1,000 Greatest Drivers: Shane van Gisbergen

Apparently less SaVaGe than some people once thought.

I completed this later than I wanted to because I decided I wanted to finish determining top fives for all the remaining seasons in the 1910s and 1920s that I hadn’t done yet tonight. Now I have completed this and have top fives that I am satisfied with for every year from 1894-2024. Will I still tweak them some more in the future? Probably, but I like what I have right now and now I am prepared to write about any driver who I think had a top five season (SVG included) without having to worry about determining those season grades, although I still need to fill in thousands of E, E-, C+, C, and C- seasons for all the years after 1904 (prior to 1905, there is so little racing out there that I do not rank any drivers outside the top five). This has resulted in some changes to drivers I’ve already covered. First of all, I decided not to award any points for performances in 1917 and 1918. I realize racing in the United States did not shut down those years (even though the Indy 500 did as did all racing in Europe), but I decided it was unfair to award the American drivers points for those seasons when Europe was at war and there wasn’t even an Indy 500. As a result, the rated 1917 and 1918 seasons for Louis Chevrolet, Tommy Milton, and Ralph Mulford have been removed. I realize some drivers had some great accomplishments in those years (including Ralph DePalma, who I haven’t covered yet, earning a career-best eight wins in 1918) but in retrospect it seems unfair to include those seasons to begin with. I don’t think this should affect whether any drivers make the list or not since the drivers who dominated those seasons also dominated other seasons. However, I will consider accomplishments in those seasons when ranking the top 1,000 drivers. I just didn’t want to decide which drivers to select based on those seasons when there was almost no global competition. There is definitely an American bias both before and after the war as well as it took Europe a while to rebuild, which is why you get things like American Indy 500 winner Jimmy Murphy crossing over to win the French Grand Prix. There were a few other more minor changes: I dropped Giuseppe Campari’s 1928 from 5 to E, raised Pete DePaolo’s 1927 from E to 5, raised Emilio Materassi’s 1928 from E- to 5, dropped Milton’s 1924 from 5 to E, dropped Mulford’s 1913 from 5 to E and his 1919 from 3 to E, and dropped Felice Nazzaro’s 1914 from 4 to E.

I found out today that my mom is probably not going to be cleared to leave the nursing home for at least three months because Pace CNY (the in-home care servicer I have been talking to) will not accept her until her Medicaid case is complete, and one of the officials at the nursing home told me that it took at least three months on average for Medicaid cases to be completely filed. Which means instead of her possibly coming home by June as I’d hoped, it now likely won’t be any earlier than September, which means Medicaid will be charging for at least four months of nursing home care, which will probably drain around 1/3 of the equity in her estate. I already have contacted an elder law attorney to see if I might be eligible for the Caregiver Exemption so Medicaid won’t go after the house when she dies and I should probably hear from them next week. However, I’m not freaking out about the possibility of losing the house as much as most people would or I likely should be. I never really much wanted a house to begin with and living in a house was her dream, not mine. I’d be content to live in an apartment for the rest of my life if I got a job to cover it. Yes, we screwed up that we had neither heard of long term care insurance or Medicaid asset recovery in the first place, but I think we’re far from alone since this shit hardly ever makes mainstream news. My bigger concern for the time being is not having the house foreclosed upon because I am unable to make the payments, so I’ve got to start making at least $1,000 more a month in order to do that. I’ve already started talking to local recruiters and I’m gonna call a bunch of them next week. I’ve also asked RotoBaller if they would consider me for internal technical roles beyond just writing. There could be some potential there, but that still seems rather unlikely to me.

As for today’s driver, SVG is still a going concern, although I must admit he has been more disappointing in the Cup Series than even I expected, and my expectations were not high. Obviously, his stock car rating is wildly inaccurate since it only includes races through 2024, and he is likely to continue tanking for a while until he even remotely figures out ovals. I’m starting to think he’s old enough that it will never happen since he’s not that much younger than Brad Keselowski (who is washed up) and Kyle Busch (who is close).