1,000 Greatest Drivers: Craig Breedlove

In which I explain why I've decided to include world land speed record holders.

I’m going to be a little redundant here and write largely the same material before and after the paywall. It wouldn’t occur to a lot of people to include drivers who set world land speed records on any sort of greatest drivers list because they are one-on-one competitions where drivers do not necessarily compete at the same time and place or at the same venues unlike circuit racing or even rally racing. However, I have decided this scene is an essential part of the overall motorsports landscape for a variety of reasons. Gaston de Chasseloup-Laubat set the first world land speed record at the end of 1898 and he and Camille Jenatzy traded it back and forth three times each for the half year afterward. Both drivers also won proto-Grand Prix races with Jenatzy winning the prestigious Gordon Bennett Cup. Plenty of the other world land speed record holders have won circuit races as well either in Grand Prix events or IndyCar races. These included Henri Fournier, Arthur Duray (who won two Grands Prix 21 years apart and 5 24 Hours of Spa class wins), Pierre de Caters, six-time Grand Prix winner Kenelm Lee Guinness, four-time Grand Prix winner Malcolm Campbell (who set a record nine world land speed records over an 11-year period), Campbell’s rival Henry Segrave (who won eight Grand Prix wins including an early French GP), George Eyston, John Cobb, Indy 500 winners René Thomas and Ray Keech, and most famously Victor Hémery (who won the Vanderbilt Cup, the most prestigious American race before the Indy 500 was established).

In fact most of the world land speed record-holders in the pre-World War II years had either IndyCar or proto-Grand Prix wins somewhere, and several legends including Frank Lockhart and Marshall Teague have died while attempting to make land speed record attempts. I highly doubt I’m going to list all these guys and I’m almost certainly not going to list any of the one-time world record holders who didn’t compete elsewhere, but I think I need to list some of them because the world land speed records were clearly important parts of all these drivers’ legacies and many of them had major league wins elsewhere. That is what convinced me that this is an important part of racing history even if you don’t consider it “racing” and it’s also what convinced me to decide to include drag racers on my list as well even though I suspect most people wouldn’t. I know this discipline diverged significantly from circuit racing after World War II, but it was definitely inextricably linked to circuit racing before the war, so I think for me to not list drivers like Breedlove is historically inaccurate. I also rate drivers who set all time speed records either on closed courses or NHRA events highly, and that will also carry some weight with me in regard to this list. I would far rather list great drivers from this realm than decent but mediocre drivers along the lines of Richie Ginther, Dave Marcis, or Ed Carpenter if given my druthers, but I’m certainly not going to list all the world land speed recordholders (Henry Ford is on that list and he definitely doesn’t deserve it). I just thought I’d justify where I’m coming from with this since I know a lot of people would consider this an “outside the box” selection.