1,000 Greatest Drivers: Felice Nazzaro

♪ Feliz Naz-zaro ♪

I figured I’d make that stupid song pun since it is the right season for it. I’m a day late on this both because I felt this column needed more research to do it justice and also because I decided to finish my DTM statistical table yesterday and today. I didn’t know much Nazzaro except that he is extremely important and I bet many of you haven’t heard of him. However, you can make a case that he is the most influential driver in the history of Italian motorsports considering he earned Fiat’s first win when Enzo Ferrari was a two year old and literally inspired Ferrari to go into racing. A lot of Nazzaro’s legacy is really forgotten because the races he tended to dominate the most (the Targa Florio and Coppa Florio) were among the most important races held in the era in which he raced and definitely Italy’s two biggest races but are now completely forgotten because the Coppa Florio folded after 1981 with the random exception of a one-time revival in 2020. The Targa Florio actually still exists but it stopped being a sports car race after 1977 and has been a regular round of the Italian Rally Championship since then, but the difference between his current fame and his impact on motorsports history may be larger than any other driver.

For the really early years of motorsports prior to 1905 when the first IndyCar season was held, I only rank the top five drivers. I do have my top fives selected for all of these seasons and I actually decided not to rate Nazzaro in the top five for 1900 because I decided other races were more prestigious, but I did do so for several other years. Just for the record since I’m not sure I’ve brought this up here. My system for scoring cumulative points is the following:

1895-1904: 1. 10, 2. 5, 3. 3, 4. 2, 5. 1
1905-1941: 1. 50, 2. 30, 3. 20, 4. 10, 5. 5, E. 3, E-. 2, C+. 1
1946-present: 1. 100, 2. 70, 3. 50, 4. 30, 5. 20, E. 10, E-. 5, C+. 3, C. 2, C-. 1

The 1,000 drivers who score the most cumulative points will advance to the list and then be re-ranked by an entirely different set of criteria. It feels to me like making the list will require somewhere around 15 cumulative points, but I haven’t gone through every driver yet so I’m not quite sure whether the threshold might be slightly higher/lower than that. I made these adjustments by essentially dropping all categories down two levels for the pre-World War II years because there was substantially less racing out there and then I offered substantially fewer points for the first ten years in motorsports history because there was substantially less racing around in those years. World War II is an obvious pivot point in terms of the level of competition and I think 1905 is also since 1904 was the first Vanderbilt Cup (the first major race in the US), 1905 was the year of the first IndyCar season, and 1906 was the first French Grand Prix (the first running of a Grand Prix that still exists). This doesn’t mean that my E, E-, and C+ tiers for the pre-World War II years will necessarily have as many drivers in them as the postwar years because I might not find enough worthy drivers to completely fill those tiers, but I think this is a good rubric for not overlooking the historic all-time greats like Nazzaro while still acknowledging that the pre-World War II competition was substantially worse.