Okay, need to get some quick thoughts down for the four big racing stories of the week.
Esteban Ocon was released by Haas F1 after some temper tantrum that nobody has properly explained. It was clear his F1 career was already over since Oliver Bearman utterly destroyed him both last year and this year, but this might have cost him some future ride in another series. I think I’m gonna wait to talk about that one until some more information has been released. I do have Ocon in this bubble group so I’ll certainly have time to talk about it then.
Carson Hocevar’s suspension from the NASCAR season finale at Homestead kind of surprised me because for years, it seemed like NASCAR only suspended drivers when they either intentionally retaliated or right-hooked a competitor into the wall. I had never heard of anyone getting suspended for brake-checking before. I admit I wasn’t watching the Martinsville race that closely, because I found most of it really boring after William Byron finally got to the lead, and I was preoccupied with simultaneously entering all the lead changes from the last 15 races to make sure I have my statistical table so I can do my post-season NASCAR analysis pretty soon after the season ends. Looking back on it, it was certainly intentional and I actually didn’t realize he tried to wreck Austin Cindric five or six times because again, I wasn’t watching closely, but it somehow seemed really minor to me relative to Brian Vickers’s horrific Martinsville race in 2011 or Danica Patrick’s in 2015 or worst of all, Ty Gibbs intentionally wrecking his teammate Brandon Jones to win an Xfinity race in 2022 and knocking him out of the Championship 4. None of them were suspended, and I kind of thought all those things were worse. I guess the difference nowadays is that it’s easier to prove intentionality due to the in-car SMT data, while before that technology existed, NASCAR was forced to give people the benefit of the doubt more often. I guess I for one am glad that we’re no longer in the era of “boys, have at it”.
But I get that it wasn’t just about Martinsville. Hocevar has been a menace for virtually the entire season and I get that he needed someone to take him down a peg. I’m not convinced it will work, since he is a Child of the Social Media Age in an era when whatever causes the most outrage is most likely to go viral. He thrives on maximizing his virality rather than maximizing his pretty great talent, and I find that pretty tiresome. (Andrew Marantz’s takedown of the culture of virality in The New Yorker was my favorite article of the 2010s.) I kind of suspect Hocevar won’t be whipped into shape by being suspended and he’s going to keep doing what he does because it plays well on social media. Maybe eventually he’ll learn. [shrugs]
Dodge is returning to NASCAR effective in 2027 after a fourteen-year absence and boy, is that a wet fart. Their Craftsman Truck Series operation has been rather slow and inept this year (unlike the years leading up to their 2001 reentry into the Cup Series when they’d actually been winning in trucks), the announcement was made only months before the Daytona 500 as opposed to the 2001 announcement which was made in 1999, and they only got one awful team (Kaulig Racing) to join them, who has one driver in A.J. Allmendinger who is past his prime and another in Ty Dillon who was never any good to begin with. Have fun getting outrun by Cody Ware, guys.
Finally, I guess I need to talk about the always-irritating Colton Herta situation. Even though Herta has been appallingly mediocre against drivers five years younger than him in Formula 2 and sits a miserable 19th in the championship of 22 regular drivers (geez, I thought he’d be like 7th or something), Cadillac is still all in about developing him to replace Valtteri Bottas at their F1 team. There was a big hubbub about how apparently the FIA thought that Herta had accrued enough Super Licence points because IndyCar’s website made it look like he had won a tiebreaker for 6th against Felix Rosenqvist when he actually lost it, so when that was cleared up, it was again revealed that he didn’t have enough Super Licence points.
Now the Super Licence points system is stupid and I don’t think it necessarily reflects how much talent each driver has to begin with, particularly in an era of Formula 2 where it doesn’t seem like how you perform has much of anything to do with F1 anymore. In 2024, Kimi Antonelli finished 6th in points in F2 two years before dominating the current F1 season. Antonelli’s teammate Bearman was only 11th but he’s been very good too. Taylor Barnard was 21st in an abortive F2 season that year and is now one of the best Formula E drivers. And then you have Herta and his teammate Ritomo Miyata, who were both great in other series what with Herta winning nine races and being extremely unlucky not to win more and Miyata winning the Super Formula and Super GT titles simultaneously in 2023, looking at times awful.
I get that F2 performances don’t have much of anything to do with F1 performance these days, but still, it feels weird that Cadillac is all in on Herta when Jak Crawford and Ugo Ugochukwu are Americans who have already been more successful on the European ladder, and they would probably be cheaper options as well. Herta at $7 million a year is the most overpaid driver in motorsports, and I guess perhaps Cadillac thinks it is a sunk cost, so no matter how badly he flops in F2, they’ll make sure he gets enough practice sessions for them to get a return on their investment, even though I still think he’d be a downgrade from washed-up Valtteri Bottas.
But all the discourse is so annoying. Yes, it’s really silly that Cadillac is doing this, but you’re also seeing lots of people saying that Herta was never good and that he was just a middling IndyCar driver from fans who should know better whose measure of success is how successful you are in F1, people who genuinely seem to believe that the 15th best F1 driver is better than any other driver in any other series. My open wheel model has disproven this. Herta has obviously proven he can compete against F1 drivers. He thrashed F1 alumni Alexander Rossi and Marcus Ericsson when they were IndyCar teammates and he outperformed Romain Grosjean too. Even after all this, his rating of .213 is still higher than most F1 drivers, even last year’s champion Lando Norris. You can argue that isn’t even spurious considering the last time Herta raced in Europe, Herta and Norris were actually teammates in the 2015 MSA Formula Championship. Yes, Norris outperformed him, winning the title while Herta was third, and winning 7 races to Herta’s 4, but Herta actually won the head-to-head. In other words, they were close. I realize junior series don’t mean everything as Corey LaJoie beat Chase Elliott and Bubba Wallace in the 2012 K&N East Championship and because LaJoie never developed properly, he ended up becoming the butt of jokes. I guess one can argue Herta is something similar, except that he was actually a big star and people seem to not realize it because to far too many younger fans, if you’re not a champion, you’re mid.
So, I find myself irritated by every bit of the Herta discourse all the time. Do I think he deserves the Cadillac ride next year? No. It’s obvious that it’s almost impossible these days to transition from outside F1’s ladder system once you leave it like how Brendon Hartley and Nyck de Vries flopped also even though they proved to be truly great talents elsewhere. I’m sure Sébastien Bourdais would’ve done better if he’d gone to F1 in 2003 immediately after winning the 2002 Formula 3000 title rather than having the Champ Car detour in between. You always have to relearn the tracks and the tires if you are transitioning from another series so you’ll always have a disadvantage over people who are committed to one ladder and one ladder only (especially in an era where it seems like all series do less real world testing than they used to, and much more on simulators), but that doesn’t say a lot for your overall talent in my opinion. So, Herta has definitely sucked this season but he doesn’t suck. And to see all these people on social media calling him a mid-pack IndyCar driver. No, a mid-pack IndyCar driver is like Marcus Armstrong. Herta is probably the fourth-best IndyCar driver of the 2020s after Alex Palou, Pato O’Ward, and Josef Newgarden (I think I’d take him over Scott McLaughlin, but you could argue Kyle Kirkwood’s jumped him now). That’s far from mid-pack. It’s just that it seems to be impossible to climb the European ladder again once you leave it for any reason. It says nothing about Herta’s talent. I still don’t want him getting the Cadillac ride though, not least because Europeans’ schadenfreude about watching Americans fail gets really tiresome, even though I understand where it comes from.
Normally, I do five drivers but tonight I did six because I think it would be stupid for me to split the Fornoros and not do them on the same day since their careers are so intertwined and it’s impossible to talk about them separately. If I’d only done five drivers today, that also would have meant I’d have to split the two Giaffones I will be discussing tomorrow, and I don’t wanna do that either. So, I think it’s gonna be 6 today, 5 tomorrow, and 4 on Friday. And you won’t have to worry about me doing any TV reviews you don’t want for quite a while!
Ed Flemke (19)
Summary: Minor-league NASCAR driver from the ‘60s and ‘70s with 118 verified Modified wins and back-to-back second-place points finishes in 1961 and 1962 along with 9 Late Model Sportsman wins.
Case for: He has more verified wins than six-time Modified champion Jerry Cook’s 95 or seven-time Modified/two-time Busch North champion Mike Stefanik’s 88. Including races in other series, the difference is even more stark, with Flemke at 218 wins on The Third Turn to Cook’s 135 and Stefanik’s 110. He had more verified wins in 1961 (16) than either Bobby Allison (15) or Ray Hendrick (10). Winning in both Modified and Late Model Sportsman races increases his case.
Case against: Flemke’s two second-place points finishes in the Modifieds were pretty distant seconds since he lost to Johnny Roberts in 1961 by a margin of 5752-4234 and Eddie Crouse in 1962 5044-3972, but I suspect that is more because he entered fewer races than because the performance wasn’t there, as his 16 verified wins in 1961 tied Roberts and his 21 verified wins in 1962 were more than double Crouse’s 10. Although these win totals were massive, there were 467 total races held in 1961 and 379 in 1962, so I believe Cook and Stefanik certainly had higher winning percentages amongst the races held.
Verdict: Keep. I’ve been all over the place with these grassroots modified drivers as I believe at various points I’ve had Flemke both as a lock and then outside the list entirely. He keeps bouncing around and I have no idea what I’m going to do with him, but I wouldn’t be surprised whether I ended up listing him or not, and it might come down to how strong I consider his competition to have been. Definitely not worthy of an immediate elimination, but I’m going to feel weird listing him and not listing Cook.
Pete Folse (18)
Summary: Folse won the IMCA Big Car championship three years in a row from 1959-1961 shortly before big cars were renamed sprint cars driving Hector Honore’s iconic Black Deuce. Honore won seven consecutive IMCA titles, four with Bobby Grim in 1955-1958 and three with Folse after Grim defected from IMCA to embark on an IndyCar career, where he was 1959 Indy 500 Rookie of the Year and won one race.
Case for: Although the sanctioning body IMCA still exists, its historical importance has been widely forgotten now that nearly all its current championships are regional, not national, it was an important national sanctioning body for several decades, spawning several drivers who became major stars. IMCA’s stock car division spawned the likes of Dick Hutcherson, Johnny Beauchamp, and all-time winningest USAC Stock Car driver Don White. I already have all those drivers as locks, but IMCA’s Big Car division was actually regarded more highly at the time, which makes a strong case for Folse. It’s clear USAC sprint cars eventually overtook IMCA in prestige because drivers had to fully commit to USAC to be eligible for the Indy 500, which eventually decimated the championship. But that largely hadn’t happened yet during the run of Folse’s dominance. I looked up who he beat in his IMCA championships. In 1959, Jim Hurtubise finished second in points and Parnelli Jones was fifth, yet Folse scored more points than them combined! Eventual five-time IndyCar winner Jim McElreath (who also became the first driver to win a Silver Crown race) finished in the top ten in points during Folse’s last two title seasons. Okay, that convinces me that the competition was probably strong enough.
Case against: It’s easy to say Folse backed into his dominance because Grim defected from the series to embark on an IndyCar career, and Folse was not quite as dominant as Grim was overall, even though his 31 wins in 1960 were more than Grim ever managed in a season. Furthermore, Grim’s IndyCar career was pretty mediocre even if he did win a race, suggesting that maybe Honore’s dominant chassis inflated both of them. Since Folse was generally regarded as not as strong as Grim and I only barely have Grim as a lock, there’s still a question here.
Verdict: Keep. I was unsure about this one until I did more research, but if he was beating drivers like Jones in 1959, who won three consecutive sprint car titles immediately after he pivoted to USAC in 1960, I think he’s actually a pretty obvious selection. He’s forgotten because IMCA has faded from the limelight and because he never really wanted to compete in the Indy 500, but I’m starting to think maybe he should be a lock.
George Fonder (17)
Summary: A ‘40s and ‘50s midget racer who zigzagged back and forth between the better-known AAA championship (which had an affiliation with the Indy 500) and the then-comparable American Racing Drivers Club (you’ll be hearing more about that series shortly), Fonder won 53 AAA midget races and 24 more in the ARDC. Fonder peaked in 1941 immediately before World War II with a 23-win AAA Eastern Midget championship season.
Case for: Even though Fonder is not in the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame and the Fornoro brothers (see below) are and even though the Fornoros won more races and titles, I think Fonder was better. Midget racing was one of the most popular forms of motorsports in the country in the pre-World War II years in a way they really weren’t after the war, and the ARDC when Fonder was competing there was almost on par with the AAA, while it had become a much more second-tier league by the time USAC was paramount. Fonder probably would have also won the 1940 AAA Eastern Midget had he not been injured for six weeks.
Case against: Most of his wins were concentrated into relatively few seasons: 8 in 1940, 25 in 1941, 9 in 1946, and 17 in 1948, while most of his other years were more middling. The fact that he peaked in 1941 right before America went to war suggests that the competition in 1941 might have been rather questionable. Fonder had as many IndyCar DNQs as starts (4 each), and he never finished better than 7th in any of his IndyCar attempts.
Verdict: Keep. I think what’s making me tentatively say yes is that midget racing was very important in the pre-World War II years in a way it never was since. Additionally, his 1941 is one of the winningest midget seasons of all time, but I really need to probably do more research on the competition.
Brittany Force (19)
Summary: Recent NHRA Top Fuel star and daughter of 16-time Funny Car champion John Force with two titles in 2017 and 2022 and 19 career wins. She retired after the 2025 season to raise a family and the big question I have is whether she did enough before she retired.
Case for: Every other NHRA driver with multiple Top Fuel titles I have as a lock except for Scott Kalitta and Bennie Osborn and there is a part of me who wants to list her just to have an opportunity to include more women on the list. She still holds the elapsed time record of 3.623 seconds from 2019 and she set five consecutive speed records as well, holding the all-time speed record of 343.16 mph at the time she retired, although Shawn Langdon broke it this year. As I mentioned in my Mike Edwards entry, I also think I’ve been underrating recent drag racers when I would give drivers who had the same performances higher grades in earlier decades, and that’s not fair. All the Top Fuel drivers with more wins than her except for Langdon I currently have as locks on the list.
Case against: Every other NHRA driver with Multiple Top Fuel titles also has more wins than her except Gary Beck (tied at 19), Kalitta (18), Shirley Muldowney (18), and Osborn (2). I would say Beck and Muldowney were stronger since there were fewer races in a season in that era, and Muldowney was surely a hell of a lot more important as a pioneer. The fact that she retired so soon means that I can’t give her the benefit of the doubt that she’ll work her way up the list like with a lot of more recent drivers. She never won either of the most prestigious races (the Winternationals or the U.S. Nationals), and it’s easy to say that the Force daughters’ careers were inflated due to their dad’s connections, although she was obviously better than her sisters Courtney and Ashley.
Verdict: Keep. I think what makes me say yes is that she retired as the fastest driver, and the seven years she has held the elapsed time record are the longest period in history. It’s easy to dismiss drivers for nepotism and it’s also easy to dismiss modern NHRA Top Fuel drivers ever since the races were reduced from 1/4 mile to 1,000 feet, but I think she probably deserves it.
Drew Fornoro (14)/Nokie Fornoro (14)
Summary: Sons of 1950 American Racing Drivers Club and 1953 NASCAR Midget (did you know NASCAR had a Midget Series? Probably not) champion Nick Fornoro, Drew and Nokie (the latter of whom was actually Nick, Jr.) dominated the regional northeastern midget scene in the ‘80s and ‘90s. They competed in a variety of regional midget cars, but Drew primarily raced in the Northeastern Midget Association, where he won nine titles (1983, 1985-86, 1988, 1992, 1995-96, 1998-99) and Nokie, like his father, primarily raced in the ARDC, where he won six titles (1982-86 and 1995). All of Drew’s titles came in the NEMA, but Nokie also had titles in other divisions (winning the 1981 NEMA title before any of Drew’s as well as the ATQMRA Midget title in 1988).
Case for: Drew’s nine titles and Nokie’s eight are not necessarily easy to dismiss, nor are their win counts, as Nokie has 118 verified wins to Drew’s 103 according to The Third Turn. Now many sprint and midget races count for multiple tours simultaneously and a lot of races counted towards both the NEMA and ARDC championships. However, these counts are based solely on unique wins, so I’m not double-counting anything here.
Case against: In the years immediately following World War II (like the years when Nick was racing in it), the ARDC was a pretty prestigious midget title and had some great drivers in it, but by the time the younger Fornoros came of age, it was definitely second-fiddle to USAC. Nokie is credited with six USAC Midget wins to Drew’s three, but almost all those wins came in double-counted NEMA and/or ARDC races, and they did not exactly compete against the strongest competition in the Midwest very often. Furthermore, as far as dirt grassroots drivers are concerned, I prefer drivers who win in a bunch of different kinds of cars to people who win only in sprints or only in midgets, etc…
Who was better?: My initial gut instinct was Nokie (mainly because he won a bunch of different titles while Drew won the same one repeatedly), and the more research I did, the clearer it became. Although lots of NEMA and ARDC races do not have complete finishing orders available, based on what we have, Nokie beat Drew 60-46 in NEMA and/or ARDC races where they both competed. Furthermore, Nokie seemed to pave the way for Drew’s success: even though Drew was five years younger than Nokie, Nokie actually won first in 1979 and won the family’s first title in NEMA in 1981 before he left the series and mostly switched to ARDC, allowing Drew to dominate. Furthermore, all three of Drew’s USAC wins came in double-counted NEMA and/or ARDC races, while Nokie actually won the 1985 and 1987 “Night Before the 500”, a much more prestigious race, where he did compete against a lot more of the national drivers.
Verdict: Drop both. Even though I think Nokie was the better driver, I just don’t think the northeastern midget competition in that era was strong enough overall to justify listing either of them, as dominant as they were. I might feel differently if either of them showed versatility and won in a bunch of different cars, but in a world where I’m rejecting Dave Blaney, I don’t think I can justify drivers like this (although admittedly, maybe this is making me reconsider drivers like Blaney).