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Who is the best driver of all time?
Wins alone would point to Petty. He scored his 200th
and final victory on July 4, 1984, at Daytona
International Speedway in front of President Reagan.
Petty has 95 more victories than David Pearson, who
holds down second place on the all-time NASCAR win list.
But Petty started 1,184 races, compared to 574 for the
"Silver Fox." Neither Petty nor Pearson ever started
the Indianapolis 500.
Petty won the Daytona 500 a record seven times and the
championship the same number of times. Earnhardt, who
was fatally injured in a last-lap crash at Daytona
last February, finally won his only Daytona 500 in 1998
but matched Petty's record of seven Winston Cup titles.
Earnhardt's 76 career race victories is sixth
all-time, coming in 676 starts.
Both Foyt and Andretti not only drove in the Daytona
500 but also won it.
Foyt is the all-time Indy car race winner at 67,
including four in the Indianapolis 500. He also started at
Indy 35 consecutive times, an incredible record. And
in 1967, he shared the winning ride with Dan Gurney in
the demanding Le Mans 24 Hours sports-car race.
Andretti is second on the Indy-car victory list with
52. He also is second on the Indianapolis 500 races
started list with 29 and third in laps led, 556, yet he
only won the world's most famous race once, in 1969.
Foyt won the national championship seven times, Mario
four times.
On the plus side for Andretti is that he drove in 128
Formula One races, won 12 and the 1978 World
Championship. He has finished no better than third at Le Mans.
Andretti started a record 407 races in an Indy car,
and, combined with his F1 starts, his start total in the
top two forms of open-wheel racing is a remarkable
535. Foyt started 369 Indy-car races.
Michael Schumacher, who now owns seven World Championships with
two different teams, has strong credentials for
consideration as the greatest driver ever in Formula One. He won consecutive
titles with Benetton in 1994-95 and then five consecutive titles followed with Ferrari from 2000-2004.
As of the end of the 2005 season, Schumacher had won 84
F1 races in the 231
that he competed in over 15
seasons. He has broken about every record that F1 had.
Another popular F1 driver considered great was Alain Prost, who started 199 races between 1980-93 and won championships in 1985, 1986, 1989 and 1993.
Brazilian Ayrton Senna, whose career was cut short --
like Earnhardt's -- by death in a crash, won 41 times
in 161 starts and led 2,986 laps in 86 races. Many consider him the best driver.
One thing Schumacher hasn't done is take a shot at the
Indianapolis 500. Some other F1 stars of the past,
such as Jimmy Clark, Graham Hill, Nigel Mansell, Jackie Stewart and
Emerson Fittipaldi did. Clark, Hill and Emmo won it, and
Stewart had the 1966 race in his crosshairs until an
engine problem took him out with 11 laps to go.
Then we come to Jeff Gordon. He grew up in the shadow of
the Speedway yet hasn't raced there in an open-wheel
car. He chose to go to stock-car racing and has won 57
times in just 283 races. He raced to victory in the
first Brickyard 400 in 1994 and has since won it 4 times. He has won on the big ovals, short tracks and road courses.
Possibly all of these drivers are second to the late
Juan Manuel Fangio. All this Argentine did was start in
the front row in 48 of 51 races, win 24, capture 29
poles and earn a podium finish 35 times. He led 39 races
for 1,348 laps and won championships in 1951, 1954,
1955, 1956 and 1957.
The drawback in selecting him as the greatest is the
strength of competition in the 1950s and the lack a
strong racing season. Still, he won a career-high 47
percent of the races he started, and that says a lot for
his talent. All any driver can do is beat the
competitors who race against him each time.
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