Q: To Isaac W. Stephenson in last week’s Mailbag: no, this is fall at Milwaukee so it has to be the Tony Bettenhausen race! Or I suppose we could really follow tradition and call the first one the Rex Mays Classic and the second one the Tony Bettenhausen.
Chris, San Francisco, and well under the age of 50
MP: An idea: What if IndyCar dedicated each season to providing secondary, retro names for its races (which apply) to honor the greats from those events? Long Beach would be the Al “King of the Beach” Unser Jr. GP next year, and so on. Dedicate as many races as possible to legends of the event or past winners as a sub-theme for the sake of nostalgia. For those who are old enough to have seen the Bettenhausens or Unsers or even a Franchitti win at Track X in 19XX, it might be a kick to revel in the reverie.
Q: “…every IndyCar fan under the age of 50 who just read this said, ‘Who’s Rex Mays?'”
I’m 24 and will bite. I googled Rex Mays and he is a GOAT. He was from the Los Angeles area and was friends with the Hollywood stars of the era.
He was the Andretti or Dixon of his day. He was the second-ever back-to-back IndyCar champ. Mays’ luck at Indy was worse than either driver. Sat on the pole four times, and in 12 starts only once was his speed not in the top 10. Held the record of most poles for more than 40 years, and is still third all-time behind Mears and Dixon, who have more attempts. He is number two behind Michael Andretti for number of laps led without winning.
Mays had eight IndyCar wins, but during his era there were fewer races per season. During his time IndyCar drivers also raced sprint cars, and he won dozens of races in this discipline. In 1936 and 1937, IndyCar racing competed on a road course (near New York City) for the first time in 15 years. Many of the top European pre-F1-era drivers competed in these races. Mays, with little road course experience, finished third, and was offered a drive with Maserati. For some reason he didn’t accept.
As a fan, I don’t want IndyCar making a big deal out of things only when they think we already know about it. F1 and NASCAR are busy establishing museums and Halls of Fame for their great drivers, while for IndyCar (or apparently Champ Car if I’m being historic) we get nothing cool. I assume you would tell us if a museum or HoF was being planned.
It’s silly that Penske added a jacket to the laundry list of prizes a driver gets for winning he 500, when I can’t even tell you offhand what a season champion gets. A ring? A mini Astor Cup? Season champions should be the ones getting jackets, not 500 winners. If past GOATs aren’t celebrated, why should we expect future fans to hear about our GOATs of today?
Anyway, to Isaac’s point, the races at Milwaukee are sponsored by Hy-Vee and appear to be named after the Milwaukee Mile for this year. Hopefully something is done by NBC/IndyCar/Milwaukee Mile/Hy-Vee to continue honoring Mays. It wasn’t just that he was a great driver – he became a legend for saving another driver’s life at Milwaukee. One race there was an accident in front of Mays where a driver was thrown from their car onto the track. Mays was leading the race, but instead of going around the driver, Mays stopped his car in a way that protected the other driver from the pack of cars following behind.
Mays didn’t win that race, but he saved a life. For that, Rex Mays should probably always be highly honored during Milwaukee Mile races. Next year can we have Hy-Vee presents the Rex Mays 250 at the Milwaukee Mile?
Michael S., Seattle, WA
MP: That was one of my favorite letters of the year, Michael. Thank you!
Q: What was the most surprising race winner you RACER writers remember?
Kurt Perleberg
MP: It’s gotta be Carlos “Grumpy Cat” Huertas. Fabulous guy. Wickedly dry sense of humor. Completely unheralded. Had done nothing in his open-wheel career to give a one-percent inkling that he could win an IndyCar race. Was driving for Dale Coyne. And with a rare decision by IndyCar at the waterlogged Houston Race 1 in 2014 which saw the contest changed and shortened from a lap-based race to a time-certain event, Coyne pulled off a masterful strategy play that promoted Huertas to the lead. Afterwards, Coyne said he’d called on his experience in time-based races, and Huertas was the beneficiary. A once-in-a-lifetime deal for Huertas, who led an all-Colombian podium with Juan Montoya and Carlos Munoz.
CHRIS MEDLAND: That I remember watching? Olivier Panis in Monaco in 1996. But if I take the view of a race I worked at, it’s got to be Pastor Maldonado for Williams at the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix. Starting on pole position was a shock in itself, but for Maldonado to lose the lead at the start, stay calm, regain it from Fernando Alonso’s Ferrari with strategy and win on raw pace was just remarkable. There were other races where the Williams was at the sharp end in a really competitive year, but at that time it had come completely out of the blue and didn’t require a strange safety car or major incident, it was just pure performance and an excellently-executed weekend.
KELLY CRANDALL: John King came to mind. He won the season-opening Daytona race in 2012 in the Craftsman Truck Series driving for Red Horse Racing (which is now defunct) and no one knew who he was. It was the definition of an upset win. It was only King’s eighth start in the series, and he only made eight more in his career. King ran one race in 2014 and hasn’t been seen or heard from since. Those 16 total races were the only ones he ever ran in any of NASCAR’s top three series.
MARK GLENDENNING: Marshall stole my Huertas answer, so I’ll say Mario Dominguez at Surfers Paradise in 2002 and Alexander Rossi at Indy in 2016 instead. But my biggest “what the heck” moment was not a win, but a test — the first day of the final F1 pre-season test at Barcelona in 2009, when Brawn showed up with one car for Rubens Barrichello and blew everyone into the weeds. (Jenson Button drove it the next day.) Most of the press corps were still wrapping their heads around the double-diffuser concept and quite a lot of people suspected that the team was simply playing tricks to lure some sponsor logos onto what was then a plain white car. I was chatting off the record with a high-profile driver from another team in the paddock that night and asked him if Brawn was the real deal, and he replied, “Oh, the rest of us are f***ed.”