I decided to hold off and not post one yesterday because I knew David Gravel was in my next group of five and he was leading the World of Outlaws championship entering yesterday’s finale and I wanted to see whether he secured that or not before I talked to him. I’ll try to complete my NASCAR statistical table this week (for the season that is about to end) and then maybe my WEC statistical table next week (for the season that has already just ended, but obviously it takes a lot more time to calculate and analyze the sports car stuff).
Klaus Graf (14)
Summary: Graf won the 2005 Trans-Am championship and then went on a power run in the final seasons of the American Le Mans Series in the Muscle Milk entry owned by Greg Pickett. He had a couple wins in 2010 (one with his car owner Pickett and one with Romain Dumas) before he hooked up with Lucas Luhr from 2011-2013. The pair won 18 races in those years including the last two overall ALMS titles in 2012 and 2013 before Grand-Am and the ALMS reunited. He has 20 overall wins in the ALMS and two class wins including the 2010 12 Hours of Sebring along with 6 Trans-Am wins and 1 VLN win.
Case for: Graf feels like a driver who should make the list on vibes because he went on a bit of a (rather brief) dynasty run with Luhr and also won a Trans-Am title by himself. Graf had more laps led (944-850), more fastest laps (9-8), and more poles (9-5) than Luhr in the years when they were teammates, but I have no idea who was faster in the races since I don’t have lap times for those seasons.
Case against: ALMS competition was getting really pathetic in its final seasons, as there were only two full-time entries in the P1 class in 2012 (Graf/Luhr and Chris Dyson/Guy Smith) and Luhr and Graf were the only full-timers in 2013, so you could argue they won those titles by default. Graf never won an overall 12 Hours of Sebring, which arguably mattered more than the ALMS titles especially in an era when Sebring had international competition and the rest of the races did not. As a sole driver, Graf went winless in both Porsche Carrera Cup GErmany and Porsche Supercup before immediately going on to win the Trans-Am title, but he only beat one driver fo relevance (Paul Gentilozzi) and I don’t even have him on the list despite being the winningest-ever Trans-Am driver, which is not a good sign. While Luhr is obviously deserving since he had a lot more sports car titles than Graf did (including those against more competitive fields), Graf’s career effectively ended when Grand-Am and ALMS reunited. He was never classified at Le Mans. He DNQed in three of his four NASCAR Cup Series attempts. Graf’s .028 touring car rating is okay, but more in line with a driver who wouldn’t make the list.
Verdict: Drop. Even if Graf may have slightly outperformed Luhr when they were teammates in their dynasty run, I don’t think that’s enough to overlook the fact that he beat almost no one of relevance in any of his championships. Even if you want to argue Graf was better than Luhr when they were teammates, Luhr did a lot without Graf (including winning many championships and marquee races against deeper fields) and Graf really didn’t do much of anything against Luhr. And when they had to compete against the real competition at Sebring (where the international teams entered, even though they skipped most of the regular ALMS races), Luhr and Graf did basically nothing. He seems like a driver who should make the list on paper, but actually, I think it’s a pretty easy rejection.
David Gravel (15)
Summary: Gravel successfully secured his third consecutive World of Outlaws championship last night, making him one of only four drivers to achieve this along with Steve Kinser, Donny Schatz, and Brad Sweet. His 131 wins rank sixth all time, and while he is nowhere near Kinser and Schatz on the all-time win list, he does have more wins than Sweet’s 93, even though Sweet won five consecutive titles from 2019-2023 immediately before Gravel’s run.
Case for: Gravel’s win total and championship count are both hard to dismiss when considering only five drivers have more wins (Steve Kinser, Sammy Swindell, Schatz, Mark Kinser, and Doug Wolfgang) and I have all of them are locks and Gravel is likely to overtake Wolfgang in wins a year or two. He also only trails Steve Kinser, Schatz, and Sweet in titles. He is obviously still very relevant as a three-time defending champion, and since his current point total is only based on seasons through 2025, he will likely be adding either 2 or 3 points to that this year depending on whether I rate him C or C+. He has seven seasons with 10+ wins and his winningest season in 2017 (when he won 18 times) came against stronger competition than he is facing now.
Case against: The major knock against Gravel is that he finished second to Sweet in the championship three years in a row, but never actually won a title until Sweet had defected to the High Limit series that he and Kyle Larson co-founded. It’s really debatable whether WoO or High Limit has the stronger competition now and Larson and Sweet’s endorsement of the other tour means it may be more prestigious now. Gravel’s titles therefore seem hollower than most other WoO titles when winged sprints were not split. However, it’s not like Gravel wasn’t arguably just as good as Sweet when they were racing together, as his 30 wins from 2021-2023 were only barely worse than Sweet’s 32, so it’s also clear Gravel was well overdue for a title by the time he actually won one. I don’t have Sweet as a lock yet, which also makes Gravel more tenuous. Unlike many sprint car drivers, Gravel doesn’t have a lot of wins outside of WoO, with only 148 in total, fewer than Dave Blaney’s 181 and I rejected him previously.
Verdict: Keep. Even if the winged sprint split makes his titles less valuable than most WoO titles in previous eras, he is very much a relevant driver and it doesn’t look like he’s going to stop winning anytime soon. He obviously proved in numerous seasons to be a championship-caliber driver even if he never actually won a title until the fields were shit.
Henri Greder (14)
Summary: One of many ‘60s/’70s drivers who crossed over between rallying, sports cars, and touring cars when the distinctions between those disciplines were more loosely defined, Greder won the French Touring Car Championship Group 1 title in 1974 and 10 races in that series with another in class along with 3 non-points touring car wins in France and 2 non-points touring car wins in Germany, 3 European Rally Championship wins (at a time when that was the most prestigious rallying title), the 1965 Marathon de la Route, four World Sportscar Championship class wins (including two Targa Florios and one Le Mans class win), and one European Touring Car Championship class win.
Case for: His 25 wins might be a lot to dismiss, especially since he did win in several different disciplines over a fairly extended period of time (1963-1975), suggesting he had a lot of relevant seasons. He seemed to be competing in the FTCC as an owner-driver, and he definitely was in his Le Mans class win. He was tied for the most ERC wins in 1963 with two.
Case against: Greder feels like a career compiler rather than anyone who had a really big peak. His big accomplishment is being one of the inaugural FTCC champions, but there were literally no drivers competing in his class who I think are even the slightest contenders to make the list. He never finished better than fifth in any of his WSC class wins, and in the aforementioned Le Mans class win, he was 12th 52 laps down in a class that had only one other competitor. Even though he had a couple top five points finishes in the French Rally Championship, he never won a title there.
Verdict: Drop. There were a lot of European drivers like this who bounved back and forth between rally cars, sports cars, and touring cars and some of the others like Leo Cella I’ve already rejected, even though he actually won an Italian Rally Championship, which might’ve honestly been more prestigious than Greder’s FTCC title. While I think the FTCC is a very undervalued championship as two of its multi-time champions Jean-Pierre Malcher and Dany Snobeck don’t even have English language Wikipedia pages even though they were undeniably great, Greder was competing there before the series had any competition. His ERC results definitely seem like the strongest part of his career, but even there, he didn’t have a particularly strong points finish. This feels like jack of all trades, master of none.
Bob Grossman (16)
Summary: American sports car driver of the ‘50s and ‘60s who won back-to-back SCCA championships in the 1958 G Production and 1959 C Production classes. He won 16 overall SCCA races and 11 more in class. He also won 10 World Sportscar Championship class wins including the 1962 24 Hours of Le Mans, 1966 24 Hours of Daytona, and 1966 and 1969 12 Hours of Sebring.
Case for: While I feel the drivers who won SCCA championships in the National Championship Runoff era to be mostly irrelevant (and I’ll get to that when I address Jerry Hansen), the SCCA championships were the most prestigious titles in the United States when Grossman was competing there before the advent of series like Trans-Am, Can-Am, IMSA, the United States Road Racing Championship, and the USAC Road Racing Championship. Grossman had a lot of overall wins, as I already revealed.
Case against: Most of the individual SCCA classes did not have great competition, mind you, but that honestly applies to most sports car classes throughout history and that isn’t exclusive to this period. With any of the American sports car drivers of this era, I have to look at their results in regional, divisional, and non-championship SCCA races to get a full extent of their legacy, and Grossman’s win totals in those races aren’t amazing: 1 win in ‘58, 1 in ‘59, 2 in ‘60, 1 in ‘61, and 1 in ‘62. It comes off very career-compilery. Even if the SCCA was the most prestigious American sports car series, it was still an amateur league so I have to include drivers from it sparingly, I think. The three times I do have listed championship finishes for him other than his titles came when he finished 3rd in A Production in 1962, 2nd in D Modified in 1963, and 3rd in C Modified in 1964. While he lost the first two to Dick Thompson and Roger Penske (who were two of the all-time SCCA greats), he lost the last one to Ed Lowther who was pretty meh. But I think what ultimately decides it is that I went through all the drivers in Grossman’s classes during his title years and I would say all the G Production drivers in 1958 except Chuck Stoddard were no-names, and all the C Production drivers in 1959 except Dave Causey were. And it’s not like I think either Stoddard or Causey are list-worthy either, they were only barely relevant, and even they only made a couple starts in those years each.
Verdict: Drop. Yeah, even if SCCA was the big kahuna in sports car racing when Grossman was competing there, it was still an amateur league so many of the drivers who won even multiple championships weren’t very good. That doesn’t mean I don’t think the absolute best drivers from this cohort shouldn’t be included (like Thompson, Penske, Walt Hansgen, and obviously the crossover drivers like Phil Hill and Mark Donohue) but I think you probably need more than two titles or a lot more wins than this to be listed. I think Bob Bondurant is a lot more interesting than his fellow Bob as far as the second-tier guys.
Maurício Gugelmin (14)
Summary: Although he has a reputation as a middling open wheel driver in both F1 and CART, there are a lot of interesting things about his career that make me want to take a quick look. He won a bunch of minor league titles climbing the racing ladder (British Formula Ford, European Formula Ford 2000, and British F3). He made F1metrics’ top 100 list in 95th (although I find that dubious). But my decision on him is ultimately going to come down to his CART career.
Case for: As a CART driver, Gugelmin beat his PacWest Racing teammates six years in a row in the championship, dominating past champion and Indy 500 winner Danny Sullivan so hard in 1995 that he led my teammate model. He then beat his fellow F1 expat Mark Blundell in points every year from 1996-2000. He led the most laps in the 1995 Indy 500, and in his peak season of 1997, he won a race at Vancouver, finished fourth in the championship, and set the fastest qualifying speed in history until Gil de Ferran broke that record three years later for a team that was otherwise not very good.
Case against: First off, I think his F1 career was bad. As I already revealed in the Ivan Capelli entry, Capelli pretty much pummeled him in average running position every year and he actually fought for the lead a couple times while Gugelmin didn’t. Gugelmin did outlast Capelli since he was pretty good in CART for a longer period than Capelli was very good in F1, but he never had that high a peak. Gugelmin’s six straight seasons of beating Sullivan and Blundell were bookended by a 1994 season at Ganassi where Michael Andretti obliterated him in his comeback after his failed F1 season and a 2001 season where Scott Dixon destroyed him as a rookie. Obviously, getting beaten by those guys is not necessarily a disqualification, but the margin between them might be. I don’t value 1995 as much as it looks because I think Sullivan was just washed up. I think the reason I’m going to say no though is because you can debate whether Gugelmin or Blundell was actually better. Sure, Gugelmin beat him in points five straight seasons, but Blundell won 3 races to Gugelmin’s 1 in 1997 (the only year they both had competitive equipment), and he actually won the head-to-head 18-16, his lead change record of 4-2 was better than Gugelmin’s 6-10, and he did all this even though Blundell had two seasons where he missed several races due to injuries.
Verdict: Drop. I think this comes down almost entirely to his comparisons with Capelli and Blundell since they were his teammates in most of his major league seasons. Capelli’s rating of .069 is not amazing, but it’s still in line with a lot of other drivers who will make the list. Blundell, meanwhile, is at .014 (just above average), while Gugelmin is at -.021 (just below average). They were both clearly middling drivers but Blundell was ahead in my model and on the good side while Gugelmin was on the bad side, not to mention that Blundell had 3 CART wins to Gugelmin’s 1 and he also won Le Mans, which Gugelmin didn’t. I do think Gugelmin should be rejected, but I still kind of find his CART career legitimately underrated. However, if I was going to reconsider either of them, I think I’d rather reconsider Blundell than Gugelmin.