggests to me that maybe I should switch them. If I do, Costantini becomes a lock in addition to Goux, so I can see the argument that maybe I should do this. But if I decide it’s not enough longevity, I can certainly easily leave him off.
Johnny Coy (17)
Summary: A prolific Long Island midget winner in a bunch of obscure series, Coy has at least 137 verified wins according to the Third Turn, and ten midget championships. I’m still missing some of this information, as I have “only” 118 wins and 8 titles listed: the ARA Midget championship in 1949, the NASCAR Midget championship in 1958 (yes, NASCAR actually had a Midget championship briefly), four American Racing Drivers’ Club titles in 1968, 1969, 1971, and 1972, and two ATQMRA titles in 1974 and 1978.
Case for: The volume of wins and titles is massive, as is his longevity, since the first listed title I have for him was in 1949, and his last significant midget win came in 1981. Despite hardly ever competing in the AAA/USAC Midget Series, which came to monopolize all the attention, given how it was once a feeder for IndyCar racing and later became a feeder for NASCAR, he was still inducted into the Midget Hall of Fame in 2004 and is recognized as one of the best of his time.
Case against: The ARDC was once a very prestigious series and a legitimate rival to the AAA/USAC series, and even Mario Andretti started there in 1962 and 1963, shortly before Coy’s run, before defecting to USAC, but it still did not have the prestige of USAC and was a little second-rate in comparison, even at that time. Despite how much prestige NASCAR has now, most people don’t even know they had a midget title, so it’s hard to know how much to take that seriously.
Verdict: Keep. An intangible is that his son, Joey, was also a prolific champion with three NEMA Midget titles, one ARDC title, and three ATQMRA Midget titles, but not nearly as many wins (only 23 verified). It feels like the family deserves representation on this list for all its success, but I would honestly prefer Johnny over Joey since he won a lot more often in a lot more different series over a much longer time period, and in an era when regional Northeastern midget racing wasn’t as ancillary to the national USAC tour as it would later become.
Chris Craft (19)
Summary: Craft was a prolific winner in the British Saloon Car Championship, the forerunner to the British Touring Car Championship, where he earned four overall wins, 21 class wins, and back-to-back class championships in 1969 and 1970, although he did not win the overall championship. He also won the European Sportscar Championship in 1973, and two races in that series, four British Sportscar Championship overall wins, and one more in class, and one class win in both the European Touring Car Championship and World Sportscar Championship.
Case for: That might be too many wins to dismiss, particularly considering he won in several different series in both sports cars and touring cars. I have already rated him at 19 points, which is higher than most of the other drivers I am going with.
Case against: I realize many of the top BSCC drivers intentionally competed in less competitive classes to give them a better chance of winning overall championships, so I’m not going to criticize him for having vastly more class wins than overall wins, although I think never winning a championship when you do that is a strike against. The European Sportscar Championship wasn’t that prestigious, as the previous champion was Arturo Merzario, and the succeeding champion was Alain Serpaggi and I don’t like I’m listing either of them. His open wheel career wasn’t impressive as he had a single DNF and a DNQ in F1. His open wheel rating of -.685 is terrible. His touring car rating of .005 is mediocre. He didn’t even have any class wins in sports car endurance races, and winning those races matters more than season championships anyway.
Verdict: Drop. You know, when weighing all these arguments together, I don’t find the case for Craft remotely compelling at all. Even his Wikipedia page doesn’t even attempt to provide evidence of his greatness: “One of the highlights of his career was a third-place finish in the 1976 24 Hours of Le Mans.” Now, sometimes Wikipedia is wrong (the Jim Reed and Thierry Tassin pages are horrible), but if even his Wikipedia page is arguing just finishing third is a career highlight, meh. I’m clearly overrating him based on his win count.
Gianfranco Cunico (16)
Summary: Italian rally racer who earned a surprise World Rally Championship victory in 1993 as a privateer. Cunico won 34 overall races in the Italian Rally Championship and three consecutive championships from 1994-1996. I think he’s quite similar to Dario Cerrato, who I’ve already gone through.
Case for: Winning a World Rally Championship race for a non-factory team was extremely rare in the ‘90s, which separates him from a number of the other Italian Rally Champions who never won internationally. He beat Cerrato the one race they were teammates in 1994, although that was at Cunico’s peak while Cerrato was past his prime, and his 41-11 head-to-head record against his teammates is better than Cerrato’s 23-14.
Case against: On the other hand, just comparing these two guys, since I think Cerrato is the best comparison, Cerrato won more Italian rally titles (5) and almost as many wins (32) while also winning two European Rally Championships, a title Cunico never won. Cerrato’s seven consecutive title-winning seasons suggest a higher sustained peak, even if Cunico won a WRC race and Cerrato didn’t, and even though Cunico had a slightly longer run of relevance. Cerrato’s record is worse but he also had more head-to-head comparisons against World Rally Championships, while Cunico was never teammates with a WRC champion. (He lost to Stig Blomqvist three times and beat Markku Alén one time when they were teammates, but they weren’t competing in the same class, so I decided it doesn’t count.)
Verdict: Keep. I can’t really decide right now whether I think Cerrato or Cunico was better, even though I gave Cerrato a couple more points. I might not end up deciding on these guys until I see which one of them ends up higher rated in my rally drivers’ model, if I ever finish that and I have no idea which way that would go. I could see either of them being rated higher. If I can’t decide between them, and I kept Cerrato on the bubble, I have to do the same for Cunico.
Jorge Cupeiro (14)
Summary: Basically a one-year wonder in Argentina’s Turismo Carretera series, Cupeiro won 9 races and finished second in points in 1965, which was arguably better than the rest of his career combined. He had four other Turismo Carretera wins overall and five overall wins in Turismo Nacional, and a second-place points finish in the Class D championship in 1961, but that’s about it.
Case for: Only four other drivers won nine races in a season, Juan Manuel Bordeu, who won 9 in his 1966 title season, Eduardo Copello, who won 11 in his 1967 title season, Dante Emiliozzi, who won 10 in back-to-back seasons in 1963 and 1964, and Roberto Mouras, who won 9 in 1984. Even seven-time champion Juan Manuel Traverso never won more than 8, and Cupeiro won 9, to that year’s champion Emiliozzi’s 4, but Emiliozzi was still certainly the bigger star as that was his fourth title in a row.
Case against: Clearly, the win totals of the ‘60s drivers are inflated because there were more races in a season in the mid-’60s than there were in other periods. Winning 9 races in a year doesn’t stand out as much if people are winning 10 and 11 in the same period. The fact that he fell off almost immediately afterward suggests he just had a really dominant car that year and didn’t in other years, but not really bouncing back or ever finishing better than fifth in points after that does not speak well for him. Additionally, while I rate Turismo Carretera higher than most other North Americans do, especially when considering that Juan and Oscar Gálvez, who won 14 out of 15 championships from 1947-1961 and were legitimate rivals to Juan Manuel Fangio before he left for F1, but after Juan died in 1963 and Oscar stopped racing, there was a major power vacuum, and I don’t believe the competition level was as strong.
Verdict: Drop. If I’m even going to leave off drivers like Oscar Aventín, who won multiple titles in this scene, Cupeiro didn’t have a chance. That one year was definitely an elite season, but the rest of his career is insufficient to push him across the line. He really just benefited from weaker competition and more races in a season.