I will finally be receiving Mom’s Social Security money on her behalf as her representative payee on November 12. That frustrated me a little because our mortgage payment is due the day before and I was hoping I could pivot to having it automatically deducted from her bank account as it was before so hopefully I can start saving for when I inevitably lose the house to Medicaid after she dies. However, the bank told me that they have a ten-day grace period for the payment, so just this one time, I think I’m going to not pay on time and wait to receive the money. I could pay it now, but then I would have like $60 left in my bank account and I could not afford to buy groceries. I’ve been told that the account must be strictly for her expenses, which is why I would prefer to pay the mortgage using her account and free up money for mine, especially since she has two Social Security payments, coming not one. Since they told me it could be late just this one time with no penalty, I think that’s what I’m gonna do, so I don’t run out of money for food for me. After that, we should be clean sailing as far as that goes.
However, what is significantly concerning me is that Mom keeps saying she isn’t hungry. She’s been getting Meals on Wheels every day and keeps refusing them, and now there are about 20 Meals on Wheels stockpiled in the fridge. I’ve been badgering for her to eat and she keeps saying she isn’t hungry and I know she’s lost about 60 pounds since she went into the nursing home. I wonder if she’s no longer able to feel when she needs to eat, much like how she’s losing the sense of feeling when she has to go to the bathroom (I had to clean her up twice today, but I enjoyed doing it honestly). I managed to get her to eat a little pie an hour ago, but I know she needs more than that, and that’s really freaking me out right now.
Usually, I go off for a few hours by myself once she is getting ready to sleep usually around this time (7 PM), but I stay in the room with her consistently throughout the daytime hours almost every day while simultaneously working on this project and/or my other paid work. I would like more in the way of social connections, but it feels like the Unique Peerspectives men’s group I used to be has been enshittified now that they’re going to add more lectures and less freeform conversation (which is what I wanted), and the trivia that I used to go to at Heritage Hill Bar was just shut down a couple weeks ago, so even if I’d wanted to still go, that is now over. Maybe I’ll want to go back to counseling soon since I have so few other people to talk to, but I also don’t know if I can justify leaving Mom at home that long unless I really need to (typically meaning a medical appointment for myself).
I am planning on starting the fourth and final season of LearnedLeague, which starts next week right after the NASCAR Cup Series and WEC finales, but I think I’m going to quit after that. It wasn’t that much fun and was kind of a waste of time. It was obviously much less social than the bar trivia and if I wanted to be as good as I’d want to be, that would require far more study than I desire to partake in. While I made content out of all my past LearnedLeague matches, I don’t think I’m going to do that this time. I know nobody was interested. I did also finally collect the head-to-head teammate comparisons for all the NASCAR seasons this year, so I’m trying to get myself ready to have my full post-season NASCAR statistical table pretty soon after the season ends.
Fred Frame (19)
Summary: An Indy 500 winner from 1932 during the least competitive era in the history of the sport, I would instantly reject Frame based on his IndyCar career, but what makes his case more complicated is that he also won 30 AAA Eastern Big Car wins (even though only 7 of them counted for points) and a non-points AAA Stock Car race as well.
Case for: Frame’s Indy 500 win from 27th was not his only good run there, as he led three Indy 500s for a total of 106 laps (67th-most all time) and finished second in 1931 when he did not win. Because Indy awarded vastly more points than the other races on the schedule, he was a consistently strong points finisher, finishing 6th, 4th, 2nd, and 2nd in the 1928, 1929, 1931, and 1932 IndyCar championships respectively. But really, it all comes down to how seriously I take his sprint car wins.
Case against: Frame’s Indy 500 win was his only major league win and he kind of backed into it after 1930 winner Billy Arnold and eventual 1932 rookie/champion Bob Carey both crashed while leading. Frame entered many IndyCar races besides Indianapolis but never led any of them. There wasn’t even a points championship when Frame was at his most dominant in sprint cars, so how competitive the AAA Eastern Big Car championship was is an open question when even IndyCar competition was terrible. Three of the five winners in both 1931 and 1932 won races only in those seasons, including both Indy 500 winners. The big question is whether the sprint car competition was good enough to override this. Frame received no votes in a poll of the top 25 greatest sprint car drivers of the 20th century. He did not make my 100 greatest IndyCar drivers list, and there are drivers I included on that who won’t make this one. I typically rate him as one of the ten worst Indy 500 winners and find him kind of analogous to Marcus Ericsson, who I will probably not be listing.
Verdict: Drop. I’m gonna make the call. No, Frame’s sprint car competition was not good enough. There were some great drivers who won AAA Eastern Big Car races in the years when he was at his peak (Bill Cummings, Ralph DePalma, Mauri Rose, Gus Schrader, Wilbur Shaw, Billy Winn) but it seems like most of those guys entered sprint car races only occasionally in that period and peaked in other periods or competed in other regions. For the most part, sprint car racing in the early ‘30s was a bunch of flash-in-the-pan drivers just like IndyCar racing and I think that puts me in the no camp. Winn is an exception as he did win (har) 34 sprint car races from 1931-1934 and 46 overall, but that’s a lot more than Frame won, even though Winn died at age 31, younger than Frame was at the start of his career. There’s some nice versatility here, but I think he falls a little short and since he’s technically in the top 1,000 right now after I made the adjustment to the ‘30s seasons, I’m going to have to downgrade some of his seasons to reflect that. But this is definitely a close miss.
Damion Gardner (17)
Summary: Regional sprint car legend who dominated the California Racing Association, a title that has existed in some form since 1946 (the original California Roadster Association shut down and was replaced by the Sprint Car Racing Association in 1994, then that was replaced by the USAC-sanctioned CRA in 2004). When counting all sanctions of this series, Gardner holds the record with ten titles (2005 and then nine consecutively from 2013-2022; the 2020 season was canceled due to COVID). His 95 wins in the series are probably also a record. He has 126 wins listed on The Third Turn.
Case for: What separates Gardner from a lot of other regional dirt legends like the Fornoro brothers in yesterday’s installment is that he had considerably more success at the national level than they did, as he won 16 USAC Sprint races, proving he could win against national-caliber drivers much more often than them. Furthermore, Gardner showed more versatility as he also won the Chili Bowl in 2008, proving he could also win in midgets, while the Fornoros won only in midgets, and I think that California is typically a stronger region for dirt competition in sprints and midgets than the Northeast as well, where dirt modifieds tend to dominate.
Case against: He spent most of his career competing in a regional minor league and he never won the overall USAC Sprint title.
Verdict: Keep. I find the case for much more compelling as he had enough national wins to prove he was more than just a regional legend and his Chili Bowl win proves he was more than just a sprint car driver as well.
Mario Gayraud (17)
Summary: Short-lived Argentine touring car driver who won the 1984 championship and 14 races in the top-tier TC2000 series and four class wins in the lesser Turismo Nacional series.
Case for: What makes him arguably stronger than some Argentine touring car drivers of this era was that he was highly competitive with that generation’s best touring car driver Juan María Traverso. Since Traverso was competing in TC2000 and not the rival Turismo Carretera series at that time, I tend to rate the TC2000 drivers of the ‘80s higher and the TC drivers lower. Gayraud was the first driver to win a TC2000 championship in a Ford and his 14 wins and one title from 1983-1988 aren’t far behind Traverso’s 18 wins and two titles over that time span. He was actually the highest-finishing Ford Taurus driver in points in both 1983 and 1984, two seasons when Traverso was also driving a Ford Taurus.
Case against: Gayraud had a surprisingly short career as he never won anything of relevance after 1990, even though he was still only in his early thirties at the time. He attempted to transition into Turismo Carretera, making 51 starts without managing even a single podium. I definitely prefer the drivers who competed and won in both series to those who specialize in only one. This is still a very niche scene and sometimes I think I overrate it too much.
Verdict: Drop. I kind of think his failed Turismo Carretera pivot in the ‘90s makes his prime in the ‘80s look worse, since it suggests maybe he just had a dominant car for a little while and then when that faded away, so did he. His four consecutive top two points finishes are nice, but he only won more than one race in a TC2000 season three times from 1984-1986 and I kind of think it’s not enough. The Fords couldn’t have been that terrible since Rubén Daray won the following year’s TC2000 title in a Ford in 1985, but only won four races and I’m not even close to listing him.
Felipe Giaffone (19)
Summary: The Giaffones are a generally unheralded but sneakily very successful Brazilian motorsports dynasty. The brothers Affonso Giaffone, Jr. and Zeca Giaffone both won Stock Car Brasil titles for their family team in 1981 and 1987, respectively. Affonso, Jr.’s son (confusingly named Affonso) and Zeca’s son Felipe had more international ambitions, with Affonso briefly competing as a mid-packer in the IRL in 1997, while Felipe went on to be much more successful, finishing 6th and 4th in the IRL standings in 2001 and 2002 and winning at Kentucky 2002, before an injury in 2003 effectively ended his relevant career. He bounced back in Brazil, where he won a record eight titles in Brazilian truck racing, winning the Formula Truck title in 2007, 2009, 2011, and 2016, and the Copa Truck title in 2017, 2023, 2024, and 2025.
Case for: Giaffone’s IndyCar career is vastly underrated as his open wheel rating of .113 is very solid and he was one of the only drivers to improve in the championship in 2002 as the series got more competitive after Penske defected from CART to the IRL with Hélio Castroneves and Gil de Ferran. He was very strong in the 2002 Indy 500 while driving for Mo Nunn’s IRL operation. Nunn entered his CART driver Tony Kanaan in the race as well and they ran about the same. Giaffone was running second to Castroneves when laps-down Dario Franchitti threw a nasty block on Giaffone to allow Tracy to pass him, which set up the infamous controversial finish. If that hadn’t happened, would Giaffone have been able to pass Castroneves before the race-ending caution came out? It’s worth thinking about. However, his IRL career as strong as it was probably too short for consideration. His truck racing career, where he won 59 races, is clearly his main legacy at this point. I actually decided to include those Brazilian truck racing series in my touring car model. I know most people would argue a truck racing series should not be included in a touring car model, but there was enough crossover between drivers from Stock Car Brasil in that series that I decided to do that. Giaffone’s touring car rating of .265 is outstanding, and the list of drivers who did that well in two different models isn’t that massive.
Case against: Giaffone’s 2003 injury came at the worst possible moment as the established ex-CART drivers and teams were taking over the IRL while a lot of the old-line IRL teams were going out of business now that they were unable to compete with the more well-funded, professional teams. Unlike Sam Hornish, Jr. or Scott Sharp, Giaffone wasn’t quite established enough to survive this transition, and I think a lot of IndyCar fans (erroneously) consider him a bust. After a part-time stint with Dreyer & Reinbold in 2004, he made an improbable comeback with A.J. Foyt in a successful last-minute attempt to bump Arie Luyendyk, Jr. out of the 2005 Indy 500 (continuing the long-standing feud between Foyt and the Luyendyks), which briefly landed him an IRL ride with Foyt in 2006 before he fired him mid-season and he returned to Brazil.
Verdict: Keep. Giaffone never really got his due in the US because he was arguably the last IRL star to emerge before the CART drivers took over the series (it’s between him and Tomas Scheckter, I guess). He probably would’ve had a much longer IndyCar career without the injury or if he’d won the 2002 Indy 500. As Castroneves and Tracy both became insufferably annoying in the latter stages of their careers, a part of me wishes Giaffone had won and kind of thinks he got robbed instead. But washing out of the IRL allowed him to fulfill his true potential back home, so I doubt he regrets it. Even though the most famous part of his career is not his career highlight, he had easily enough longevity, versatility, and good enough ratings in both of my models to make him probably a stronger contender for the list than where I have him here.
Zeca Giaffone (17)
Summary: However, Felipe’s father I’m much less sure about. Zeca did win the 1987 Stock Car Brasil title like I said and 14 races in the series from 1979-1986, but he did not attempt any international crossovers, so I have to judge him by his Brazilian career alone.
Case for: Zeca definitely outlasted his brother Affonso, Jr. in Stock Car Brasil as he won in seven of its first eight seasons from 1979-1986, while Affonso, Jr. only won five races (four in the inaugural 1979 season and one in 1981), which is why I have Zeca on the bubble and Affonso outside of it. He also won the Mil Milhas de Interlagos a record five times.
Case against: On the other hand, Affonso was a lot better than Zeca when they were teammates. Affonso’s touring car rating of .261 is almost on par with his nephew’s .265, while Zeca at .113 is substantially behind both. Affonso beat Zeca 17-8 when they were teammates (9-2 in 1979, 5-1 in 1981, and 3-1 in 1985, although Zeca swept him 4-0 in 1984). This gives Zeca actually a losing record of 19-21 against all his teammates, and none of Zeca’s other teammates won a race or got a top five points finish, so this is definitely worthy of criticism. For all his wins, Zeca’s 1987 championship was actually winless and he never won again after 1986, which makes the title seem pretty hollow.
Verdict: Keep. I think I’m going to reluctantly leave him on for now for the five Mil Milhas wins since that is a prestigious race, but I’ve definitely almost talked myself out of it.