I didn’t realize I failed to follow the instructions when I went to my SIBO test. I was told that you couldn’t have any high-fiber cereals the day before the test because that might lead to an inaccurate reading and I had oatmeal yesterday morning as I did most mornings. However, I looked up what a high-fiber cereal was and it is supposedly a serving with more than 5 grams, while the oatmeal I ate only had 3 grams of fiber, so I thought I was in the clear. But then I also ate sourdough bread as I do normally when you’re apparently only supposed to eat at most white bread the day before, and my meal replacement bottles have fiber too. I didn’t realize that there was a certain amount of fiber you weren’t supposed to exceed and nobody told me that. Now that I have a list of what foods are allowed and what foods are prohibited, I’m not sure I can even do it. Since I have basically an all carbs ‘n’ meal replacements diet and I gag almost all unprocessed food, I don’t know that I can even meet the dietary restrictions to get this test done. So, I just canceled and have not yet rescheduled that appointment yet. The only frustrating things about it were that I took an Uber because I wanted to make sure I got there on time (walked home obviously), and I also had to cancel my mom’s Meal on Wheels today, but she’d been refusing so many of them that there are now like 15 or 20 of them stockpiled in the fridge, so that wasn’t so much of a big deal either.
Pete Hamilton (15)
Summary: Hamilton briefly dominated the superspeedways in the NASCAR Cup Series with the innovative Plymouth SuperBird, winning four races including the 1970 Daytona 500, where he passed three-time and defending champion David Pearson to win. However, like some of his contemporaries such as Tiny Lund and Bob Welborn, his Cup Series results are actually only a small part of his legacy, as he also won the NASCAR Late Model Sportsman (proto-O’Reilly Series) title and at least 26 races there, 12 wins in NASCAR’s short-lived Grand Touring Series, at least 11 Modified wins, and back-to-back titles in the World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing Super Late Model Series after he retired from NASCAR only years after his peak due to the lasting effects from an injury suffered in a Grand Touring race.
Case for: Although NASCAR competition in the early ‘70s was certainly very bad, Hamilton mostly skipped the short track races with smaller fields and typically only entered the superspeedway races in his peak years, so all three of his 1970 wins came against full-size fields (his 1970 Talladega 500 win, where he led 153 of 188 laps even came against a 50-car field), and even though one of his wins came in a 125-mile qualifying race in the last year those counted for Cup Series points, even that field had 33 cars in it, so he definitely faced the strongest competition possible for that admittedly very shallow era. Furthermore, although a lot of people assume he won solely because he had a Petty Enterprises car, he actually beat Richard Petty 6-2 in the races both of them finished in a 1970 season where Petty won a season-high 18 races. But I think the season I find most impressive is his 1969 Grand Touring season. Although he did not win the title since he only started 26 of 35 races, he won a season-high 12, as many races as the three other Cup winners in the field (Lund’s 6, Jim Paschal’s 5, and Buck Baker’s 1) combined. While Baker and Paschal were admittedly past their prime, Lund was at his absolute peak in that era as he won three of the four Grand Touring/American titles from 1968-1971 (all except for that one), won the most races in all three of those seasons, and won 40 races overall in that period, two of which double-counted as Cup wins. If Hamilton won twice as many races as a part-timer than Lund did as a full-timer when Lund was at his actual peak, and I have Lund as a lock, then Hamilton should probably be on the list also.
Case against: It’s really just longevity and bad historical preservation. Hamilton’s NASCAR run was really short, but not as short as people think it was since it is almost impossible to find accurate information about the Late Model Sportsman series these days beyond championship results and the NASCAR media pretends the series history started with the Busch Series in 1982 now. Many of his wins are lost presumably because the local Northern tracks he dominated either went out of business or did not have their race results historically preserved as well as the Southern tracks did. For example, even though Hamilton won the 1967 Sportsman championship, even The Third Turn has no listed wins for him that year. I was curious and figured he had to be a prolific winner based on what he was doing elsewhere, so I looked it up in contemporary newspaper archives and discovered he actually had 17 wins that year. Furthermore, I think a lot of people have forgotten the Grand Touring/Grand American series existed and had some prestige in its heyday (note how Tiny Lund correctly made the 50 Greatest Drivers list but incorrectly has not made the Hall of Fame yet). People stopped caring less and less about these other series that at times had comparable prestige to Cup, and that has caused Hamilton’s legacy to be erased. Finally, I think the fact that in modern times, we’ve had a lot of mediocre Daytona and Talladega multi-time winners (Jimmy Spencer, Michael Waltrip, David Ragan, Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., etc…) that has caused a backlash where people believe that superspeedway racing does not take talent and that has hurt the reputations of drivers like Hamilton who dominated those tracks when those races genuinely mattered more (I would say it also hurt Dale Earnhardt, Jr. and Sterling Marlin’s reputations, but obviously they’re on a higher level.)
Verdict: Keep. A few years ago, on one of my previous Discords, we had a vote of the top 100 NASCAR drivers in history and the similarly-surnamed Bobby Hamilton (who also has four wins) made it and Pete Hamilton didn’t. This was a mistake. I have nostalgia for Bobby, too, as I remember his ‘90s/2000s NASCAR career fondly, but he was by no means one of the best stock car drivers of his era (except at Martinsville; basically, he was an 8th-10th place driver at best in his late ‘90s peak). The more research I do, it looks like Pete was genuinely one of the best stock car drivers of his day and is significantly underrated now due to bad historical preservation, the fact that people now belittle superspeedway racing, and the fact that his career was shortened due to injury. As someone who prefers drivers with high peaks than career compilers with longevity for the most part, I’d much rather advocate for Pete than Dave Marcis or something (he’s coming up).
Joey Hand (14)
Summary: American sports car racer with one major championship in the American Le Mans Series GT class in 2011 with Dirk Müller and 3 overall IMSA wins and 14 class wins including Grand-Am, ALMS, and IMSA sanctioned races. This includes an overall 24 Hours of Daytona win in 2011 in a one-off for Chip Ganassi while mainly focusing on his ALMS BMW Rahal ride, back-to-back Sebring class wins in 2011 and 2012, and a Daytona class win in 2012. He also has a Le Mans class win in 2016 and six more minor wins in the World Challenge and Grand-Am Challenge series.
Case for: He won all the marquee races that an American sports car racer would need to win to have a complete career and he did win a championship against a GT class in 2011 that was a lot deeper than the LMP1 class where Klaus Graf and Lucas Luhr competed. His 2011 was definitely impressive all around as it was difficult to win both at Daytona and Sebring in the same year when Daytona was anchoring the Grand-Am schedule and Sebring was anchoring the ALMS schedule, and at Daytona, his 116 laps led were more than his teammates (Scott Pruett’s 72, Memo Rojas’s 40, and Graham Rahal’s 3) combined.
Case against: Now, Hand is kind of the opposite of Hamilton as he has longevity and a pretty big reputation among sports car aficionados, but I mostly find him an overrated career compiler except for his admittedly great 2011 season. If Alex Gurney was the American Klaus Graf, then Joey Hand is the American Michael Christensen: a career compiler who definitely had a lot of wins, even in marquee races, but somehow never quite felt like one of the best sports car racers in his time and kind of struggled when he wasn’t carried by superior teammates. His three full-time co-drivers in all his ALMS/IMSA years were Bill Auberlen, Dirk Müller, and Scott Pruett. Auberlen is the winningest driver in IMSA history, Pruett is arguably the greatest American sports car driver ever, and Müller probably isn’t in the same league as those two, but he still won 12 races in the European Touring Car Championship/World Touring Car Championship and a Porsche Carrera Cup Germany title by himself and has a positive touring car rating of .026, while Hand’s is a miserable -.192 because he spent three years in DTM and finished 20th, 12th, and 20th in points while his teammates finished 8th, 2nd, and 13th, suggesting Müller was doing much more of the work. Credit to Hand that he did beat Pruett in speed percentile in 2015, but he didn’t beat him by much (71.88 to 65.54) and Pruett was 55 at the time! So, not that much credit. The other two speed percentiles I have for him in post-split IMSA seasons (42.39 in 2016 and 31.45 in 2024) were not good.
Verdict: Keep. You know, yesterday, I was going to make this an instant no because his DTM record was so bad and his sports car teammates were so superior. I’m probably still going to drop him eventually, but I guess as with Michael Christensen I need to check. He had a bunch of wins in 2017-2019 just like Christensen did, so I think I need to look up his speed and passing numbers against not only Müller but also Richard Westbrook and Ryan Briscoe in the other Ganassi Ford. If they pummeled him every year as I expect they did, then I’ll drop him, but he probably had too many wins, too many marquee wins, and too much longevity for immediate dismissal. He definitely is a step down from Christensen though in my view, because at least Christensen had a few major wins by himself and a positive rating in my touring car model; Hand had neither.
Jerry Hansen (16)
Summary: Hansen won a record 27 events at the SCCA Championship Runoffs, winning at least one runoff every year from 1967-1984 except 1970. He also won professionally on occasion, scoring five Trans-Am wins, one win in the SCCA GP Championship (which eventually became the very prestigious Formula 5000 series), and very atypically for a sports car racer, even a USAC Sprint win in 1973.
Case for: Having more runoffs wins than any other driver is an interesting distinction, and there were nine different seasons he won multiple races at the Runoffs, including six in a row from 1971-1976. He was the only driver to win three runoffs in a single season in 1972. While the runoffs, like all SCCA racing, are technically for amateurs, he occasionally proved he could hack it in professional racing as the other wins listed above prove.
Case against: On the other hand, I just don’t think I value the Runoffs much, since they are effectively the American version of karting and he was 31-48 years old in all his Runoff wins, while the truly great drivers who emerge through that ecosystem do not continue in that discipline until graduating into professional racing. While Formula 5000 became a very competitive series in the ‘70s when various F1, IndyCar, and IMSA championship contenders fought for the titles, it wasn’t in 1968 when Hansen won his one race there, as he won against a total field of no-names in a year Lou Sell won the championship (who?). His Trans-Am wins weren’t much better. While there were times it was a major league series, his best season of 1975 when he won twice and finished tied for 3rd in points came when John Greenwood won the title, and I don’t have him on the list. His one win in 1978 came when Greg Pickett (better known as the car owner for the Luhr/Graf dynasty run against no one) won the title, and I don’t have him on the list either. At least Elliott Forbes-Robinson, a great driver, won the Trans-Am title in 1982 when Hansen won his last two races, but the competition still sucked as 57-year-old acting legend Paul Newman also won a race that year and EFR failed to start Hansen’s first win and DNFed in his second. The sprint car win is interesting because we don’t normally see sports car drivers crossing over like that, but it’s not enough to push him over the line.
Verdict: Drop. Ultimately, it comes down to how seriously I take the SCCA National Championship Runoffs, but I see little reason to take them that seriously in an era when IMSA had the top-tier competition. I am probably overrating Hansen even here.
Gene Hartley (16)
Summary: A ‘50s midget legend who won the 1953 AAA Indoor Midget championship and the USAC Midget title in 1959, Hartley won 38 national midget wins from 1953-1961, peaking with 11 wins in his 1959 title season.
Case for: Hartley was the bridge between two separate dynasty runs as he won the sole title in between the hat tricks of Shorty Templeman from 1956-1958 (the first three years after USAC replaced AAA sanctioning) and Jimmy Davies from 1960-1962. He proved to be very competitive with both of them, as in his 11-win title season, Davies and Templeman finished second and third only won twice each, so Hartley legitimately overtook Templeman before Davies overtook him. Hartley’s 38 national midget wins actually exceed Templeman’s 32 although not Davies’s 48, but their similar win totals do suggest that all three should be on the list.
Case against: The main thing Hartley is lacking is IndyCar success in an era when sprint and midget racers were frequently crossing over and winning IndyCar races. Davies was obviously the best of this triumvirate as he also won three IndyCar races and two non-points events in his early twenties before switching fully to midgets, and he was actually the youngest winner in IndyCar history for six decades until Graham Rahal overtook him. Templeman never won an IndyCar race either but he did finish fourth in points once, won three poles and finished second twice despite somehow never leading. Hartley never led in IndyCar either and his points finishes were much worse, but he did finish second once at Langhorne himself also. I have Davies as a lock but the main reason I have Templeman higher currently is because he won five consecutive Washington Midget Racing Association titles before his national career even started, and I suspect he has a lot more wins overall even if Hartley arguably won more nationally.
Verdict: Keep. Yes, Davies and Templeman won three national midget titles to Hartley’s one and I think they have stronger profiles in general, but Hartley was close enough that it would feel weird if I included both of them and left him off.
Eddie Hill (18)
Summary: NHRA Top Fuel driver who had a dominant 1993 title season with 6 wins and won 4 races in 1988 as well, but he only won three races for the rest of his career except for a surprising Fast Masters win in the all-star senior series at the Indianapolis Raceway Park road course.
Case for: The ‘90s are the era that drag racing fans seem to most venerate, and he won his 1993 title at the age of 57! Hill definitely set his share of speed records, too, including three speed records in 1987, three elapsed time records in 1988, and two elapsed time records in 1992. The Fast Masters win is an interesting crossover when considering he and his fellow drag racer Ed McCulloch were the only winners that year with no significant road racing experience. Hill ranked 14th on the NHRA’s 50 Greatest Drivers list.
Case against: 13 career NHRA Top Fuel wins is not necessarily a persuasive case when considering I have 28-time winner Shawn Langdon and 19-time Brittney Force on the bubble, and I don’t even have the other 19-time winner Justin Ashley on the bubble yet. I think the main issue I have is that almost all his wins were concentrated into two seasons, suggesting he was mainly a product of some dominant cars even to a greater extent than most NHRA stars, who win every year. Lots of NHRA drivers win at extremely advanced ages and that’s not particularly unique. And it’s hard for me to take a senior tour for racing seriously when not all drivers age at the same rate. Furthermore, McCulloch actually had more Fast Masters wins (2) and a lot more NHRA professional wins (22) over a longer time period, so if I was going to list one of them, it should be McCulloch.
Verdict: Drop. I know he was highly regarded and set lots of records, but I just don’t think it’s enough wins, or especially winning seasons.