I have decided to turn on charges for the Substack again after shutting them off a couple of weeks ago, minutes before I went to the emergency room. I was freaking out and catastrophizing that I would never have the energy to update again, but since I’ve actually been updating almost daily and arguably more consistently in the past couple of weeks than I was in the weeks leading up to my ER visit, I figured I should. However, I don’t think I’m going to write any more full driver entries this year, and I’ll just focus on the remaining bubble posts (there are 205 more drivers, so that means 41 more posts), and then I’ll work on this year’s top 200 list after I’m done. I’m probably going to write a Murphy Brown review, even though nobody will care (I did tease it several times over the past few months), and I will work on my statistical tables for each series and my driver ratings at some point in the middle of this. I’m still slowly working through all the IMSA lead changes to verify them and finish that statistical table, but I might not finish it until the NASCAR season is already over, so I might do that first. I probably won’t paywall most of the bubble drivers, and I might paywall nothing, but if I do, it’d probably be either that day’s bubble drivers or one of my year-end statistical tables/analyses if I write both on the same day.
I went to the gastroenterologist yesterday. He said I should be taking IBgard peppermint capsules every day and Metamucil twice a day. I was concerned that my abdominal pain was because I had ratcheted up my Metamucil intake too quickly after having not taken it for a while, but my gastroenterologist didn’t think so and thought I actually needed to take it more, so I’ll try to work my way up to that, I guess. He also wanted me to have celiac testing. I was tested for celiac before, and I think it was negative, but I decided to try again, so I walked to another building on the North Medical Care campus to have some blood drawn. I scheduled a breath test to see whether I actually have SIBO instead of IBS, which my colonoscopy did not rule out. It annoys me that it was scheduled for November 11 because I was hoping that I could go to the bank and set up my representative payee account for Mom so she can again have her Social Security checks deposited there, and hopefully, I can have the mortgage automatically withdrawn from her account as it was before, which should free up a lot more money out of my own paycheck to do other things with. Because her Social Security is in limbo, and I had to pay to replace the furnace pump as well as two months’ health insurance bills, I ended up bouncing a check yesterday and had to transfer money from one of my bank accounts to my main one, and I probably won’t get paid until November 2 or something. This is what finally convinced me to turn on charges again, but I still intend to make it worth your while, even if probably most of my posts are going to be free for a while.
I also accompanied Mom to her follow-up doctor’s appointment at PACE CNY today. After she canceled her previous vision appointment because she was (in my opinion, irrationally) afraid that she was going to be attacked on the bus, she scheduled another one today to hopefully have her cataracts removed, as well as a dental appointment. Although Van Duyn replaced her sixty-year-old dentures after they either lost or stole them, in this Wonderful World of Planned Obsolescence, her replacement dentures were nowhere near as good, and one of the teeth in her replacement dentures already fell out and was lost, so I guess they’re going to need to be replaced again. I also expressed concern that Mom hasn’t been eating enough. She keeps saying she’s not hungry, and she keeps refusing her Meals on Wheels meals (there’s a stockpile of about fifteen in the fridge now), and I’ve been very concerned about that since I don’t think she’s meeting her caloric intake, but she keeps saying she’s not hungry. I estimated that she lost fifty pounds in the nursing home while she was there, since I think she was refusing food there a lot, too. I wasn’t sure, but I know she weighed over 200 pounds entering the nursing home at the end of 2024, and she just did a weigh-in today and was at 139.6. That concerns me deeply, since it’s arguably the first time in my life I actually outweighed her (I was at 142 yesterday, although I normally weigh 136 while at home). Yes, she is six inches shorter than I am and is still technically overweight, so I guess it isn’t dire, but I think she has lost too much too fast, and I want to make sure she retains her strength. I’m probably going to need to be cooking for her more if she keeps refusing her meals. If she does fall into the normal BMI range at some point in the near future, it will be the first time in my life that she was neither overweight nor an addicted smoker (she smoked two packs of cigarettes a day for 40 years so God knows how much I breathed in, even though I always tried to avoid her smoke trails and she always pointed the cigarettes away from me). I suspect she probably wouldn’t have lived as long as she already has if she hadn’t quit smoking in 2007, but I’ve got to see what I can do about her diet.
Mike Edwards (14)
Summary: 21st-century drag racer who won the 2009 Pro Stock title and 40 career wins from 1996 to 2013. He won the U.S. Nationals twice in 1998 and 2013 and the Winternationals once in his winningest season of 2010, when he won eight times. His 40 wins are tied with Kurt Johnson for 7th all-time. He set an elapsed time record and a speed record in 2009 and two elapsed time records in 2013.
Case for: If you look at the all-time Pro Stock win list, there is a sizable gap between Edwards and Johnson and Darrell Alderman’s 28. I think some of the drivers behind Edwards hit higher peaks, including Alderman (who won three titles and is a lock) and Lee Shepherd (who died early in the 1985 season as the four-time defending champion), but I have all the other drivers with 40+ wins on the list and it would stand out if I don’t include Edwards.
Case against: Basically, I’ve been underrating all the 21st-century drag racers relative to their 20th-century peers because I felt the current era of the NHRA had significantly worse competition, but I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m probably wrong about that. A lot of people struggle to take modern drag racing seriously, particularly after the races were reduced from 1/4 mile to 1,000 feet, although this did not apply to the Pro Stock class where Edwards raced. It seems to be much less culturally relevant than in the ‘90s, when it was all over RPM2Night, but how much of that is an actual decline in relevance, and how much of it is that it simply got more cross-promotion when it was on ESPN? Even if the NHRA was definitely less respected in Edwards’s era than it was in Bob Glidden’s, I’m not docking any of the NASCAR and IndyCar drivers for dominating in eras when those series had less of a cultural footprint or were embracing gimmicks or for competing in eras when the race distances were reduced. Ergo, I don’t think there’s much of a real case against.
Verdict: Keep. I’m either massively overrating most of the other drag racers or significantly underrating him. I’m going to go with the latter.
Ray Elder (16)
Summary: Arguably the all-time greatest NASCAR West Series driver (now ARCA West), Elder won six titles in seven years (1969-1972 and 1974-1975) and 47 wins, making him possibly the most underrated NASCAR driver in history. Two of Elder’s NASCAR West wins in 1971 and 1972 came in 500-mile combination races with the Winston Cup Series at Riverside, where he managed to win for a privateer family team in Winston West equipment against the Winston Cup regulars.
Case for: Elder’s chief rival, Hershel McGriff, made both NASCAR’s 50 Greatest Drivers list and the Hall of Fame, while Elder didn’t even make the 75 Greatest Drivers list, and he’s only been nominated for the Hall of Fame, but who knows whether he’ll ever get in. Elder has the more impressive career as McGriff won only one title in 1986 at age 58 (long after Elder retired, when his fiercest competition was Chad Little) and 34 West Series wins, yet Elder made fewer starts (240) than McGriff (271). McGriff’s peak period came against Elder, as he had 12 wins the only time he competed against Elder full-time in 1972, but Elder, who won 7 times, still won the championship. McGriff might’ve been more talented when considering his longevity, but he would stop racing full-time for decades at a time and never accumulated the same volume as Elder, and I certainly like Elder’s career peak better. Even though McGriff won four races in the Cup Series to Elder’s two, Elder’s came against much deeper fields in family equipment, while McGriff was driving for Frank Christian in the ‘50s, and his performances were actually a step down from Fonty Flock’s before him, yet Flock has never been recognized on any of NASCAR’s lists.
Case against: The question is whether this is more of a case for Elder or against McGriff. I think McGriff had the talent to make the list, but just didn’t have the record. Elder does have the record, but it seems people in the know always regarded McGriff as better despite his weaker record. Another driver, Jack McCoy, is worth mentioning because he won two NASCAR West Series titles and a record 54 wins, even though his Cup record is pretty bad. McCoy also leads the West Series in laps led (6,603) to Elder’s 6,033 and McGriff’s 4,580, and I actually have McCoy as a lock (although I suspect I shouldn’t).
Verdict: Keep. I am probably not awarding Elder enough points since I would probably pick him as the greatest NASCAR West driver ever over McCoy and McGriff if you asked me point-blank. He had twice as many titles as McCoy and McGriff combined and a more concentrated peak, while McCoy was more of a career compiler and McGriff was much more of a career compiler, and his two wins at Riverside were bigger than McGriff’s more minor Cup wins, while McCoy had none at all. I think I am overrating McCoy (who should not be a lock) and underrating Elder right now, although I still remain convinced McGriff should not be on the list. He had the talent and the longevity, but he just had too many long periods of inactivity in his prime to justify his placement, in my opinion.
Casper Elgaard (17)
Summary: Danish touring car great who won the Danish Touringcar Championship four times, including three in a row (2004-06, 2010), then won its replacement, the Danish Thundersport Championship, twice more in 2014 and 2015. When considering both those series and the later TCR Denmark, Elgaard has 46 wins. He also earned a Le Mans class win in 2009, 1 European Le Mans win, and another in class.
Case for: Although Denmark is a small country, its domestic championships had better competition than you’d think. Jan Magnussen was one of the best sports car drivers in the world at that time and had two Danish Touringcar titles and one Thundersport title, and fellow two-time champion Michel Nykjær also won two European Touring Car Championship titles and three World Touring Car Championship races, indicating that the top drivers were more internationally relevant than you’d think. When counting all series, Elgaard held the record for championships until Kasper Jensen overtook him recently, if you count the TCR Denmark stuff.
Case against: How strong was his competition really? Magnussen was a spectacular driver with an open wheel rating of .204 and a touring car rating of .147, a former Karting World Champion who blew the crap out of Dario Franchitti in British Formula 3, and then went on to four ALMS/IMSA titles in addition to his three Danish titles, but I’m not sure any of the rest of the Danish drivers of this era really measure up to him. While Elgaard might’ve won more titles, Magnussen had exactly 100 Touringcar/Thundersport/TCR Denmark wins, so it’s hard to argue Elgaard was even close. Most of the Danish drivers never really competed in major league touring car racing, and the drivers who did weren’t amazing. Besides Magnussen, the other two Danish champions in my touring car model both have negative ratings (Nykjær’s -.013 and Jason Watt’s -.121).
Verdict: Keep. I really can’t make up my mind here. Elgaard was substantially worse than Magnussen (who is obviously a lock) and substantially better than Nykjær and Watt, but I find both his cases for and against to be equally compelling. The only conclusion I think I can draw from this is that Nykjær (whom I also have in this tier) shouldn’t make it.
Tommie Elliott (14)
Summary: Minor league NASCAR driver with at least 73 verified Modified wins and 1 Late Model Sportsman win.
Case for: The main thing Elliott has going for him is that he had at least 28 verified Modified wins in 1954, where he finished second in points to Jack Choquette’s 17. Elliott did beat some major drivers in points that year, including Banjo Matthews, Cotton Owens, Ray Hendrick, and Fireball Roberts, although I imagine most of those guys probably entered fewer races.
Case against: There are so many pre-modern era Modified drivers you’ve never heard of with close to, if not more than, 100 wins and other than that season, I see little that stands out. He’s on the bubble because I gave him a full E grade for 1954, but that season really feels like an outlier since he never had more than 8 verified wins in any other season.
Verdict: Drop. Nothing in his record really separates him from his peers, and that isn’t enough. When you consider the fact that Frankie Schneider had consecutive seasons with 44, 41, and 29 verified wins, and Joe Weatherly had back-to-back seasons with 37 and 35 verified wins, Elliott doesn’t really stand out even that much in context, and if I’m not going to even list Jerry Cook…
Tomáš Enge (18)
Summary: A onetime hot open wheel prospect, Enge won six races in F1’s then-top feeder series, Formula 3000, and was running away with the 2002 championship until he was disqualified after winning the Hungaroring race due to testing positive for marijuana at a time when pot use was much more frowned upon (I remember watching the New York gubernatorial debate that year and there was a candidate from the Marijuana Reform Party in the debate, just to put the era in context for you). While that basically ruined his open wheel career and his one IRL season in 2005 was pretty forgettable also, he had a smattering of sports car wins from 2003-2016, including the 2009 European Le Mans title and two overall wins and three class wins there, four American Le Mans class wins, including the 2003 and 2006 Petit Le Mans, a 24 Hours of Le Mans class win, five FIA GT wins, two World Challenge wins, one ADAC win and another in class, one International GT Open win, and one VLN class win.
Case for: Enge won in a lot of different series, and he was one of the drivers who put Aston Martin’s sports car program on the map. While I think a lot of drivers can match that sports car record on paper, what stands out to me most of all is that he won five consecutive Le Mans class poles from 2002 to 2006, even though he only won once, suggesting his speed was greater than his results. His open wheel rating of -.005 is better than you think for a driver who is routinely considered a bust for how loudly he flamed out.
Case against: Although he significantly elevated the Aston Martin program, how much is that really worth when his raw speed was greater than results? Qualifying on pole five times in a row at Le Mans is nice, but on the other hand, is there any discipline of motorsports where qualifying matters less than sports car racing? No. Consistency in speed matters more than top speed there, and Enge never exactly had a reputation for consistency.
Verdict: Keep. I kind of feel that such an extended run of qualifying dominance should be rewarded when considering that most retirements at Le Mans are mechanical and mechanical DNFs have more to do with the car than the specific drivers. I think in order to properly judge Enge, I would need to compare his lap times to his teammates, but the problem is that lap data are scarcely available for most of his best seasons, so I’m probably going to have to go on vibes here. I will say that I feel like I have insufficient evidence to drop him at this point.