CART's Greatest Driver?

[Lee Janotta]

Who's CART's greatest driver?

Base it on their whole career, or just their CART career, I dun really care, just trying to break the boredom. But don't give an F1 championship more weight than a CART championship.

I only wish there were more options in the poll! I had to leave out A.J. Foyt, Al Unser Sr, Al Unser Jr, the king of the f***ing traitors who's name I won't mention, Greg Moore, and dozens of others.

[boom boom]

So Many it is hard to choose.... I chose alex on being the best I seen in person..elkhart 97 and 98... not to mention he is a class act as a person

I would like to break it into decades
Choosing Alex in the 90's
and JMP right behind him but I give it to Alex

The 80's.... without a doubt Rick Mears. I grew up in the 80's and he was my favorite open wheel driver.... would have won more Indy 500's(when it ment something) than anyone else if he didn't retire so soon. Was sad when he left but you had to admire him for leaving on his own terms... still good enough to race if he had the desire to do so

[Lee Janotta]

Yeah, I was really tempted to go with Mears. Imagine what he could have accomplished if he hadn't been injuring in the crash at Sanair... He never fully recovered from that, it always caused him pain on the road and street courses.

But I chose Emmo because he just had _such_ incredible talent... I think he'd be regarded as one of the best drivers ever, if he hadn't cut his F1 career so very short (first by joining his brother Wilson's laughably uncompetitive team, then retiring altogether). Winning CART championships in his 40s was just amazing.

[Tailwind]

That is a list of truely great drivers. I have to agree on Rick Mears and Alex. Mario would have to be up there without a doubt. Still, Emmo is my favorite driver of all time.

[Dov]

It was hard to choose, because there was so many good ones, but I chose Mario Andretti. Not only for his success in auto racing, but for his longevity. There's not many drivers out there like Mario, who drove racing cars from different eras, with all the different specs and had the control he had. When I think of auto racing, the first name that's comes to me is Mario Andretti.

[Crash Test]

My favourite is still Greg Moore, probably a bit of a case of what could have been...

[Fish_Flake]

I picked Mario. He was competitive until the end, at age 54, which is something that can't be said about very many others. A.J.'s last few years were a complete joke, so were Al Unser's, Tom Sneva's, Gordon Johncock's, and all the other geezers from the 1970s that were still showing up at Indy until they all followed A.J.'s lead and decided that they were too old for this stuff in 1992. Emmo retired only after breaking his neck in a crash at age 48. Even in NASCAR, where drivers keep racing forever, rarely do they remain winners past their mid-40s. Anybody who watched Richard Petty or Darrell Waltrip past the age of 48 understands what I mean. Harry Gant won when he was 52, but he started at 40. Bobby Allison won the Daytona 500 at 50 and was having a good season in 1988 until he had a terrible accident that nearly killed him. Dale Earnhardt had one, maybe two good seasons left in him when he was killed two months before turning 50, and it's likely better to have seen him die on top rather than watch his talent wither away with age like Dave Marcis or Dick Trickle. (hehe, Dick Trickle)

Anyway, Mario won when he was 53 years old. Save Le Mans, he won everything that would be expected from the best driver there ever was. He's still the answer most Americans above the Mason-Dixon line will give when they are asked to name a famous race car driver. That's why he is the best, not only in CART but in all racing, period.

[macdaddy]

Alessandro Zanardi, as I've never seen anybody throw a car around the way he could.

[mac]

I'll give you three guesses who I voted for.

[f1manoz]

Of the drivers I have seen in action, Zanardi gets my vote.

On sheer reputation, I'd have to agree with names like Mears, Unser and Mario Andretti.

[BSchneiderFan]

I had to go for Mario. A class act for so, so long.

[DNQ]

Can't go past Mario. So good for so long. IMO perhaps the greatest racer ever, in any form of motorsport.

[Grover]

Mario, he could drive any type of car and win. No one did that!!!!!!

[DavidStHubbins]

Super Mario brother...

[Lee Janotta]

Hey Fish, Unser Sr. won his last 500 at 48, that's not too shabby, especially considering he only entered three races that year! (Indy, Michigan, and Pocono)

Yeah, A.J. couldn't win at darts at the end of his career, but a lot of that was from various injuries. The guy _did_ win LeMans, remember.

Mario won his last race at 53, true, but that was at the end of the 5-year drought he'd been suffering since Cleveland '88... He was always strong at Phoenix, it has a lot of similarities to his home track at Nazareth.

I'm enjoying this because there's no wrong answer!

[Snrub]

I don't want to vote for Mario because he was such a success all over the place. Indisputably one of the top 5 all time greats.

Zanardi accomplished a lot very quickly, but I think if he'd stuck around longer that the average would have been lower. He was certainly good, but I don't think he was better than several other drivers who were racing at the same time. In his best year the luck always seemed to go his way. No matter how dumb of a move he'd make, somehow it would out for the best. Often he made passes through being too agressive and forcing the other driver to back off if they wanted to finish the race. He almost killed Andretti through his recklessness. Also, VASSER beat him in his first year. What does that say?

Rahal was more about reliability than outright speed. I can't vote for him.

Mears to be honest I don't hold as much stock in some of those early CART drivers. Part of it is that I wasn't around so I don't want to vote on something I don't know enough about.

JV was very good in CART, but he never raised his profile substantially above those of a few other drivers who were racing at the same time.

I'll give my vote to JPM. I do not believe anyone has more raw talent than he has. He's a freak. Everyone knew he was king of CART despite incredibly poor luck in both years of running. Nothing seem to work out for him, despite being indisputably better than all. CART's field was also at its most competitive in this time period. I'd kind of a wierd vote because he didn't accomplish that much. I'm voting more on what he could/should have accomplished and raw speed.

[Jay]

Mario. In too many ways to name.

[Smally]

Well that's very very difficult,...but i voted for Alex. He was incredible. I never saw a driver getting from behind to the front so quickly. He did some awesome moves I'll never forget. When i saw Laguna Seca in 1996 I really could not believe what was happening...An awesome Pass!
Greg could have been the greatest driver of all times, but you all know how the story ended

[macdaddy]

Even if it were a vote for "Favourite Driver", my answer still would have been Zanardi. My answer would have been Rick Mears for most of my life, up until I met the rookie ZMan in Detroit. He was by far the friendliest and most-outgoing driver I've met.

If I had to compile a list of "favourites" it might read Zanardi, Mears, Mario, UnserJr, Emmo, Tracy, Parker Johnstone and Andre Ribeiro.

Tracy wouldn't have made that list even just last year, but now it's impossible to leave him out!

[ensign14]

Rick Mears, because he was CART for a while and is indelibly linked with the series. Plus rumour has it he was faster than Piquet when testing a Brabham in 1980.

[KC]

I wish we could see a race with Mario, Mears, Rahal, Unser Jr., Rutherford, Emerson Fittipladi and Zanardi. That would be epic.

[evo]

Unless it was on an oval, then Rick would have just taken it. Guess who I voted for.

[racefanatic]

I voted for Zanardi because he was a GREAT driver and would have gotten even better. I miss him! But Emmo was fun to watch, and Rick Mears won my first Indy 500 in '91... so, hard choice! Gil de Ferran was great too. I wish he'd come back to CART and win that 3rd championship.

[Prost!]

Mario - hands down.

[rookie]

Alex because he was one of only three to win four races in a row