1,000 Greatest Drivers: Ken Miles

The Brit who became a bigger icon in America than in his homeland.

I admit I don’t know as much about this era as I probably should. For a certain generation, the pioneering drivers in American sports car racing were some of the biggest motorsports icons. It’s weird for those of us who grew up knowing Roger Penske only as an owner of businesses, race teams, and racetracks to read about his driving career and realize that he was once taken so seriously as a driver that Sports Illustrated named him “Driver of the Year” once. I didn’t know much about early SCCA racing until the past couple months but I did enter all the drivers who won overall and class races in the SCCA National Championship from 1951-1964 before it was eventually replaced by the United States Road Racing Championship, then by IMSA. While Penske was very successful in the SCCA and he won four consecutive class championships from 1960-1963, it’s hard for me to know how seriously to take that now. Even though the SCCA was ostensibly a tour for amateurs, it’s clear the top drivers in it were pros but it’s weird that it seems like the American sports press hyped early sports car drivers from a supposedly amateur tour more than seemingly any other drivers except Indy 500 stars. So while I’ve entered all the data from this championship, it’s hard for me to tell how to rate those drivers’ seasons because it seems like SCCA drivers (like for example Walt Hansgen) were much bigger racing figures at the time than they are now viewed in retrospect. I still probably need to do a lot more research in this area.

While Miles despite being British did come out of that early American SCCA scene, I know he certainly belongs on this list based on what he did in endurance racing after he went pro. He’s one of the few drivers from this period who remains a motorsports icon to this day, especially after Ford v. Ferrari came out. That movie had no influence on my writing. I haven’t even seen it (or really many feature films at all in the past fifteen years since I graduated from college), which is maybe an oversight but at least I’m not going to be biased based on inaccurate biopic narratives…