Bubble Drivers: K

Well, that was a crushing blow...

Well, I just had the housing inspection to determine if my mom will be able to come home today. The answer is no for the time being. Even though I significantly cleared paths and removed a large percentage of the clutter she had hoarded, the women from Pace CNY still think it’s a fire hazard even though the Village of North Syracuse code enforcement officer okayed it six months ago, and I have organized a lot of stuff since. Additionally, they think our carpets in the living room and kitchen are unsanitary and they are convinced they probably have bedbugs, even though I’m not convinced. They recommended that the carpets be torn out and probably replaced with a hardwood surface, but I don’t have the money for that. Mom usually entered through the garage, but that required pivoting and turning several times and they don’t think they could arrange a ramp or anything to traverse that way. They told me she could possibly enter through the front door since the front room we hardly use is the neatest in the house, but since the area between our front steps and our driveway is entirely grass, we would either need to have the grass removed and have a portion paved or buy a modular ramp. And right now, the outside screen door has been fused shut and I’ve been unable to open it for a few months. I’d like to get rid of the outside screen door as well as my mom’s car, but I don’t know how to handle any of these things logistically since I don’t drive, although Pace CNY told me I could donate the car and someone might pick it up.

I certainly don’t have the money to do any of these things. Technically, there should still be enough equity in our house to make these improvements and that is how I’d ideally prefer to do it, but it seems like the probability of being able to take out a second home equity loan or line of credit would be essentially zero. After my job transcribing calls for the deaf and hard of hearing in 2022 was automated (just barely two years before I would have qualified for Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which is why I stayed so long/fell into complacency/lost all my “marketable” skills), I was unable to pay several credit cards after my unemployment ran out and I have creditors after me calling me daily. I was still keeping my mom’s credit cards up until May when all but $50 of her Social Security had to be taken by the nursing home. While I haven’t missed a housing payment and now probably won’t since I have somewhat stabler work, I asked her what to do about her credit cards and she told me to stop paying them and my dad told me that independently too. But as a result, I don’t think anyone would loan to either of us to make these repairs, even though there’s definitely enough equity in the house for it. As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m probably going to lose the house regardless since I didn’t know you had to get a Medicaid trust to protect that since nobody told either of us about this and I’m sure all the equity will likely be drained by the time she dies. I don’t care as much as I should since honestly, living in a house was not my dream. It was hers because she didn’t want no man (landlord) telling her what to do. I never really wanted a house and I’ve proven utterly incompetent at maintaining it, so as long as I can raise enough money to rent a much tinier apartment with 80% less stuff after she dies, I guess I’m good, but obviously with my credit in such a garbage situation I am sure nobody would rent to me. But I don’t really think Mom is near death or anything like that, so I still should have some time to rebuild. Since there still should be enough equity in the house to cover this (at least for a few more months until it’s gotten to be like a year and the equity of the house is pretty much drained), I guess I should try and see if I can get this done before the nursing home takes everything. What options might I have to use the equity before the nursing home takes it all?

Even though I know I wasn’t the person hoarding, I still feel like such an utter dipshit that she got forced into a nursing home against her will by adult protective services because I didn’t take the initiative to clean up after her when she told me repeatedly for decades that she’d rather be dead than in a nursing home. I can just feel both all the smug STEMlord techies and the smug tradespeople laughing at me for being so “smart” and highly educated and developing no marketable or life skills at the age of 40. There is nobody people hate more than a failed PMC. I feel like the most /r/aftergifted person who ever lived. But granted, there are lots of people with no skills and I do have some, but the things I am best at are impossible to market or monetize and I was just unable to convince many people to pay me to do anything. Even for all the stuff I did since (writing my typing book, winning all those typing championships, winning a Scrabble tournament, race-database.com, inventing all these auto racing statistical models), these were all anti-social autistic obsessions that didn’t allow me to make the connections I needed to succeed, and I really feel like I peaked in high school (I guess because that was the only time I feel like I ever came close to properly socializing). Okay, I’m starting to bounce back as race-database directly led me to this sports data entry work and if I hadn’t been the world’s fastest typist for a while, the other person who hired me for the quasi-tech job from the typing gamer world wouldn’t have either, but it was too little, too late and I feel like all the skills that really matter (home maintenance, eating property, driving - which is hilarious considering what I’m doing here, socialization, organizing, brownnosing) I was never capable of doing. My dad’s all like, “The only things that matter are staying healthy and making money.” While I definitely don’t agree with that, I probably let myself get too carried away with my unprofitable projets du jour and not enough at proper life balance. Although, granted, a lot of that time in my un(der)employment I was also taking care of Mom even if I was too autistic/dyspraxic/comically inept to do it to the standards of a professional nurse or something, and if I can actually convinced some authority figure that my care kept her out of a nursing home for two years, I can protect the house if I want to, but it feels like there is no way I would be able to convince someone of that.

I really spiraled out of control in a way I wasn’t expecting and even though I achieved some great things, I simply put could not make anyone care about them and I drifted off into my own world more and more withdrawing into borderline NEETdom. Granted, I was a special ed kid, decades before I was officially diagnosed as autistic. I was great in school and managed to erroneously convince some people as well as myself that I was some sort of genius because of my rapid arithmetic and typing ability as if either of those things matter, but grade school skills don’t mean shit in the real world. I must admit I get frustrated and bitter that I can make great albeit completely unmarketable content and not attract much notice or money for it, while someone can get hundreds or thousands of social media likes just for mindlessly saying “rest in piss” to some widely-hated political figure or influencer. (Then I have to remind myself these people probably aren’t making any money doing that either and are just gaining essentially worthless Internet clout from assholes I wouldn’t want anything to do with in the first place.) I guess it was always going to be rough as an undiagnosed autist who doesn’t drive in a dying upstate New York region graduating in 2008, but I’ve just gone from this person who seemed too mature for my age into some manchild. At least I think I’m starting to work myself out of it now.

Anyway, this is probably not what I should be doing, but it is still the only thing I enjoy doing and maybe if I need to raise money for a ramp and/or having my carpet removed, I might turn on charges again in October or something. If I did that, I certainly still wouldn’t post every day because I definitely don’t have enough time for that with all the other things I need to be doing, but I’ve given y’all several free months in a row already.

This is not a particularly strong group of drivers as I think Mark Kinser and Brodie Kostecki are probably the only drivers here you could really argue are capital G Great (although you could make cases for others), so I’m removing a lot of these drivers from my bubble. I still need to cut 55 drivers more from that tier and that’s assuming I don’t take any drivers from lower tiers, but I probably will.

Howard Kaeding

1969: C
1970: C+
1971: C+
1972: C-
1973: C+
1974: C-

Cumulative points: 13

The patriarch of the rich Kaeding racing dynasty, Howard died earlier this year at the age of 92 and I placed him on my bubble list because he had more listed NASCAR Modified wins on The Third Turn (125) than Jerry Cook did (84), but I ultimately decided it would be weird to list him and not list Cook since Cook did win six titles while Kaeding never finished better than 7th in the Modified championship (probably because he didn’t enter nearly as many races). There are so many drivers who won a large number of Modified races in the years before the start of modern Modified Championship in 1985 and they are mostly very obscure. While I wouldn’t say Kaeding is obscure exactly, I’ve decided I need to have a higher standard for which Modified drivers I will list if I’m not going to list Cook, so I am awarding fewer points for each level of Modified wins and I’ve decided not to list Ed Flemke either.

Pierre Kaffer

2002: C
2003: C
2004: C+
2009: C+
2010: C
2014: C-
2015: C-
2019: C

Cumulative points: 16

Kaffer had an eclectic career that included one semi-major league championship in the International GT Open in 2010, an overall 24 Hours of Nürburgring win in 2019, three IMSA overall wins and five class wins (including an overall 12 Hours of Sebring win in 2004 and back-to-back class wins in 2009 and 2010), and five WEC class wins. In 2009, he also won his class at both the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Nürburgring, and he has a solid touring car rating of .082. I guess it’s a yes, but I’m not very enthusiastic about it for some reason.

Harry Kallström

1969: E
1970: C
1976: C-

Cumulative points: 13

Kallström won the European Rally Championship in 1969 when that was the most prestigious rallying series. He also won the Swedish Rally Championship in 1964 but only won one rally that year so I didn’t think it was significant enough to rate. Afterward, he won once in the International Championship for Manufacturers in 1970 (which overtook the ERC as the most prestigious rallying series before the WRC got off the ground), another ERC rally in 1970, and a WRC rally in 1976, but ultimately, I don’t think it’s quite enough. I view him as very good but not great.

Yoshimi Katayama

1979: C-
1982: C-
1984: C-

Cumulative points: 3

On paper, Katayama looks really strong because he has three 24 Hours of Le Mans class wins, two 24 Hours of Daytona class wins, and a touring car rating of .526 (the fourth-highest of all time in my model), but the more I evaluated him, the less impressed I was. My issues with him are that not only did he never finish closer than 17 laps behind in any of his Daytona and Le Mans class wins, but in two of his Le Mans class wins in 1983 and 1990 there were only two and one finishing cars in his class respectively. The two Daytona wins in 1979 and 1982 and the other Le Mans win in 1984 had deeper fields, but they still largely consisted no names and I’d prefer to go for an Amos Johnson who was a full-timer and much more prolific winner yeara after year as opposed to a driver like Katayama who cherry-picked races. Furthermore, Katayama is so high in my model because he swept his teammates 11-0 but all those teammates were also no names and his rating stems entirely from races in 1968-1970, none of which he even won in class. Actually, not merely a no, but a hell no.

Todd Kelly

2001: C-
2002: C
2003: C-
2004: C
2005: E-
2006: C+
2007: C+
2008: C-

Cumulative points: 18

The elder brother of 2006 Supercars champion Rick Kelly, Todd actually has more wins than Rick (19-13) but I think he was significantly worse. Todd accumulated more wins because he spent most of the 2000s driving for the championship-caliber factory Holden team, but his teammates Mark Skaife and Greg Murphy generally outperformed him significantly. Kelly did finally beat Skaife in points in his 5-win 2005, but only beat him by the narrow margin of 1760-1754 points. The next year, Kelly beat Skaife significantly worse in the championship but Skaife actually won more races. If he’d continued at that pace for the rest of his career, he’d still be a lock anyway but in 2009, he joined Rick at Kelly Racing, co-owned by both brothers. Over his last nine seasons from 2009-2017, Todd went winless and was decimated by Rick 163-89. As a result, Rick is substantially higher rated in my model (.162 to Todd’s .047) thereby explaining why I have Rick as a lock and Todd not even though Todd won more races.

Tom Kimber-Smith

2006: C-
2011: C
2012: C
2015: C
2016: C-

Cumulative points: 8

Much like Phil Hanson, this turned out to be a much bigger stretch than I thought it was going to be. I think I originally put him in this tier because he did earn three 24 Hours of Le Mans class wins in 2006, 2011, and 2012, and swept the 24 Hours of Daytona, 12 Hours of Sebring, and Petit Le Mans in the PC class in 2015, but that class was pretty terrible and overall he didn’t have enough wins and was too short-lived given how shallow his classes were consistently.

Mark Kinser

1995: C
1996: E
1997: E-
1998: C+
1999: E-
2000: C+
2001: E-

Cumulative points: 33

Much like Ralf Schumacher, Kinser doesn’t really get his due because his brother Steve became the most successful driver in his discipline in history to that point. However, Mark currently ranks fourth in all-time World of Outlaws wins behind only Steve, Sammy Swindell, and Donny Schatz with 203 and he has a lot more wins than such better-regarded drivers as Doug Wolfgang, Danny Lasoski, Dave Blaney, and Brad Sweet. In fact, Mark’s 35 wins in 1996 are actually the most in a season by any WoO driver other than Steve. While Mark certainly had a lot of winning seasons I didn’t rate since I do still consider WoO to be generally minor league, his significant breakout began in 1995 when he won 18 races. Although I’d normally give that dominant a year a C+, that is slightly tainted for me because both Steve and Sammy were part-time due to their ill-fated NASCAR Cup Series and Craftsman Truck Series deals respectively (this is also why I’m leaning against listing Blaney even though he won that title). However, Steve and Sammy were competing full-time in 1996 so I gave Mark the full E. Obviously, that year would never be duplicated again but he still won 29 races in 1997, 24 in 1999 when he won his second championship, and 14 races or more every year from 1995-2001 before he fell off. A wildly underrated career and this group’s only lock.

Norbert Kiss

2014: C-
2015: C-
2021: C-
2022: C-
2023: C-
2024: C-

Cumulative points: 6

Kiss won six titles in the European Truck Racing Championship and with his eight wins this year, he overtook the other six-time champion Jochen Hahn for all the time win record (he currently has 128). That win number by itself feels hard to dismiss, so it comes down to how seriously I choose to take this series. My answer is not very. This series never seemed to have much talent that did anything in any other series, which leads me to treat it as not connected enough to the general racing landscape for consideration (and I didn’t even have Hahn in this tier). While Kiss has dominated and won enough for me to rate all his title seasons, I think most people would probably consider it to be even less major league than the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and I don’t know whether I’m even going to take any NASCAR truck drivers (besides the ones who succeeded in Cup).

Arno Klasen

2001: C
2002: C
2003: C-
2004: C-
2007: C-
2008: C
2009: C

Cumulative points: 11

As with his VLN teammate Jürgen Alzen, I marked Klasen down despite his 27 VLN wins because exactly like the 29-time winner Alzen, he did basically nothing outside that series. I’m going to say no to Klasen for the same reason I said no to Alzen: the 24 Hours of Nürburgring is more important than all the races on the VLN schedule put together and neither of them won it overall. I did give Klasen one more point than Alzen however because he had three Nürburgring class wins while Alzen only had one, although if you actually look at any of the 24 Hours of Nürburgring results for a given year and see how many classes there are in each race, this is a much less impressive accomplishment than it seems. I may come to a different conclusion for Olaf Manthey, another prolific VLN winner who had at least a few significant wins outside of that.

Günter Klass

1965: C-
1966: C

Cumulative points: 3

Like Kallström, Klass was a European Rally Champion in 1966 but I’m much less impressed by his season since he won only once there and that field was pretty shallow while Kallström won three times. Admittedly unlike Kallström, Klass did have some sports car wins, including class wins at the 24 Hours of Le Mans and a win in the United States Road Racing Championship that year and class wins at Sebring and the Targa Florio the year before, but at Le Mans, he was the only finisher in his class 30 laps behind overall with the far superior teammate Rolf Stommelen. I’m not too impressed.

Takashi Kogure

2002: C-
2004: C-
2006: C
2007: C+
2009: C
2010: E-
2011: C
2012: C-

Cumulative points: 17

In addition to winning two Super GT titles (the more prestigious GT500 title in 2010 and the less prestigious GT300 title last year when I didn’t rate him), 14 Super GT races, and 7 Super Formula races (in the days when that series was called Formula Nippon), Kogure also was the highest-rated Super Formula driver in my model three consecutive years from 2010-2012 and won a dominant Japanese F3 title in 2002, where he won 11 races. I don’t think he’s a lock, but I would rather be on the side of including him than excluding him.

Franz Konrad

1976: C-
1983: C-
1993: C+
1997: C+
1998: C+
2001: C

Cumulative points: 13

I was really on the fence with this one. After nearly two decades of pretty nonstop mediocrity, Konrad emerged as a sports car star in his forties when he won the 1993 24 Hours of Nürburgring for his self-owned team with three really obscure teammates who did next to nothing afterward (except that admittedly Frank Katthöfer successfullly defended his win). Late in his career he earned 13 IMSA class wins from 1997-2002, including back-to-back 12 Hours of Sebring wins in 1997 and 1998 and a 24 Hours of Daytona win the latter year (even though that was the first year of the IMSA split when Sebring and Daytona technically counted toward different series). While I’m impressed he did all that at the end of his career for a self-owned team and his touring car rating of .087 is okay, I think I am more inclined to say no than yes because he had an exceptionally long career but a short period of relevance. (He doesn’t even have any listed wins on the graphical tables on his Wikipedia page.) He was bad many more years than he was good, and I’m not inclined to include many drivers like that (it’s also probably why I’m more likely leaning no on Dave Marcis). But I could change my mind…

Brodie Kostecki

2022: C-
2023: E
2024: C

Cumulative points: 13

I have oft criticized Kostecki over the years and once went on a podcast and called him the most overrated driver in the world. I don’t remember which episode it was. I had a point in there somewhere and I think it was because this was in the wake when Shane van Gisbergen (erroneously) claimed “any of the top ten in Supercars could do what I did” in terms of dominating NASCAR road races, a claim I found dubious at the time. Kostecki, Will Brown, and Cameron Waters’s extrmely mediocre NASCAR runs confirmed my suspicions. SVG is a once-in-a-generation talent and honestly, his last teammate Broc Feeney who is presently dominating the sport is as well. Kostecki and Brown were effectively the Dale Jarrett and Bobby Labonte of that era of Supercars. I’m not going to say they weren’t deserving champions, but they were certainly second-rate compared to the champions who surrounded them (Gordon/Stewart and McLaughlin/SVG/Feeney). Having said that, Kostecki has been skyrocketing in my model and when I last updated my touring car model, he did become above average for the first time. When I looked at his individual seasons, only two of his eight seasons were negative but his 2017 minor league season was estremely negative as was his 2021 when Brown blew him out and he was a rookie. In the years since, he has consistently had positive ratings and I’m willing to admit I was too harsh. He certainly isn’t as overrated as Brown is, considering this year Brown has only won two races to Feeney’s 12 while Kostecki has also won two races and is ranking 6th in points while his 22-win teammate Will Davison is only 17th. This will almost certainly be Kostecki’s best year in my model to date, and that will definitely push him on the right side of the bubble. If I have to choose between Kostecki and Brown for one of my last spots, it’ll definitely be Kostecki. But they’ll both probably make it, even though they’re both overrated and not as good as Feeney or Chaz Mostert.

Peter Kox

1995: C+
1997: C-
1999: C-
2000: C+
2001: C+
2003: C
2005: C-
2009: C-
2010: C-
2013: C-

Cumulative points: 17

Kox had a long, complicated career with some real highlights on and off for nearly two decades, but I don’t think he was ever elite. He broke out in 1995 when he finished second in the Super Tourenwagen Cup, only barely losing the title to his teammate Joachim Winkelhock, but Winkelhock won six times to Kox’s zero. He did score one major win that year when he, Winkelhock, and Steve Soper combined to win the 24 Hours of Spa by 9 laps. After winning once in the British Touring Car Championship in 1999, he switched to the European Super Touring Cup, which eventually after several name changes became the World Touring Car Championship. In 2000, he finished second in ESTC points with a season-high five wins, then he transitioned to a less prestigious ESTC class and won the Super Production title in 2001. He continued to have a variety of sports car wins in the FIA GT, American Le Mans Series, European Le Mans Series, German ADAC GT (where he won the 2010 title), British GT, and Blancpain Endurance/Sprint Series. A lot of these seasons I felt were not dominant enough to rate him, but some of them I did, especially his 2003 when he won class wins at both the 24 Hours of Le Mans and Petit Le Mans. Like Kaffer, I’m not enthusiastic, but I think it’s a yes.

Erwin Kremer

1968: C+
1971: C
1973: C-

Cumulative points: 6

Kremer peaked in 1968 with three wins in the European Touring Car Championship with Helmut Kelleners including an overall win in the 24 Hours of Spa, but I think Kelleners was the better driver so I’m more inclined to give him more credit. Afterward, Kremer won eight World Sportscar Championship class wins including Le Mans class wins in 1970 and 1973, but when I actually looked at each of these wins, he generally finished so many laps behind overall and usually competed in classes that had six or fewer cars. Much like Klass, I didn’t rate his 1970 Le Mans class win because he drove the only car that finished that class. While I’m more inclined to give credit to frequent class winners in recent decades when the minor classes are more codified and have more factory interest, it feels like most of the class winners who didn’t also win much in the way of overall wins somewhere are going to fall short.

Daniil Kvyat

2012: C-
2013: C
2014: C
2015: C+
2019: C-

Cumulative points: 9

Kvyat feels like he weirdly never lived up to his potential. Despite being even with Carlos Sainz, Jr. as a minor leaguer (28-30) and dunking on Esteban Ocon 16-2, his F1 career did not turn out too great. His first two years were fine as he essentially matched future Formula E champion Jean-Éric Vergne and actually beat Daniel Ricciardo in points at Red Bull the year after Ricciardo significantly beat Sebastian Vettel before he did an early-season team swap with Max Verstappen going to Red Bull and Kvyat dropping down to Toro Rosso. That move seemed to ruin Kvyat’s career and he wasn’t particularly fast again. I still think there was talent there, but unless he reemerges as a star in some other discipline (and so far he hasn’t despite his WEC and NASCAR excursions, and it doesn’t look like he’s going to), it’s a no despite the fact he somehow almost made the top 50 on the F1metrics list.

Horst Kwech

1966: C
1967: C
1968: C
1970: C-
1971: C-
1973: C

Cumulative points: 10

Kwech won 7 overall races and 8 more in class in what is considered the golden age of Trans-Am before earning 3 IMSA class wins in 1973. While Trans-Am was admittedly regarded far more highly in this period than any other, that era of the series is inextricably linked with Mark Donohue and when I actually looked to see how Kwech did against the big names, I wasn’t very impressed. In nearly all Kwech’s Trans-Am wins, he typically only beat Donohue in races Donohue failed to finish. Although there were occasionally great drivers entered in his Trans-Am classes who he beat straight up especially when he beat Jacky Ickx and Allan Moffat in a couple races, more often than not, there weren’t really any list-worthy drivers in his class and he only accrued so many wins in my opinion because he pointedly avoided the real talents like Donohue by competing in separate classes. He did win one overall race straight up against the big names in 1968 over runner-up Peter Revson, but Donohue didn’t finish that one. Ultimately, I think he was good but not great.