1,000 Greatest Drivers: Mike Hawthorn

Although the Le Mans crash was definitely an accident, he didn't help himself afterward.

I realized after I had already written the Bobby Rahal article that Mike Hawthorn was the driver I originally had scheduled for April 10 because it was his birthday, while I was intending to plug in Rahal for April 11 because I had a blank space there and Rahal was originally scheduled for January 10 (since I’m planning on going through all the drivers I skipped in chronological order on days when I have blanks). However, I’m glad I waited on Hawthorn because it gave me time to determine all my top fives for each year of the ‘50s before I released the Hawthorn and Curtis Turner columns (both of which I plan on finishing today). I figured I would give both of them top five seasons and I did, but I just want to mention right here that having gon ethrough the entire racing landscape in those years, I’ve made some changes. First of all, I decided to rank Stirling Moss over Jack Brabham for #1 of 1959. I haven’t done Moss yet, but I did rank Brabham #1 for that year recently and I’ve changed my mind. I’ve also decided to give four NASCAR drivers who I previously covered one top five season each even though I didn’t think I was going to. I promoted Herb Thomas’s 1953, Buck Baker’s 1957, and Fireball Roberts’s 1958 to #5 and Lee Petty’s 1959 to #4. I decided they should all have one top five season each, but as you see when I cover Curtis Turner, I actually decided to give him two. I also gave one top five season each to Tim Flock, Marshall Teague, and a NASCAR driver who will surprise you, but I haven’t finished any of those columns yet. Finally, I decided to change up Bobby Rahal’s best race from Pocono 1988 to Loudon 1992. I decided it was better for Rahal to win a race-long duel against Michael Andretti in his best season (particularly when Rahal’s owner-driver operation was probably not as good as Newman-Haas) than for Rahal to win a race on attrition with an inferior Judd engine, especially when I realized the amount of points he gained by passing Andretti at Loudon (8) was more than his margin of victory in the championship (4), so I will eventually over the next few days (maybe today) edit all these columns to reflect these changes. It took me a couple days to get it done because with such a sensitive topic, I wanted to be as respectful and accurate as I could, and on this subject, that’s pretty difficult.