1,000 Greatest Drivers: Max Verstappen

This completes the first eighth of my book.

One of the reasons I just decided to skip the originally scheduled Raffaele Pinto column yesterday and delay my Robert Kubica column one day is that I planned for my Verstappen entry to be my final 1,000 greatest drivers entry of the year so I can spend the remainder of the month working on my annual top 200 list and this is the 125th column I have completed, which means I will be 1/8 finished with the book through this year. I’ve already done a lot of work on the top 200 list.

After finishing the update for my open wheel model yesterday and finishing my F1 statistical table for 2024 today, I have pretty much solidified my seasonal tier ratings for all NASCAR and open wheel drivers this year. There are 65 drivers from F1, NASCAR, IndyCar, Formula E, Super Formula, and Formula 2 who I am pretty certain I am going to include on my list and then a handful of others who are borderline. Most of the other drivers I will include will likely be from rallying, sports cars, and/or touring car series (although a few of the open wheel drivers I included did also have sports car accomplishments this year). I’m not quite as confident where I’m going to place these drivers and I won’t be until I update my touring car model next week after the final touring car series races of the year in Brazil’s Stock Car Pro are complete. Usually, when completing these lists, the thing that makes me perpetually want to pull my hair out is deciding which of 30 sports car drivers who posted similar-caliber seasons to include and which not to include, and I figure sports car drivers will once again be the most difficult to analyze this year so I want to give myself time for it.

For the remainder of this week, I’m going to try to finish my statistical tables for the European Le Mans Series, Supercars, the TCR World Tour, and BTCC so I’m ready to write once I have the touring car model updated again. I also intend to include some drivers from more obscure disciplines like sprint car racing (I am going to be ranking Logan Seavey very, very highly), drag racing, and other series that tend to get less international attention. If you know of any worthy grassroots drivers I might be likely to overlook, please let me know.