Q: To the RACER Mailbag team: I’m in off-season mode and I started thinking about the legends of racing that I have seen win a race in person. Now, the names that I may have left off this list are arguable, but this is what I’ve come up with based on my own rigorous definition of a legend of motorsport. I was hoping the Mailbag team could offer their same list just for fun… Hope this is fun for the readers.
My list: Bobby Unser, Al Unser, Al Unser Jr., Johnny Rutherford, Michael Schumacher, Emerson Fittipaldi, Rick Mears, Steve Kinser, Bobby Rahal, Helio Castroneves, Jeff Gordon and Dave Darland. (Gotta throw a Kokomo legend in the list). Regrettably, I never saw my IndyCar heroes, AJ, Mario, or Michael win one.
Hope everyone has fun with this.
Andy, Detroit
MP: From your list we share Al Unser Jr., Emerson Fittipaldi, Rick Mears, Bobby Rahal, and Helio Castroneves. I can add Mario Andretti and Michael Andretti, Paul Tracy, Greg Moore, Alex Zanardi, Jimmy Vasser, Gil de Ferran, Jacques Villeneuve, Danny Sullivan, Arie Luyendyk, Tony Stewart, JPM, and a bunch more before 2000.
On the sports car side, Hans Stuck, Hurley Haywood, Allan McNish, Tommy Kendall, Scott Pruett, Tom Kristensen, David Brabham, Geoff Brabham, Davy Jones, Juan Manuel Fangio II, PJ Jones, Al Holbert, Brian Redman, Bob Wollek and tons more as well.
Granted, most of the wins I’ve seen have been a function of my job as a crew member or media member whose livelihood is what takes me to dozens of tracks each year, so it would be weird if I wasn’t there to see a lot of legends reach victory lane since I got my start in 1986.
KELLY CRANDALL: I’ve curated my list by including those I witnessed win a race while attending as a race fan and now as a media member (in no particular order). It is subjective, what one considers a “legend” but I think you consider their body of work or major events and overall impact on the sport. And I’m sure there are folks that I’ve forgotten over the years, unfortunately.
Tony Stewart; Jeff Gordon; Kevin Harvick; Kyle Busch; Jimmie Johnson; Kyle Larson; Kurt Busch; Shane van Gisbergen.
MARK GLENDENNING: Like everyone else, I’m stuck on how you define “legend” and I also have a crap memory. Here’s who comes to mind:
IndyCar: Scott Dixon, Will Power, Dario Franchitti, Helio Castroneves, Sebastien Bourdais, Juan Pablo Montoya. Robin probably would have classified T.K. as a legend so let’s include him, too.
F1: Michael Schumacher, Mika Hakkinen, Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen, Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel, Max Verstappen.
NASCAR: Kevin Harvick.
Sports cars: Tom Kristensen, Allan McNish, Dindo Capello.
Touring cars: Peter Brock, Craig Lowndes, Mark Skaife, Jamie Whincup, Shane van Gisbergen (although I watched him win a NASCAR race), Andy Priaulx, Alain Menu, Yvan Muller, Jason Plato.
CHRIS MEDLAND: Mine’s sadly quite boring on this one — blame periods of dominance in F1 and only a few trips to other races being possible! But I’ve got Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, Max Verstappen, Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen, Helio Castroneves, Scott Dixon… and without knowing your rigorous definition Andy, do we count Kevin Harvick?
Q: With complaints about track limits in F1 in the news again, I feel the need to once again promote the factually best option for dealing with the matter without compromising safety.
All that’s needed is a one-two meter wide strip of grass or dirt, not gravel, on the inside and outside of every corner. It’s enough to unsettle anyone who goes too wide to the point that if they hold it they absolutely deserve to hang on to any advantage gained. But it allows the long tarmac runoffs to be kept for improved safety while also retaining much of the “character” of a circuit that those runoffs can eliminate.
Sure, its one-two meters less of that paved runoff to reduce speed when control is lost, but in concert with proper crash barriers I don’t see that being enough to be a serious issue, especially as it eliminates the need for those [beeeep] sausage curbs that everyone but the FIA seems able to see the dangers of!
FormulaFox
CM: To be fair, the complaint was less about the track limits themselves and more about the policing — or lack of — at certain corners. Drivers learned they could get away with cutting Turn 6 in Austin because there wasn’t a fixed camera on it in the way required.
But in terms of your idea, the problem isn’t F1, it’s motorbikes and track days. Such a solution would likely throw someone off a bike if hit at any angle, or potentially cause a normal driver in their own car to lose control totally rather than just run wide on a normal run-off area. Track days can be very lucrative for circuits, which often also need to host other big events to help sustain the cost of F1.
Personally I think a removable solution needs to be found, so that tracks have the ability to return to boring run-offs quickly and easily after F1 leaves. That would be expensive, I’m sure, but this is meant to be the pinnacle of motorsport and I agree there are occasions when the track limits situation makes a mockery of that claim.
Q: What if track limits were enforced electronically? A car exceeds the set limits, a reduction in power is automatically instigated. Perhaps it would reduce power at the next straight so the power cut would not happen in the middle of a turn.
Bill Branagh
CM: On this idea, Bill, I don’t think it needs the punishment part — three strikes and you’re out as it currently stands would be fine if it was electronically enforced, because drivers would know instantly when they’ve exceeded the limit as they could be informed by a beep or alert on the dash. It would also mean there wouldn’t be any arguments over whether part of the car had stayed in contact with the track if it could be policed in that way.
A power reduction would be dangerous, as if a car was following closely and in the slipstream (and a driver might even be more likely to run wide when under pressure) then the drop in speed could cause a big accident. Just think Mark Webber in Valencia…
Q: I don’t have any skin in the game because the Vegas ticket prices were outside my income bracket, but if I paid for tickets and was told they were going to run the session without fans and we had to leave, I think I might have lost my mind. Montreal is potentially doable for me, but this has me wondering if I want to attempt that? (My son has been asking for a couple years now). First, why did this happen? Second, what is being done to ensure it doesn’t happen again? Third, were spectators who stuck around compensated at all?
Ryan, West Michigan
CM: It was a pretty embarrassing start to the weekend it must be said, given how all the talk from F1 and the LVGP was about how the race was going to set new standards. But it does happen from time to time, as it did in Azerbaijan in 2019 and Monaco a few years before that. It happened because until you run multiple current F1 cars over drain covers you’ll never know if you’ve secured them well enough or not, and the huge amounts of downforce they create acts like a sucker trying to pull them up.
Now don’t forget they can’t be permanently secured because access is needed after the race weekend is over (hopefully never during!), and as car performance increases you have to increase the resistance to stop them being dislodged. In the end I believe the solution was to fill the space below with sand and aggregate, to change the pressure difference either side of the cover, and it worked well as there were no further issues.
Spectators on one-day tickets were compensated, but only in the region of an offer of a $200 voucher to use at the official shop, rather than a direct refund. For some I’m sure that was a deal they were happy with if they had something they really wanted to buy, but for others it won’t have been enough as it’s almost encouraging them to spend more when they deserve their money back.