1,000 Greatest Drivers: Pete DePaolo

Belatedly celebrating the 100th anniversary of the first win for the first driver to reach 100 mph at Indy.

Well, I finished the column before midnight, but I didn’t quite finish the intro before midnight. I missed a few of the last days here, including the columns I had intended to write about Jaime Melo, Russell Ingall, and Josh Cook, but I will catch up with those at some point later. DePaolo is a vastly more important racing figure than any of those three and not just because he was the best driver of those. April 30 was the 100 year anniversary of DePaolo’s first win, so I figured he was a good day to cover for the last day of April even though the actual release date bled into the month of May. But obviously that also works, because DePaolo is one of the greatest IndyCar legends of the pre-World War II period since he was both the first driver to average 100 mph in the Indy 500 as well as the second to win two IndyCar titles, not to mention the absurd array of accomplishments he achieved in the ensuing decades. But even though he himself said that his win at Fulford-Miami Speedway in 1926 was better than his Indy 500 win because he was so pissed that his car owners forced him to step out of the car because he had a blistered hand, gotta disagree, man. Winning the Indy 500 with a blistered hand is more impressive than winning a fuel mileage race with an oversized fuel tank that later would’ve been ruled illegal.

I’ve been slow the last week because I’ve been getting a lot of stuff done in real life. I had my first haircut and beard trim in five years (?) since I know I need to make myself presentable if I’m going to look for more work to supplement my income from this and my RotoBaller work now that my mom’s Medicaid for her nursing home stay is going to take almost all her income. I have an interview tomorrow for a job at the Rescue Mission store, which is like a local Syracuse-based version of Goodwill. I also plan on taking some resumes over to various downtown temp agencies after I finish that interview. A couple days ago, my mom was assessed by an intake person to see if she can be accepted into PACE CNY for in-home care. If she is accepted, she might be able to come home by about June 1. It might be a bit difficult to figure out what sort of work will fit with me being able to watch over her on Saturday and Sunday when PACE CNY does not operate at that point, and if I work every day on the weekdays, then I probably won’t be able to visit her in the nursing home at all. This conundrum is why I’ve been reluctant to seek work from outside the home, but at this point, I have no choice. The next mortgage payment is due May 11 and I can’t pay it (unless I receive the money I am expecting from the person who is paying me to create a robot version of me for his typing game by then, or I sell our car by then…) So I’ve had a lot going on obviously, but I have been expanding my release schedule. I had 11 columns in February, 21 columns in March, and 24 in April (counting this for April). Even with all this going on, I’m going to try to have a column every day for the month of May since I have intentionally scheduled almost all the IndyCar legends I have not done yet for the last two weeks of May. If I blow off any of them, it’ll be some of the drivers from other forms of motorsports that I squeezed into the first couple weeks. But tomorrow, it should come as no surprise that I have Ayrton Senna scheduled for that day.