Bubble Drivers: B

Continuing to feel really lonely and continuing to find this book project my only acceptable escape...

I was a little slow on releasing this column because I updated both my stock car and open wheel models a couple days ago. My boss for my tech job made me purchase a subscription to ChatGPT. Although I certainly tend toward tech and AI skepticism these days, as long as I have this, I’m going to make the most of it. A couple weeks ago, I asked it to write me SQL code to help me automate the process of iterating my model 30 times as I traditionally do to complete my model updates. I also decided to download a desktop-based database client because my online client on Fresh Roasted Hosting was running so slowly and I was curious whether my model would update faster on a desktop app. It definitely was. Using HeidiSQL and the ChatGPT code, my stock car model updated in eight minutes and my open wheel model updated in eighteen. It used to take me three hours, so this will save me time and I’ll probably update my models more often. But I have limits: I would definitely never use it to write content for me. (Insert em-dash here.)

I don’t think I’m going to write an entire post yet, and I might wait until the NASCAR regular season ends to write a stock car model update and likewise wait until the IndyCar season ends to write an open wheel model update post, although I might post the updates on social media at some point. I will spoil a few things though. In my open wheel model, Taylor Barnard overtook Max Verstappen for first place among active drivers (fourth overall), although Verstappen is only barely behind Barnard in sixth. Even though Barnard was only a Formula E rookie this year, he does have a significant enough sample size as he has a 3-0 record against Jake Hughes and a 10-2 record against 12-time FE winner Sam Bird (see below), so it actually kind of checks out. Despite Barnard’s shaky minor league record, maybe this shouldn’t come as a big surprise because he was a major karting great. As far as the other newer drivers go, Isack Hadjar debuted at .194, Zane Maloney fell from .240 to .163, Gabriel Bortoleto debuted at .135, Igor Fraga debuted at .039, Zak O’Sullivan debuted at .021, Kimi Antonelli had a record drop from .494 to -.034 because he is being swept by George Russell this year, Oliver Bearman similarly fell from .320 to -.063, Felipe Drugovich debuted at -.130, Oliver Rasmussen debuted at -.271, Jacob Abel debuted at -.309, Rikuto Kobayashi debuted at -.514, and Seita Nonaka debuted at -.545.

With Barnard now having a large enough sample size, he displaces Mitch Evans as the highest-rated Formula E driver in my model, but Evans (who got beaten badly by Nick Cassidy this year) also fell behind Edoardo Mortara. With his dominance this year, Álex Palou overtakes Pato O’Ward as the highest-rated IndyCar driver in my model, but it actually looks like Will Power will beat him in my model this year because of how badly both Scott McLaughlin and Josef Newgarden are underachieving. Sho Tsuboi remains the highest-rated Super Formula driver. A number of drivers who previously had below-average ratings are now above average, usually for the first time. These are Ayumu Iwasa, Iori Kimura, Dan Ticktum, Oscar Piastri, and (surprisingly) Callum Ilott. Charles Leclerc jumped Lewis Hamilton because he’s been dominating him this year. More surprisingly, since he’s not having a great season, Colton Herta actually jumped both Scott Dixon and Josef Newgarden; he certainly is crushing Marcus Ericsson pretty badly, even though Kyle Kirkwood has outperformed him. Kirkwood himself was also one of the biggest gainers, improving from .091 to .141. Perhaps surprisingly, Alex Albon actually jumped Lando Norris, but maybe crushing Carlos Sainz, Jr. is better than being neck-and-neck with Oscar Piastri. I’ll have to think about that. Only one driver besides Antonelli and Bearman dropped from positive to negative (Yuki Tsunoda, which is not really surprising).

The stock car model update is much less interesting. Despite being barely active, Jimmie Johnson remains the highest-rated active driver, but he did fall behind Kevin Harvick, probably because Harvick’s teammates Chase Briscoe and Ryan Preece both improved a lot. Carson Hocevar fell below Martin Truex, Jr., William Byron jumped Christopher Bell, and (surprisingly) Joey Logano fell below Ryan Sieg, but other than that, there were few changes of any significance amongst the above-average drivers. Connor Zilisch debuted at -.010 (still very good for his age and get well soon), and Jesse Love debuted at -.173. Corey Heim skyrocketed from -.080 to -.024, probably because a lot of his other teammates improved in the model (he doesn’t have a regular Craftsman Truck Series teammate eligible for it this year). But generally (because of larger sample sizes), there weren’t as many striking changes here as in the open wheel model, and nobody shifted from below average to above average or vice versa.

No real updates on my mom lately. I’m still waiting to see if the social worker will be willing to hold a meeting with her to discharge her and I still haven’t gotten through yet. Hurry up and wait. I remain consumed by loneliness. I keep deactivating and reactivating both my Bluesky account and the one Twitter account I can log into. I still don’t have access to my racermetrics Twitter account, but I don’t feel like I really belong in either of those places. I’m too socially liberal for “X” and too socially conservative for Bluesky. Which means that I grew up in the ‘90s “zero tolerance for bullying” era and never really shook those values. Internet culture rebelled against those ‘90s normie values and I’ve never been able to handle it. Now apparently, the standard is “it’s okay to bully anyone as long as they are in an opposing political group or even if they’re in a demographic group that is more likely to vote for the party you don’t like”.

After decades of isolation due to my autism and rarely working outside the home, I have lost all my previous social connections, and I’m growing really, really tired of all the liberals who think it’s okay to dunk on and make fun of lonely men. Yes, the idea that the loneliness epidemic is a “male loneliness epidemic” is stupid when what it really is “tech robber barons addicting people of all genders to their platforms, which isolates them from interacting with people in their real lives”. However, it’s equally stupid when a lot of liberals who would condemn bootstraps mentality in the economic realm think it’s okay to do so in the social realm and assume that any man who is complaining about loneliness merely wants to “get laid” rather than wanting anybody locally who cares about them in their life at all. I grew up in an era when it wasn’t okay to bully anyone, and now it feels like nobody believes that anymore because social media rewards people who bully the outgroup. It deeply frustrates me that I think I make better content than most of these people but can never gain traction, while you can get hundreds or thousands of likes dunking on somebody who is suffering if they are in a demographic group that is more likely to vote for Trump (even if they didn’t).

Internet culture really mainstreamed a type of sociopathy that I always despised: laughing at the stupid and feeling schadenfreude for anyone who suffers if they’re in your outgroup. I remember when blue states and red states weren’t even a thing (the states didn’t even have consistent colors until 1996 or something!) and now both liberals and conservatives are celebrating natural disasters if they happen in a state that voted for the other party, even though in every state like almost half the people didn’t vote at all and at least a third of the rest probably voted for the minority party. (And even though it’s not like either the liberals or the conservatives actually want to repair our crumbling infrastructure.) It’s exhausting and frustrating that these people get so much traction and awarded by platforms, while I can’t get anybody to care about my shit at all. Even in racing circles, because most of my millennial peers were repulsed by racing either due to global warming or how racing became associated exclusively with NASCAR in America and how that got associated exclusively with the neocon movement, it feels like I was too young to make connections to all the print media people and too old to make connections to the social media people now that racing social media is finally booming. It feels like even most of these people want little to do with me.

I mean as I’ve said before, the reason I’m pushing so hard to complete this project (although it’ll still probably take me over three years) is because I really want to get offline entirely (I might change my mind). It feels like I’ve alienated all the people I used to talk to online: I’ve fallen out of touch with all the tournament Scrabble people and most of the people I used to talk to on racing forums and my high school classmates. I know I’ve burned so many bridges and I desperately want to reconnect with people in real life, but I’m lost because I don’t even know where my peers even are anymore. All the platforms we used to use (AOL, LiveJournal, MySpace, etc…) are gone, and everybody basically stopped using Facebook at some point and it took me years to notice, so I don’t even know how I could reconnect to people at this point, especially now that everyone increasingly doesn’t want to be contacted. I know I’m repeating all the shit I said several times before (including the post that I deleted) but I find myself being nostalgic for things like phone calls and phone books. People used to talk to each other all the time, and now people treat phone calls like nuisances and people have decided they want security over connection. I didn’t. Once cell phones were never listed in phone books, it became so much harder to contact people you used to know. And then we wonder why we have a loneliness epidemic. And then we think it’s okay as long as the right people are suffering.

I’m getting more and more obsessed with loneliness and social interaction. Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone really lit a fire under me, and I mean the last book I read, Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence, and the current one I’m reading, David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs, both had considerable discussion about how not having social connections makes you physically sicker. Yet we’ve embraced this as a society, deciding that suppressing all risks of short-term harm is more important than social interaction, and then telling anyone in a historically privileged group that it’s their own fault if they complain and assuming anyone complaining is just feeling entitled to sex. I’m always at risk of becoming a reactionary over this, but it’s not like I want what Trump and the MAGA people are selling either. The identitarian liberals just want it to be acceptable to bully historically privileged groups and make all sorts of defenses why that’s acceptable when it’s repulsive, and the identitarian conservatives want it to be acceptable to bully historically underprivileged groups (I acknowledge the latter is worse, but neither is okay). Nobody seems to believe in universalism anymore, and that truly sucks.

So I don’t belong on social media, but I haven’t found what I’m looking for in real life groups either. Similarly to how I’m too socially centrist for social media, I find myself too young and nerdy for traditional real world social groups (like going to church and I tried to make connections there). It seems like most of the people who still socialize outside of church are people who go to various gaming groups, and to be honest, that’s not what I’m looking for either. My problem here is probably that despite being such a nerd, I wasn’t much into “geek culture”. My cultural tastes were always aggressively normie. I grew up on family sitcoms, NASCAR, and classic rock radio, and was never into comic books, anime, cosplay, RPGs, tabletop gaming, or any of those sorts of things as I was much more of an academic nerd than a cultural nerd. Do I just need to fake an interest in Dungeons & Dragons to socialize with anyone in real life? Tournament Scrabble made me miserable and unhappy, and I haven’t enjoyed bar trivia much either, although I did go yesterday and finally had a conversation with one of the other players for the first time. What I want is a real life support group or mutual aid group where people help each other with their real world physical needs. I want something like Alcoholics Anonymous (I might have to start it myself). Unfortunately, I’m not an alcoholic. I joined a short-lived autism group a decade ago in Syracuse before the people there moved away. It was just a play group where people would go and play laser tag or whatever. I have plenty of outlets for play, and right now this book is the one I want. If I’m going out in the real world, I want it to be to help people, not to play games as I’ve largely lost the competitive fire I used to have for anything, but it doesn’t seem like there’s much of an appetite for that anywhere. So I still find myself lost and focusing on this shit, but I digress…

Brady Bacon

2009: C-
2014: C
2015: C+
2016: C
2017: C
2018: C
2019: C+
2020: C
2021: C
2022: C
2023: C+
2024: C

Cumulative points: 26

Since he now ranks second in USAC Sprint Car wins with 61 wins (one shy of all-time win leader Dave Darland), he should be a lock, especially because he’s one of the relatively few (like 10-12 or so) drivers to win in all three USAC divisions and the World of Outlaws. However, I still consider the top three USAC divisions to be minor leagues and he’s nowhere near as dominant as Darland on the Silver Crown and Midget tours, so I think he should be barely a lock.

Craig Baird

1991: C-
1992: C-
1993: C-
1994: C
1995: C
1996: C
1997: C
2000: C-
2006: C+
2007: C
2008: E-
2009: C
2010: C
2011: C+
2012: C+
2013: C+
2014: C-
2016: C
2018: C-

Cumulative points: 39

A relatively obscure New Zealand touring car driver, he won one Supercars race in 2000 but has won numerous titles in minor leagues, including three straight New Zealand Formula Pacific titles from 1991-1993, five New Zealand touring car titles including four in a row from 1994-1997, five titles in Porsche Carrera Cup Australia in 2006, 2008, and 2011-13 (where he is the winningest driver), and five consecutive New Zealand Porsche GT3 championships from 2005-2009.

Claude Ballot-Léna

1969: C
1970: C-
1972: C
1973: C+
1974: C-
1975: C
1976: C-
1977: C-
1980: C
1981: C
1982: C-
1983: C
1986: C-

Cumulative points: 21

Ballot-Léna earned seven Le Mans class wins and was clearly the linchpin of his teams since he only had one repeat co-driver in all those years, but he never won Le Mans overall and I think that’s worth significantly more. He also won a shared European GT title in 1973 with Clemens Schickentanz (the championship had no tiebreaker), a French touring car title in 1975, and an overall 24 Hours of Spa in 1969 and 24 Hours of Daytona in 1983. You could make a case he really should be a lock, but I thought too much of it was in minor leagues or minor classes. He should still make the list.

Alessandro Balzan

2005: C-
2007: C
2009: C-
2010: C-
2011: C
2013: C
2014: C-
2016: C
2017: C-

Cumulative points: 13

With three consecutive Porsche Carrera Cup Italy titles in 2009-2011, three Grand-Am/IMSA titles in 2013, 2016, and 2017, and a Le Mans Cup class title last year, you could argue he should be a lock, but I just don’t think any of those titles were all that prestigious. I think Grand-Am GT and IMSA GTD never had particularly strong driver lineups, but I probably should still leave him on my bubble since I may reconsider him and award him more points if I ever get lap time data for his Grand-Am/IMSA title seasons, which might be difficult to find now.

Edgar Barth

1952: C-
1953: C-
1957: C-
1958: C
1959: C
1960: C
1961: C-
1962: C
1963: C+
1964: C+

Cumulative points: 18

Barth won two East German F2 titles in 1952 and 1953 and seven non-championship races during years when all the F1 races technically counted as F2 races, but the competition there was terrible. He also won three European Hill Climb titles, five overall World Sportscar Championship wins including the Targa Florio and 18 WSC class wins including three at Le Mans.

Marc Basseng

2005: C
2006: C
2007: C+
2008: C-
2011: C+
2012: C+

Cumulative points: 14

Basseng earned overall wins in the 12 Hours of Bathurst and 24 Hours of Nürburgring in 2011 and 2012 respectively and won a major league title in FIA GT, but his two other championships came in either Pro-Am or amateur classes and most of his wins (26) came in the Nürburgring-only VLN sports car series, which I don’t regard that highly. As with Jürgen Alzen, I consider 24h Nürburgring wins more important than all the VLN wins put together, and he didn’t have a lot.

Raymond Beadle

1975: C
1976: C-
1979: C
1980: E-
1981: C
1982: C-
1984: C-

Cumulative points: 14

Probably now best-known as Rusty Wallace’s championship-winning car owner, before that, he also won three consecutive NHRA Funny Car titles from 1979-1981, but he wasn’t that prolific a winner there. His 14 wins may not be enough for serious consideration, even though the schedules in those years were shorter than when John Force was competing.

Norm Beechey

1964: C-
1965: C+
1969: C+
1970: E
1971: C

Cumulative points: 19

Beechey won two Australian Touring Car Championship/proto-Supercar titles in 1965 (when it was a one-race championship) and 1970 (one year after the championship was expanded to multiple races). Naturally, his 1970 title season impresses me more especially because he did it as an owner-driver.

Ernesto Bessone II

1985: C-
1987: C
1988: C+
1991: C+
1992: E-
1993: C+
1994: C+
1995; C
1996: E-
1997: C+
2000: C
2003: E-
2004: C+

Cumulative points: 40

Bessone is one of only five drivers along with Agustín Canapino, Omar Martínez, Matías Rossi, and Juan Maria Traverso to win all three of the major Argentinean touring car championships (Turismo Carretera, TC2000, and Top Race V6); he and Rossi are the only drivers on that list who also won titles in Turismo Nacional, which you could argue is a bigger deal than Top Race.

Jules Bianchi

2009: C+
2011: C-
2012: C
2013: C+
2014: C

Cumulative points: 11

Bianchi was widely viewed as a potential World Championship contender and future Ferrari prospect prior to his tragic death in 2015, and his open wheel rating of .249 backs that up, so here it’s a question of whether I give him a boost for “what could have been” vs. “what was”. I ended up opting for the latter because while in all likelihood, he would have beeen a prolific F1 winner, you can’t necessarily guarantee that because there are other drivers like Tom Blomqvist whose minor league results were vastly superior to their major league results, and I feel I can’t reward his F1 seasons more than this just for beating Max Chilton.

Lucien Bianchi

1957: C-
1961: C-
1962: C
1963: C
1964: C
1965: C
1967: C
1968: C+

Cumulative points: 15

Even though he was not as talented as his grand-nephew Jules (his open wheel rating is only -.035), he is much more decorated with three Belgian Rally titles, five overall WSC wins including the 1968 24 Hours of Le Mans and 1962 12 Hours of Sebring and eight more in class, a European Touring Car win and another (the 1968 24 Hours of Spa) in class in addition to a secodn 24 Hours of Spa class win before it became an ETCC event. I like the crossover between winning in rally cars, sports cars, and touring cars, but it would still feel wrong to list him when Jules was the far superior natural talent.

Tom Bigelow

1968: C-
1972: C+
1973: C
1974: C
1975: C+
1976: C
1977: E-
1978: C+
1979: C
1980: C
1981: C-
1984: C
1986: C-

Cumulative points: 29

Similar to Brady Bacon, Bigelow ranks fourth with 52 USAC Sprint Car wins. Although he has fewer titles than Bacon, I rate him marginally higher because he had a Midget title when Bigelow didn’t, he had a higher peak as his 14 wins in 1977 are tied for the all-time single-season record with Logan Seavey last year, and he also was a decent IndyCar driver with a top ten points finish in 1977 and two top fives in points in 1979 and 1982 (admittedly those were on the USAC side when the elite IndyCar drivers by then were all racing in CART).

Clemente Biondetti

1938: E
1939: E-
1947: E-
1948: E
1949: 5

Cumulative points: 30

Biondetti is the only driver to win the legendary Mille Miglia sports car race four times. He also won the Targa Florio twice and managed to sweep both races in 1948 and 1949 in addition to winning the 1939 Coppa Acerbo.

Prince Bira

1936: E
1937: C+
1938: C+
1946: C
1947: C-
1948: C+
1949: C-
1950: C+
1951: C-
1954: C-
1955: C-

Cumulative points: 18

The Thai prince Birabongse Bhanudej was a top ten points finisher in the first F1 season in 1950. Although he never won a points F1 race, he won ten non-championship events along with the 1949 Swedish Grand Prix and 1955 New Zealand Grand Prix, which did not technically count as non-championship events. Although the level of competition in those races wasn’t great, his teammate rating of .183 is really strong for the length of his career (although my open wheel model only includes post-World War II races) and he did beat a few legends like Stirling Moss, Louis Rosier, and Jack Brabham in his non-championship events, so I would rather list him than not.

Sam Bird

2012: C-
2013: C
2014: C-
2015: E
2016: E-
2017: E-
2018: E-
2019: C+
2021: E-

Cumulative points: 37

Although his Formula E career is deservingly over after he finished 18th in the championship while his rookie teammate Taylor Barnard was 4th, his 12 wins still rank tied for fourth and only two wins behind co-leaders Sébastien Buemi and Mitch Evans, so I don’t know why I was so hesitant to make him a lock, especially sine he also had a WEC title as well even though he never won the Formula E title.

Henry Birkin

1928: E-
1929: E
1930: E-
1931: E

Cumulative points: 10

This one is maybe unfair since he did win the 24 Hours of Le Mans twice, but I just felt he was never a top five driver in a season as I think Woolf Barnato (his 1929 co-winner) was clearly the leader of the Bentley Le Mans dynasty with three wins in three starts. Birkin was certainly close to as good, but the facts that he had such a short career and I awarded fewer points for the pre-World War II seasons mean that he’s probably going to come up short.

Tom Blomqvist

2014: C-
2015: C-
2016: C
2021: C-
2022: E-
2023: C+

Cumulative points: 13

Blomqvist is exceedingly overrated in my open wheel model at .273 because he had a great minor league record (he finished second behind Esteban Ocon and ahead of Max Verstappen in European Formula 3 in 2014) but I don’t take that too seriously because his Formula E and IndyCar careers were terrible. I also find his sports car career overrated a I revealed in some of my past top 200 entries as he really struggled in terms of passing outside of his masterful drives in the 2022-2023 24 Hours of Daytona. However, his career isn’t done, so he should remain on the bubble like Balzan even though he has not yet scored 14 career points.

Eugen Böhringer

1961: C+
1962: E
1963: E-
1964: C

Cumulative points: 20

Böhringer won the European Rally Championship in 1962 when that was the most prestigious rally title and he won six races there from 1961-1963. The following year, he transitioned into touring cars where he won one European Touring Car Championship race along with the Macau Guia Race, which is one of the most historically prestigious touring car events.

André Boillot

1919:: 4
1922: E-
1925: C+
1926: E
1927: C+
1929: C+

Cumulative points: 18

While he was not as good as his brother Georges, he still won four non-championship Grand Prix including a Targa Florio and two Coppa Florio as well as the 1926 24 Hours of Spa.

Mirko Bortolotti

2011: C-
2013: C-
2014: C-
2015: C-
2016: C
2017: E-
2018: C+
2019: C+
2020: C-
2022: C
2023: E-
2024: E

Cumulative points: 36

Probably the most egregious omission from my lock list among this set, his touring car rating of .379 ranks 26th all-time out of 1,626 drivers but I guess I held off until his DTM title last year. He also won the GT Endurance Cup in 2017 and 24 sports car wins either overall or in clss, icluding back-to-back class wins at the 24 Hours of Daytona in 2018 and 2019.

Baconin Borzcchini

1926: C+
1928: C+
1929: E-
1930: E-
1931: E-
1932: 5

Cumulative points: 13

On one of the darkest days in motorsports history, Borzacchini was one of the three drivers including ‘30s great Giuseppe Campari and Stanislaw Czaykowski who died on the same day at the Monza Grand Prix on the Monza oval. Borzacchini strikes me as very good but not great as he did win 3 non-championship Grands Prix, finished second in the 1932 proto-F1 European Championship but did not win a race, and won a Mille Miglia in 1932.

Dmitry Bragin

2015: C
2016: C
2017: C-

Cumulative points: 5

Bragin won a record seven Russian Circuit Racing Series titles and two more in the less prestigious Touring Light class. He wasn’t eligible for my touring car model so evaluating how much this is worth is hard. However, judging by the level of his competition, I don’t think this is worthy of taking that seriously. Aleksey Dudukalo had a title and 23 RCRS wins but only has a rating of -.284 in my model, fellow champion Mikhail Grachev was a ten-time winner in 2014 and only has a rating of -.201, and the best of the drivers who are eligible for my touring ar model (two-time champion Kirill Ladygin) is still only rated -.062. Overall, it seems like the competition was too bad for me to take this too seriously.

Colin Braun

2006: C+
2007: C-
2012: C-
2014: C+
2015: C
2018: E-
2022: C-
2023: C+

Cumulative points: 19

As with Balzan and Blomqvist, I might adjust a lot of these years around if I ever get access to lap time and/or lead change data for these seasons. Although Blomqvist has a stronger reputation than Braun, I think I like Braun better because he has a lot more titles and he had to lift up his awful 50-year-old businessman teammate Jon Bennett for most of his prime years. I’m particularly knocked out by Braun’s 2018 season when he and Bennett only lost the Prototype title by three points. I might upgrade that to E someday.

Jason Bright

1997: C-
1998: C-
1999: C-
2001: C
2002: C+
2003: C+
2004: E-
2005: C+
2006: E-
2007: C
2011: C
2013: C

Cumulative points: 30

Although he was never really a Supercars title contender, Bright lived up to his name for quite a while with 21 Supercars wins including a Sandown 500, the last Bathurst 1000 that didn’t count for ATCC/Supercars credit in 1998, and a win at the 24 Hours of Bathurst in 2003. He also beat a field that included Jason Bargwanna and SCOTT DIXON to win the 1997 Australian Drivers’ Championship (admittedly, he was 24 while Dixon was only 17).

Gastone Brilli-Peri

1923: E-
1925: 3
1926: C+
1928: C+
1929: E

Cumulative points: 27

Brilli-Peri won eight Grands Prix from 1923-1929 including one major win in the 1925 Italian GP which counted towards the World Manufacturers’ Championship for his manufacturer Alfa Romeo even though it didn’t count as any kind of points win for him.

Antonio Brivio

1932: E
1933: E
1934: C+
1935: E
1936: E
1937: C+

Cumulative points: 14

Brivio was one of the dominant drivers of his time with a win in the 24 Hours of Spa in 1932, a Mille Miglia win in 1936, and five non-points Grand Prix wins including two Targa Florios and a Swedish GP. He also finished in the top ten in both the proto-F1 European Championship and IndyCar in 1936 despite not winning a race in either series. Overall, I think he was too dominant and versatile to not put him on the bubble even though I did not give him any top five seasons.

Warwick Brown

1975: C
1976: C-
1977: C
1978: E-

Cumulative points: 10

Brown won a later-era Tasman Series title in 1975 many years after the F1 drivers stopped competing there and then transitioned into the Rothmans International Series (which the Tasman Series turned into), where he won the 1977 and 1978 titles, winning all four races in that series in 1978. He also won a Can-Am race and finished second in points there in 1978, but ultimately despite a strong open wheel rating of .153, I think the competition he faced on average in his wins probably wasn’t good enough.

Will Brown

2019: C-
2020: C-
2021: C+
2023: C+
2024: E-

Cumulative points: 13

It’s funny. I genuinely thought he was an underrated driver when I put him in my top 100 in 2021 when I felt others were overlooking him, but now I think he’s one of the most overrated drivers in the world as he got trounced by Brodie Kostecki in 2023 (who I don’t consider to be an all-time legend or something) and is now being trounced even worse by his 22-year-old teammate Broc Feeney, who has 12 wins to his 2. Still, he’ll probably be good for either a C+ or C this year, he is the only driver to win both the Supercars and TCR Australia titles, and he also added a New Zealand GP win this year. That should be enough to move him to the right side of the bubble regardless.

Ivor Bueb

1955: C+
1956: C
1957: E-
1959: E-

Cumulative points: 15

Bueb won the 24 Hours of Le Mans twice (once as a rookie in 1955 and again in 1957). However, he wasn’t really the team leader on either of those occasions as he was slower than his co-drivers, and his 1955 win is certainly tainted since he was co-driving with Mike Hawthorn, who triggered the Le Mans wreck and then won the race anyway after Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss withdrew while leading out of respect to their teammate Pierre Levegh. I think the reason why I’m more inclined to say yes is because Bueb also swept his three starts in the British Saloon Car Championship (now BTCC) in 1959, where he beat that year’s Le Mans winner Roy Salvadori, who finished second in all three races. I rate Salvadori way higher than a lot of people.

John Buffum

1975: C-
1977: C-
1978: C-
1979: C-
1980: C
1982: C+
1983: C+
1984: C+
1985: C
1986: C+
1987: C+

Cumulative points: 23

The greatest American rally driver of all time. The big question is whether American rally racing means anything. Buffum won the SCCA Pro Rally title 11 of 13 years from 1975-1987. He won 64 SCCA Pro Rally wins and also won 45 Canadian Rally wins. In 1983 and 1984, he also became the only American driver to win rounds of the European Rally Championship, but he never won a WRC event and the WRC was more prestigious than the ERC by then. Still, I think this is probably enough dominance to include him especially because he regularly dominated against the New Zealand brothers Rod and Steve Millen, who went on to interesting things themselves as Rod won a 24 Hours of Daytona class win and five Pikes Peak Hill Climbs while Steve won two IMSA titles and became the first drive ever to win class wins at the 24 Hours of Daytona, 12 Hours of Sebring, and 24 Hours of Le Mans in one season in 1994 (the first two of which were overall). Before his rally career started, Buffum himself also earned a class win at Sebring in 1972. Overall, I think I probably need to include him since the Millens are strongly worthy of consideration themselves.

Steve Butler

1984: C
1986: C
1987: C
1988: C+
1990: C+
1991: C
1992: C

Cumulative points: 16

He did win four USAC Sprint titles and two USAC Silver Crown titles, which is a lot more USAC titles than most people. The problem is that his 28 USAC wins are pretty paltry for series that I do consider to be minor leagues. I think I should probably list him, but unlike drivers like Bacon and Bigelow, I’m not sure his much smaller combined win total is really deserving of lock status.