I previously posted this series (which I finished yesterday) on my Substack blog but I will be making this available to non-subscribers as usual and releasing one group of 50 drivers on the ranking each day from now through January 8. Please bear in mind whenever I write "this year" I am referring to 2024 and "next year" I am referring to 2025 because I did write most of the driver capsules in 2024 even though I didn't post them publicly until 2025.
For each year since 2021, I have conducted a ranking of the top 200 global motorsports drivers across all racing series, starting with my C- tier where I list the 151st-200th best drivers unranked, followed by the C tier (101st-150th), then the top 100 drivers ranked in numeric order, starting with the C+ tier (51st-100th), then the E- (26th-50th) and E tiers (1st-25th). I think it’s too silly to make distinctions for drivers outside the top 100 because the distinctions are certainly far too narrow at that level. I will be releasing this year’s series in four columns of 50 initially on my Substack before eventually releasing them all on Racermetrics at some point when I am done. As with all of my post-World War II rankings, I award 100 cumulative career points to the driver I have ranked at #1, 70 to the #2 driver, 50 for #3, 30 for #4, 20 for #5, 10 for all remaining E drivers (6th-25th), 5 for E- drivers, 3 for C+ drivers, 2 for C drivers, and 1 for C- drivers. The 1,000 drivers who score the most cumulative points will be selected for my list, although as I mentioned, I will be making adjustments for the pre-war years when there was a lot less racing out there.
I rank based on impact and I would always prefer to pick a driver who overachieved in a slow car to a driver who underachieved in a fast car if they were otherwise equivalent or even if the driver in a slightly faster car posted slightly better stats. My rankings are based on some combination of dominance, consistency, impact on teams (as measured by my teammate models), level of competition, speed, passing, and versatility (I particularly like when drivers win in multiple different disciplines and/or series in the same season). Obviously I ultimately have to go with my gut a lot, particularly when it comes to drivers who are just breaking out (Formula 2 this year was a mess), although it does seem like I guess correctly on a lot of them although I definitely missed on one of this year’s big ones.
I will list who my final 27 cuts were in this paragraph. It was going to be 25, but I ultimately decided at the last minute to cut Augusto Farfus for a sports car driver who was similar but had in my opinion a stronger profile, and I was going to list Thiago Vivacqua, who led my touring car model overall, but that felt too contrarian even for me for a guy who finished 12th in TCR South America. Besides Farfus, these were: Greg Anderson, Brady Bacon, Alessandro Balzan, Alex Bowman, Franco Colapinto, Mike Conway, Antonio García, Felipe Giaffone, Maximilian Götz, Jules Gounon, Ayhancan Güven, Buddy Kofoid, Takashi Kogure, Esapekka Lappi, Hunter McElrea, Luke McMillin, Christopher Mies, Theo Oeverhaus, Hayden Paddon, Franck Perera, Alex Riberas, Mick Schumacher, Aaron Stanfield, Rinus VeeKay, and Bubba Wallace. At this level it gets kind of arbitrary, and you could just as easily make cases for any of these as the drivers I actually listed, but you have to draw the line somewhere.
I am pretty consistent from year-to-year about how many drivers appear on my lists in consecutive years. It’s usually right around 125. This year it was 126, so there were 74 drivers who made my list this year who did not make my list last year, although some of them did make my lists in previous years. For drivers who did make my list last year, I placed either their tier group for the past C/C- drivers or their top 100 rank if I had them in my top 100 last year. There were 13 drivers who made my top 100 last year who I cut this year. These were: Ritomo Miyata (#3), Ricardo Feller (#14), Shane van Gisbergen (#16), Raffaele Marciello (#25), Nicky Catsburg (#26), Colin Braun (#62), Bastian Buus (#63), Mattias Ekström (#65), Matt Hagan (#76), Tom Blomqvist (#81), Liam Lawson (#85), Antonio Giovinazzi (#86), and Mike Conway (#98). You could certainly make cases for a few of those, particularly SVG, Catsburg, Lawson, Giovinazzi, and Conway, but I elected not to. Deciding which of 40-50 similarly-placed sports car drivers to list is usually a serious pain in the ass.
The rally-raid star and Saudi business magnate finished second to Nasser Al-Attiyah in the World Rally-Raid Championship for the second straight year, but I dropped him from the C tier to the C- tier for four main reasons. First, he only won one event in that series this year after winning two the year before. Second, he retired from the Pseudo-Dakar Rally for the first time since 2018. Third, he finished second in both the World Rally-Raid Championship and the World Cup for Cross-Country Bajas but he didn't do that this year. Finally, the fact that Original Recipe Carlos Sainz won "Dakar" this year instead of Al-Attiyah means that I will be listing three drivers from this discipline of motorsports this year, which makes Al-Rajhi stand out less, especially since Sainz is now 62 years old. Nonetheless, I do think Al-Rajhi's season is still (barely) worthy.
After so many near misses, it looked like Allgaier would never win a NASCAR Xfinity Series title. He had been remarkably consistent in the series for years, finishing between 2nd to 7th in the championship every year dating back to 2009 except for his two full-time Cup seasons, but by this point he was starting to look like nothing more than the millennial Elliott Sadler. Admittedly, he has had a lot more longevity in his success than Sadler did. Nonetheless, he got it done and it was richly deserved as he was clearly the best Xfinity driver this year. He led all drivers with 18 natural races led and an impressive 24-12 lead change record while his JR Motorsports teammates Sam Mayer, Sammy Smith, and Brandon Jones combined for 19 natural races led and a 33-31 record. Although defending champion Cole Custer narrowly edged out Allgaier in lead shares this year, I think he had faster cars as Custer's teammate Riley Herbst vastly outperformed Sammy Smith and Brandon Jones even though Herbst is probably comparable to Smith at best and barely better than Jones, thereby implying Allgaier was a stronger performer. Allgaier's championship came down to a bravura performance in the championship race at Phoenix when he improbably came back from a crash in practice and two penalties for a restart violation and speeding before driving back to second and passing Custer and Austin Hill to win the title. He also got one of the biggest Cup Series chances in his career when he filled in for Kyle Larson when he couldn't make the start of the Coca-Cola 600, driving from the back to finish 13th when the race was stopped just after the halfway point due to rain, although there he finished behind all three of his teammates. Allgaier probably doesn't deserve another shot in the Cup Series at his age, but he's still better than several of the Cup full-timers.
The most-hyped open wheel prospect of the 2020s has taken a lot of criticism from some corners for being announced as Lewis Hamilton's replacement at Mercedes despite only finishing 6th in the Formula 2 Championship despite driving for Prema Racing, the team which previously won three Formula 2 championships with Charles Leclerc, Mick Schumacher, and Oscar Piastri. Antonelli has another contingent of fervent stans who act like who anyone who denies his talent doesn't "know wheel", to quote one of the more obnoxious phrases to catch traction over antisocial media this year. I'm closer to the latter camp as my faith in his talent has not yet been shaken even though he won two minor league championships in both 2022 and 2023 and none this year. Despite only finishing 6th in points, I do think Antonelli's F2 season was quite impressive regardless. He significantly beat his teammate Oliver Man vs. Bear who only finished 12th in points. Although Bearman won three races to Antonelli's two, Antonelli was a lot more impressive as he beat him 10-5 in shared finishes even though he was an F2 rookie while Bearman was in his second year. And I do think both of them getting F1 rides this year is deserved. In Bearman's two F1 races, he lost to Charles Leclerc and beat Nico Hülkenberg, giving him a stellar debut rating of .320 in my model, which already tentatively places him ahead of Leclerc. Since neither Antonelli nor Bearman have any other teammate comparisons except against each other, this means Antonelli's debut rating of .494 is even higher, and he actually enters my model as the highest-rated F1 driver, even higher than Max Verstappen! Do I think either Antonelli or Bearman will sustain that? No, of course they'll both tank. But I think their performance in my model is definitely sufficient to justify both of them getting F1 rides next year, and Antonelli's performance is definitely sufficient for this list. Honestly, I wonder whether I underrated him.
Although Barnard finished substantially worse in the Formula 2 points than Antonelli (ranking 21st after quitting the season early to prepare for a full-time switch to Formula E and lost the head-to-head to his fellow rookie F2 teammate Joshua Dürksen 10-8, Barnard was immediately impressive in the big leagues when he was tapped to substitute for Sam Bird at McLaren's FE team for three races after Bird injured his hand in a crash at Monaco. Despite no experience in the series, he finished ahead of his established teammate Jake Hughes in all three races and McLaren hired Barnard to replace Hughes for the 2024-25 season when Hughes switched to Maserati. On his debut as a full-time driver in this month's São Paulo ePrix, Barnard finished third despite starting 17th, finishing just ahead of Bird. This gave him a 4-0 sweep against both of his McLaren teammates who are both rated as above-average drivers in my open wheel model. As a result, Barnard has an electrifying debut rating of .558 in my teammate model and if he beats Bird in the next race at Mexico City on January 11, he will enter my model as the highest-rated driver in history. Obviously he isn't the greatest open-wheel driver in history yet, but his FE performances were electrifying regardless in spite of his occasionally mediocre junior record, making him the fastest self-starter in the series since Jake Dennis, but I suspect he's going to go on to be better than Dennis. Barnard set numerous records this year, becoming the youngest starter, youngest points scorer, and youngest podium finisher in FE history and it wouldn't be surprising to see him win very soon. Although Barnard hasn't won yet, he already has a fastest race as he had the highest-average speed in the second Berlin race, where he finished eighth. That gave him a speed percentile of 69.98, higher than every full-timer in the series except for Oliver Rowland. Something tells me that if I keep doing these lists, Barnard will keep making them again and again and again.
It was tough for me to decide which of the borderline NASCAR Cup Series drivers belonged on the list and which didn't as I think Alex Bowman, Chase Briscoe, Ty Gibbs, and Bubba Wallace all had quite similar seasons. I didn't think I could really justify listing all of them, but I did want to list some of them. Ultimately, I decided to cut Bowman and Wallace because Bowman hardly led at all in a year when Kyle Larson dominated the season and Wallace failed to make the playoffs in a year Tyler Reddick made the final four and won the regular season title, but they all ran similarly so you can make cases that these drivers could be ranked in just about any order. Briscoe and Gibbs also both had more lead shares than the other two. Maybe ranking three minor-league drivers over Bowman and Wallace is wrong, but I do feel that Justin Allgaier, Christian Eckes, and Corey Heim all had spectacular minor-league seasons while Bowman and Wallace had mediocre Cup seasons (I realize Wallace was closer to Reddick than this implies and he was genuinely better on the short tracks). But I did feel Briscoe deserved it. Entering this year, I felt Stewart-Haas Racing's final driver lineup was pretty atrocious considering their legendary record of success and I would have absolutely bet on the team going winless (at least I didn't actually bet on it) but Briscoe proved me wrong. I've never really understood him and he reminds me a lot of Jeremy Mayfield in that he definitely has blinding speed in his best races but he also does a ton of stupid things and also has numerous races where he's just plain slow and completely uncompetitive. (Let's hope these are the only things he has in common with Mayfield.) Although his season essentially came down to one race, O what a race it was as he made a 3-wide pass on Larson and Gibbs for 2nd then passed leader Ross Chastain in the same corner to win the Southern 500 and improbably lock himself into the playoffs. He didn't really luck into the race either as although Larson outran him, Briscoe was 2nd for the majority of the race before passing Larson. This is a performance worthy of recognition even if the season itself might not be, as he was only barely faster than his rookie teammate Josh Berry and actually lost his teammate head-to-head to Noah Gragson. In general, I prefer to rate drivers on their best performances more than their worst, which is why I chose Briscoe over Bowman and Wallace even though they were more consistent, but I still find Briscoe to be an uninspiring hire for Joe Gibbs Racing. We've already seen what Briscoe can do and he does admittedly run mediocrely most of the time, while I think potentially either Heim or Chandler Smith in the Toyota pipeline may have higher ceilings. I expect Briscoe to be the weakest JGR driver over the next few years, but he is capable of maximizing his equipment better than some other drivers in his best races even if he has a lot of bad ones. Briscoe at JGR will be interesting, but I think he'll underachieve.
Calado's performances in the World Endurance Championship were admittedly not very impressive. He was the third-slowest Ferrari driver and he was significantly slower than his two other co-drivers Alessandro Pier Guidi and Antonio Giovinazzi for a team that went winless and the Pier Guidi/Giovinazzi/Calado team only scored 59 points while the Antonio Fuoco/Miguel Molina/Nicklas Nielsen team doubled them with nearly 115 points. Furthermore, Calado was one of only three Ferrari drivers to make no passes for the lead and the other two (Robert Shwartzman and Yifei Ye) were both faster than him. So why did I list Calado and not list Giovinazzi, Shwartzman, or Ye? Because like Chase Briscoe, he had one epic drive that drastically overshadowed the rest of his season. At the 24 Hours of Daytona, Calado had a 3-0 lead change record in the GTD Pro class. His passes of Alexander Sims, Laurin Heinrich, and Neil Verhagen were three of the last four in the class. This gave him a very strong natural win at the Rolex along with Pier Guidi and Brazilian stock car star Daniel Serra. Even though Calado only led 45 laps while Pier Guidi and Serra led more, Calado was clearly the linchpin of the team as his 3-0 record outperformed the 2-1 earned by his other three teammates combined, and a race like that covers up a lot of flaws elsewhere.
Cao marks my first selection from the world of Chinese touring car racing and he is possibly the most obscure driver on this entire list. Nonetheless, when I finished calculating my touring car model, one of the things I noticed was that the drivers in the TCR China Series tended to rank very highly in my model this year, much to my surprise. Lo Sze Ho ranked highest in this series and 7th overall after sweeping his teammate Man Siu Ming, but he's not the driver I chose. Cao, who won his second straight TCR China championship this year, was the second-highest ranked TCR China driver and ranked 21st in my model overall in my model out of 227 drivers with 5 or more teammate comparisons. Only three TCR drivers ranked ahead of him in my model: Lo, TCR World Tour champion Norbert Michelisz, and one driver who I will discuss later in this section. Cao ranked only barely behind Chaz Mostert (in my view the best Supercars driver) and just ahead of Larry ten Voorde (the best Porsche Supercup driver) thanks to sweeping both of his teammates Andy Yan and Rainey He, and he was also rather impressive in the TCR World Tour races that also counted towards the TCR China championship as he did pass Yan for the lead at the season-ending Guia Race at Macau (one of the most historically prestigious touring car races) before he was eventually overtaken by Dušan Borković. Even though Borković won, I felt Cao was the better choice because he dominated his teammates while Borković was significantly outperformed by his teammate Esteban Guerrieri. Admittedly, Cao only won one race this year and another in class as opposed to 2023 when he won four times, but I do think I like this year better because he outperformed his teammates by more and had a lead change on the TCR World Tour, which he didn't last year.
Last year, I listed Collard for a solid but unspectacular season in the British Touring Car Championship. This year, he earned his career highlight to date by winning the British GT Championship while co-driving with his father Rob. Even though Rob was historically the better driver as he had 15 BTCC wins while Ricky had none, I think Ricky was clearly the team leader this year, mainly because he is a near-prime-aged 28 years old while Rob is 56. Although this is Ricky's first title, Rob also won the British GT title once in 2020 with Sandy Mitchell. I didn't calculate lap times for the series because I don't think British GT is important enough for it to be worth my while time-wise, but I'm just assuming Ricky was the primary reason for the team's success based on the age difference even though Rob had more experience in the series and was a better driver in his heyday. The Collards won two races (including Ricky winning on his debut as a full-time British GT driver at Oulton Park) while their team car co-driven by Alex Martin and Mitchell won three times and another in class, but I think at this point Ricky was the best driver in the class with the possible exception of illegitimate DTM champion Maximilian Götz and defending Porsche Carrera Cup Great Britain champion Adam Smalley, who also had a strong rookie season and earned his first win. I feel bad that I haven't listed Smalley yet 'cause I do rate him and he is extremely high in my touring car model while Ricky is meh, but Ricky was definitely better this season.
Costa was the fourth-fastest regular in the IMSA GTD class with a speed percentile of 81.38, behind only Frederik Schandorff's 90.50, Loris Spinelli's 85.88 and Robby Foley's 85.08, but I definitely think he was better than Schandorff and Spinelli because not only did he finish higher than them in points but he also passed Spinelli for the win in the GTD class in the season-ending marquee Petit Le Mans while he was an IMSA rookie while none of those three were not. Although he only finished fourth in points, he was still solid for his inexperience, particularly considering his team Conquest Racing (yes, the subpar IndyCar team from the 2000s) had never won in IMSA's top division prior to this season. While I still don't think he was the best IMSA GTD driver this season and a couple others who I also included in this group were comparable, Costa (who is actually one of the top 20 drivers all time in my touring car model) definitely had a season worthy of recognition.
As a bit of a Connor Zilisch skeptic, I was a contrarian for a while this season in arguing that Day was the better NASCAR prospect mainly because I remain unconvinced by Zilisch's oval performances and I think Day's sprint car training is usually better-correlated with success over the entire NASCAR schedule than road racing success. I admit that I was wrong about that because Zilisch certainly did better in his ARCA and Craftsman Truck Series races despite being several months younger, but Day certainly had an impressive season regardless as he significantly broke out in the High Limit series with eight wins and a fifth-place points finish in the series that has pretty much overtaken the World of Outlaws as the most prestigious winged sprint division but we'll see how long that lasts. Day also won one WoO race and two USAC Midget races as well. Although I usually tend to rate USAC performances higher than WoO/High Limit performances myself since USAC-trained drivers seem to be more adaptable towards major league competition than winged sprint drivers, Day's eclecticism and versatility indicates that him becoming a hot NASCAR prospect is no accident even though he hasn't been stellar in his first few races, but I do have Zilisch higher than him. Don't worry about that.
The Dutch Porsche Supercup driver turned 18 in the middle of his rookie campaign, where he was the highest rookie points finisher in 7th although he wasn't even close to his teammate Harry King. Nonetheless, he was a solid performer in all Porsche series, winning one Porsche Carrera Cup Germany race, one Porsche Carrera Cup Italy race, and two Porsche Carrera Cup Middle East races in addition to ranking sixth amongst Porsche Supercup drivers in my model. While his ascent isn't quite as astonishing as his countryman Morris Schuring's last year, he is breathing similar air as this season looked like a slightly worse version of what Schuring did last year when he became the youngest-ever winner in both Porsche Supercup and Porsche Carrera Cup Germany. De Haan broke Schuring's record as the youngest winner in PCC Germany but Schuring retains his record in the premier Porsche Supercup since de Haan failed to win. De Haan did win the pole and set fastest lap at the season finale at Monza, but was overtaken by eventual champion Larry ten Voorde and eventual winner Alessandro Ghiretti on the opening lap. De Haan is clearly a promising driver on the rise, but don't expect him to win Le Mans as a rookie like Schuring did.
Despite finishing 16th in Stock Car Pro (formerly known as Stock Car Brasil), di Mauro tied Felipe Baptista for the most wins in the series with three in a hyper-competitive year that saw a staggering 16 different winners in 24 races. Di Mauro beat his teammate Nelson Piquet, Jr. 9-7 in finishes. I erroneously had this entered as 9-9 because I discovered as I was writing this that di Mauro had two DNFs in races where Piquet had beaten him that I had not properly recognized. As a result, Piquet beat di Mauro slightly in my model because he also had a win against Juan Manuel Casella in TCR South America, but I suspect di Mauro will overtake Piquet if I update this. That would still likely place him at best 9th among Stock Car Pro drivers this year (he's currently listed 11th in my model in the series, but either of those were vastly better than his points finish). Nonetheless, in a season when there were so many winners, I think selecting a larger number of winners from this series is justified, as long as they at least won feature races that did not have inverted starting grids, and di Mauro did indeed two races with qualifying sessions at Interlagos and Goiânia, thereby making him one of only three drivers along with Baptista and series champion Gabriel Casagrande to win multiple races on speed. Nonetheless, the points finish was so mediocre that I don't think I can justify putting him in a higher tier. But the wins were enough for me to take him over fourth-place points finisher Ricardo Zonta who went winless and rated lower than di Mauro in my model.
In a virtual repeat of his 2023, di Palma won his second consecutive title in the Argentinean Top Race series. Although he won only five races this time after winning seven races last year (I had this wrong when I erroneously reported that he only won five times), I would say this year was better as he had to compete full-time against Matías Rossi, who is clearly the best Argentinean touring car driver today (sorry, Canapino!) and Rossi did not compete there last year. Di Palma also drove in the more prestigious TC2000 series this year for the subpar Octanos Competición team. Although he swept his teammate Emiliano Stang 3-0 in terms of shared finishes, Stang ended up beating him 14th-18th in the championship because di Palma did not run the compete TC2000 schedule and had a lot more DNFs. Nonetheless, beating Rossi is very impressive in a year when Rossi also finished 2nd in TC2000 points, which is a much bigger deal. However, I have to rate other Argentinean drivers higher because Top Race is not as prestigious as the Turismo Carretera and TC2000 championships and has fallen in prestige relative to other Argentinean touring car series in recent years.
Dontje co-drove the Winward Racing entry in the IMSA GTD class for the five premier Michelin Endurance Cup races alongside class champions Philip Ellis and Russell Ward. While Ellis and Ward won four races, Dontje joined the team in three of its wins, including winning the first three MEC events at the 24 Hours of Sebring, 12 Hours of Daytona, and 6 Hours of Watkins Glen to win the MEC championship. Ellis was as usual clearly the team leader with a speed percentile of 76.76 to Dontje's 64.51 and Ward's 52.15, but Dontje was clearly also an important contributor as he made three passes for the lead (tied for the most in the class with Robby Foley and Kenton Koch) and these included the first pass of the season at Daytona along with coming up on top in an extended duel with Onofrio Triarsi to claim the Rolex victory for the team. This is not the first time I have listed him as he also made my list in 2021, where he also was the winner and TNL at Daytona in the same class. While I think that race was better since passing Kyle Kirkwood is a bigger deal than Triarsi, this was definitely the better season as he had three wins this time in addition to his third straight class win at the 24 Hours of Nürburgring, where he finished ninth overall and won the SP 9 Pro-Am class with Antares Au, Patrik Kolb, and Patric Niederhauser.
The sports car legend hasn't competed full-time in years, but don't say he's retired as he won his fifth Pikes Peak Hill Climb in the last eleven years, snapping Robin Shute's streak of three consecutive wins. This places tied for him fifth on the all-time Pikes Peak winner's list with Al Rogers and Rod Millen, behind only Bobby Unser's 10, Louis Unser's 9, and Glen Shultz and Nobuhiro Tajima's 7. That's pretty impressive for a race that has been running continuously for over 100 years except for the two World Wars. I placed him on this list exclusively for Pikes Peak, but Dumas still dabbles elsewhere. He entered the 24 Hours of Daytona in the GTP class this year but he was the second-slowest driver in the race ahead of only Ben Keating and his "Dakar Rally" finish of 14th wasn't too good either. Nonetheless, I think the Pikes Peak winner should usually make my list, especially if it is a driver like Dumas who has a rich racing history elsewhere.
Although Eckes failed to win the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series title, finishing third in the championship race at Phoenix and the championship behind Majeski and Corey Heim, he did things in the series that no driver had achieved in over a decade, becoming the first driver to lead 1,000 laps in a season since Kyle Busch in 2010 and the first regular to do so since Ron Hornaday, Jr. in 2009. With his flag-to-flag win at Nashville, Eckes became the first driver to lead a truck race start-to-finish since Timothy Peters at Bristol in 2012, but Eckes became only the second driver to do so without starting on the front row after Hornaday in 1997. His average finish of 5.4 was also the best in a season since Hornaday's 4.5 in 1996. He also led the series with 17 natural races led and 26 passes for the lead. I suspect one of the reasons Eckes demonstrated this level of dominance was because the depth of the field was incredibly shallow after Carson Hocevar and Zane Smith advanced to the Cup Series, but it's hard to argue with his success. Nonetheless, I actually think Heim was better and I'll get to that in his entry. If either Eckes or Heim had won the title, I probably would have moved them up to the C tier, but since they lost, I'm not sure I can justify it. Majeski wasn't terrible by any means as his 25-27 lead change record was not far off Eckes's 26-25 and he utterly thrashed his teammates Ben Rhodes and Matt Crafton, but still he was the worst of the trio in such a top-heavy year. Nonetheless, in a winner-take-all world, everyone takes the championships less seriously than they used to so it's not really a blight on Eckes's legacy that he didn't win it. This year gave him a lot of buzz and finally got him his first full-time Xfinity Series ride. The fact that his new teammates are the awful Josh Williams and Daniel Dye will certainly make him look good and considering Kaulig Racing's Cup Series drivers are an aging A.J. Allmendinger and a disposable Ty Dillon, it's not hard to imagine Eckes could fast-track to the Cup Series in one year now even though he arguably spent longer than he should have in trucks.
Foster had one of the most dominant seasons in Indy NXT (I still hate that re-branding) history with eight wins in fourteen starts, which ranks tied for fifth all-time in Indy Lights/NXT wins with Alex Lloyd in a season behind Greg Moore/Kyle Kirkwood's 10 and Paul Tracy/Pato O'Ward's 9. While the four drivers he trails are all greats or probably poised to become greats and Lloyd was indeed underrated (despite never really having a competitive car and quitting the sport after Dan Wheldon's death, he still had a solid rating of .091, comparable to Kirkwood and Robert Wickens), I can't say I'm that impressed by Foster yet. While I think the season is worthy, and it's particularly impressive that he swept all four oval races at Iowa, Gateway, Milwaukee, and Nashville, it felt like the competition was somehow lacking even though the fields consistently had 18-20 cars, much larger than in many recent years. Part of it is that Nolan Siegel was battling for the points lead in Indy NXT when he quit mid-season to jump up to IndyCar, at which point Foster was sitting second in points behind Jacob Abel. While Foster ended up steamrolling the field at this point with 11 straight top twos to finish the season including his eight wins, Siegel has proven to not be very good and I don't think Abel is very good either. There are some other drivers who I thought were impressive who Foster beat like Callum Hedge (who made my top 200 last year), Myles Rowe, and Josh Pierson but none of them were hugely competitive at all. That probably says something for Foster, but his lack of competition in America (this definitely was closer to a Karam/Chaves-era field than an O'Ward/Herta or Kirkwood/Malukas-era field) and the fact that he never won a title in Europe before coming to America leaves me still unconvinced of his future. Foster's debut rating in my model is only -.167, basically comparable to Jack Harvey who Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing previously released. With RLL losing their only bright light in Christian Lundgaard and replacing Pietro Fittipaldi with Devlin DeFrancesco (who might be even worse than Fittipaldi), the team looks like it's circling the drain so Foster will likely struggle for success, but the fact that his teammates are DeFrancesco and a washed-up Rahal may allow him to build up some cred as I could easily see him being the top Rahal driver next year, but that's not necessarily saying a lot.
As usual, I remain completely incompetent at ranking rally drivers and this year I think I'm really underrating them a lot mainly because I am not particularly impressed by Thierry Neuville as champion and I feel the depth in the World Rally Championship has never been lower now that the truly big stars like Sébastiens Loeb and Ogier and Kalle Rovanperä are running part-time. I probably won't be able to properly evaluate WRC drivers until I finish my rally drivers' model but ever since I started doing my daily driver capsules, I haven't really updated it at all and I'm still only at the start of the B drivers, although I hope to maybe finish it by the end of next year. Fourmaux was certainly impressive to some extent as he was the team leader at M-Sport Ford WRT, but it's not as if his mediocre teammates Grégoire Munster, Jourdan Serderidis, and Mārtiņš Sesks provided him much in the way of competition. Until I can properly figure out how good they are, I can't really evaluate Fourmaux at all. I will say that Fourmaux wasn't very far off past World Champion Ott Tänak's point total at Ford, but I also know that the WRC's points system this year was almost as stupid as NASCAR's and that you can't really compare it precisely with any previous season. For this one I kind of have to throw my hands up in the air until I finish my rally model. If I ever finish my rally model.
The driver who has served as a dual threat in sports cars and touring cars for many years had a sudden and inexplicable collapse in both disciplines this year as his 13th-place points finish in Stock Car Pro was his worst since his rookie season in 2014 and after three seasons where he was clearly the dominant driver in IMSA's LMP3 class from 2021-2023, he switched to the LMP2 class this year after LMP3 shut down and surprisingly went winless. He and his teammate Gar Robinson did finish 2nd in the LMP2 title battle to Tom Dillmann and Nick Boulle, so Fraga was still competitive, but the guy who had dominated IMSA's minor prototype classes for years was suddenly upstaged by the prepubescent Connor Zilisch while Fraga rarely led all year except for the season-ending Petit Le Mans, where he took the lead from Luis Pérez Companc and held it for 40 laps before being passed by eventual class winner Mikkel Jensen. I have to take both Zilisch and Jensen over Fraga, but it's not like Fraga was bad exactly. He still ranked 15th in my touring car model and 2nd among Stock Car Pro drivers at .384, so I thought he still deserved to be listed, but I do think he underachieved expectations as much as any other star. There still are a few drivers I rated higher last year who I did not rate this year (Ritomo Miyata, Ricardo Feller, Shane van Gisbergen, Raffaele Marciello, and Nicky Catsburg) so maybe it's not quite true, but it felt true.
Although Frijns went winless in Formula E for the fourth straight year, as usual he remained very competitive as he had three second place finishes and his 1.34 lead shares ranked 6th in the series despite a shockingly low speed percentile of 38.64, way off his teammate Sébastien Buemi's 60.52, but Buemi's 0.39 lead shares were also way off Frijns so it's hard to say who was better. Frijns narrowly beat Buemi in the points standings, finishing 9th to Buemi's 11th, and they tied 5-5 in their teammate head-to-head, but Frijns is narrowly rated above Buemi in my open wheel model with a rating of .138 to Buemi's .118, so that gave Buemi a better rating for the season. You really have to add in Frijns's sports car accomplishments to get a better sense of his season. Both Buemi and Frijns competed in the WEC Prototype class, Buemi with the once-but-now-no-longer (?) dominant Toyota team and Frijns with a rather slow BMW team. Once again, Buemi ranked third-fastest of the six Toyota drivers while Frijns ranked third-fastest of the six BMW drivers, but Buemi was a lot closer to the fastest Toyota driver Kamui Kobayashi in speed than Frijns was to BMW's fastest driver Dries Vanthoor. Although Frijns's speed percentile of 45.37 was far off Vanthoor's 74.78, I still decided to list him because he was faster than Raffaele Marciello (who made my top 25 last year) and much faster than his teammates and BMW regulars Marco Wittmann (33.81) and René Rast (30.45), who both made my list. Even though Frijns didn't win this year and had the disappointment of being passed by António Félix da Costa for the win at Portland, the performance was definitely there but I do think Buemi was better.
Gibbs started out the 2024 Cup Series season looking like a top ten driver just like all three of his Joe Gibbs Racing teammates before fading into mediocrity in the second half of the season, but I don't really put that on him because it seemed like a systemic team-wide issue as Christopher Bell was the only JGR driver who managed to sustain both his consistency and his dominance for the entire season while the other three drivers significantly fell off. I couldn't not list Gibbs since I did include him last year and he improved in nearly all statistical categories (both basic and advanced) in 2024 as he doubled his top five count from 4 to 8, won his first two poles at Charlotte and Pocono, improved his laps led count 4 times from 112 to 417 and his CRL count 7 times from 0.27 to 1.59. He also made the playoffs for the first time, improved in speed percentile from 64.52 to 68.75, had his first above-average season in my teammate model where he ranked 18th at .033, and he made a massive jump from -.116 to -.054 in my model overall, leapfrogging his incoming teammate Chase Briscoe who stood pat at -.070. He was the worst JGR driver in the Cup Series, but he ultimately wasn't that far off Martin Truex, Jr. and actually beat him in my model while also ranking in the top ten in several statistical categories (tied for 7th in poles in 2, tied for 5th in fastest laps with 2, tied for 7th in fastest races with 2, 9th in speed percentile, and 10th in CRL). Having said that, his year still had a lot of issues that prevented me from rating it higher as he seemed to have substantially more speed than racecraft and seemed to consistently fade in the later stages of races. In the wacky first Bristol race, he led 137 laps and seemed to be Denny Hamlin's strongest threat before fading to ninth and even getting lapped at the end. In both races where he won the pole, he got passed for the lead multiple times posting a 0-3 lead change record at Charlotte and 0-2 at Pocono and his overall lead change record of 14-21 was lackluster. Gibbs's two fastest races came at Austin, where he started second and finished third but didn't really contend and at the playoff-opening Atlanta race, where he led 37 laps before being passed by eventual winner Joey Logano with ten laps left. He had a lot of speed, but he still hasn't put that complete race together where you can unambiguously argue he was the best driver in a race. Having said that, this was still his second season and most of the current major Cup stars (Kyle Larson, Chase Elliott, William Byron, and Tyler Reddick) did not win until their third and Bell only barely did due to a fluky caution at COTA, so it's not like it's a disappointment that he hasn't won yet, particularly when he almost certainly will next year. One thing that will likely help him is his crew chief Chris Gayle (who has never impressed me in the Cup Series much) being replaced by Tyler Allen, who just won eight Xfinity Series races in his first season as a crew chief. Since I think Allen is better than Gayle, I expect Gibbs to finally win next year since he was already on the verge even with Gayle. I wouldn't be surprised if Gibbs overtakes Hamlin either since Chris Gabehart to Gayle is a major step down.
One of the things that perpetually makes me pull my hair out is deciding which of 30 similarly-placed different sports car drivers to include in the lower tier of my list. While it's usually pretty clear to me which open wheel, stock car, and touring car drivers are deserving and which aren't, you could probably make just as good a case for 20 sports car drivers who I didn't list (including big names like Lucas Auer, Dane Cameron, Nicky Catsburg, Mike Conway, Raffaele Marciello, and Jordan Taylor) as the sports car drivers I listed in this tier. Grenier deserves it more than any of those guys even though they're usually better because he had a very eclectic season winning in three different series. In his main role as an IMSA GTD driver, he finished a rather distant third in points and won one race at VIR, but he did finish ahead of the aforementioned Costa and another IMSA GTD driver I will be listing later in this section. He did not have a consistent teammate as his co-drivers Mike Skeen and Kenton Koch both split the schedule with him. I was reluctant to do this since despite driving part-time, Koch actually beat Grenier in most statistical categories with 3 lead changes to Grenier's 0, 1.09 lead shares to Grenier's 1, 0.95 CRL to Grenier's 0.86, and a speed percentile of 68.11 to Grenier's 64.89. However, I ultimately decided the volume of Grenier's accomplishments was enough to overcome Koch's higher peak. Outside of IMSA, Grenier also earned a Gold class win at the 24 Hours of Spa with IMSA GTD champion Philip Ellis, Al Faisal Al Zubair, and Dominik Baumann. Finally, Grenier also won two races in the International GT Open again with Al Zubair who is clearly not as good as Grenier. It wasn't a spectacular season, but it was arguably Grenier's best one.
A sports car driver who nearly always sits on the bubble of my lists, I listed him in the C- tier of my inaugural list in 2021, but then narrowly left him off in 2023. This year, I decided he deserved it again. Gunn was the most consistent driver in IMSA's GTD Pro class, narrowly losing the title by four points to Laurin Heinrich. Heinrich was a lot better as he won three races to Gunn's one and he did that as a rookie while Gunn has been around for years, but Gunn was definitely still worthy. What impressed me most about this season was that he was substantially faster than his teammate Alex Riberas, beating him in speed percentile by the astonishing margin of 66.28 to 26.61. Although Riberas did not run two races and was replaced by Mario Farnbacher, Riberas was the second-slowest regular in the IMSA GTD Pro class with a speed percentile of 26.61, only barely better than Dirk Müller's 25.44, suggesting that if Gunn had even had a slightly better teammate, that would've been enough to make up his narrow four-point deficit and win the title. Farnbacher wasn't much better as his speed percentile of 40.49 was also far off Gunn. However, what kept me from listing him higher is that even though Gunn and Riberas did win the semi-marquee 6 Hours of Watkins Glen, Gunn's other statistics besides his speed percentile did look a little weak as none of the Heart of Racing drivers had a pass for the lead this year. Gunn was the most dominant driver narrowly, but his 0.29 CRL isn't great either. He did have two fastest laps, but I primarily listed him for his massive advantage in speed over his teammates and the fact that he kept it close with Heinrich on the surface in the championship because his worst finish of sixth was the best of any full-timer in the class. But Heinrich's advantage over Gunn was a lot bigger than the points difference made it seem.
A driver who I think has always been a lot better than I've given him credit for, I'm listing Haase for the first time but that might be an oversight. Like I said, there are so many sports car drivers you could make a case for that there are drivers I perpetually ignore like Haase who maybe I should not have been ignoring. While I think I do a solid job of evaluating WEC and IMSA drivers, I really struggle with the drivers who primarily race in the SRO Motorsports Group series and I think I've given them short shrift over the years because those series do not provide post-race statistical documents like WEC, IMSA, and the European Le Mans Series do. As a result, while I have plenty of data including lead change data, speed percentile, etc... for those three series every year, I have not calculated these for most SRO series or more obscure series where Haase has had his best performances so I probably admit that I do overrate WEC and IMSA drivers at the expense of sports car drivers in more obscure series, and Haase has likely been one of the biggest victims. This year might have been Haase's best as he won the International GT Open (Spanish GT) championship while co-driving with his teammate Simon Reicher. The duo won four races at Hockenheimring, the Hungaroring, Paul Ricard, and the Red Bull Ring while Haase also won the 24 Hours of Dubai, claimed a class win in the Asian Le Mans Series, and he finished third with teammates Alex Aka and Ricardo Feller in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup. Although he didn't win a race there, he, Aka, and Feller did lead the 24 Hours of Spa at the 12 hour point, which gave him the sports car equivalent of stage points in that race and helped him in the championship. He might have had a better season than I think as he did beat drivers in this series who I have rated higher like Maro Engel, Sheldon van der Linde, Dries Vanthoor, Laurin Heinrich, and Joel Sturm, but I think all those drivers had better seasons. My question is whether I only think that because it's easier for me to find DTM, WEC, and IMSA data than data for Haase's series. Ultimately, I only put Haase here because his main accomplishments were in series that I feel were less prestigious than WEC and IMSA, but I might be wrong about that. Editor's note to the former Stéphane Ratel Organisation: if you want me to evaluate your drivers better, please provide lap time/lap leader documents like WEC and IMSA does.
This was almost certainly the deepest season for Formula 2 in its entire history with a staggering 18 different winners in 28 races (and Ritomo Miyata, who I ranked 3rd last year, wasn't even one of them), making this a pain to go through. F2 clearly had incredible depth this year when you consider that Andrea Kimi Antonelli is debuting in my open wheel model as the highest-rated F1 driver despite finishing 6th in points, Taylor Barnard rates even higher after sweeping his Formula E teammates in hsi first four starts despite finishing 21st in points, and Zane Maloney and Oliver Bearman also enter my model with F1 champion-caliber ratings as well. Deciding which drivers deserved to be listed here was a total mess as it seemed like many of the best drivers did not even contend for the championship. I ended up listing only five F2 drivers but considering the top of F2 definitely seemed to be stronger than the bottom of F1 this year (and the F1 teams knew it as Antonelli, Gabriel Bortoleto, Bearman, and Hadjar are all advancing to F1 as once), I do think Hadjar should be one of them as he led all F2 drivers with four wins and impressively all four of his wins came in feature races where the starting grids were determined by qualifying instead of reverse grids. Hadjar does not have a rating in my model because he has not been teammates with another driver in my model yet so I'm not entirely sure how to evaluate him. I do think Yuki Tsunoda will outperform him at VSUGAR next year as he does against nearly all his teammates, but I'm not really sure by how much. Ultimately, I only placed Hadjar in C- instead of C because he lost the title to Bortoleto even though Bortoleto was a rookie and Hadjar was in his second year, but that's just a guess.
Ultimately, I felt like I had to dock the Toyota WEC drivers in a year when their half-decade run of perpetual dominance in the Hypercar né LMP1 class ended. I saw several people complaining that Hartley didn't make the top fifty on Autosport's list, but I can't really see it. Hartley and his teammates Ryō Hirakawa and Sébastien Buemi did tie for the most wins with two but they only finished fourth in the championship after five straight titles and ended up finishing four points behind their team car co-driven by Kamui Kobayashi and Nyck de Vries even though that car had two DNFs while Buemi/Hartley/Hirakawa had none. Furthermore, Hartley was the slowest of the three drivers of his car with a speed percentile of 57.22 to Hirakawa's 64.29 and Buemi's 61.14. He was also the least dominant driver of his car with 0.13 CRL to Buemi's 0.53 and Kirakawa's 0.38, but admittedly he was tied for the most lead shares amongst the Toyota drivers with 0.67 thanks to passing Nicklas Nielsen to be the TNL at Fuji. However, his team only ended up finishing 10th in the race and Hartley only ranked fourth in speed percentile and fifth in CRL overall amongst the Toyota drivers. He was good definitely and I would say better than de Vries and Mike Conway who I did not list, but when considering Toyota fell off thanks to the increased competition in the Hypercar class, they didn't win Le Mans, they finished behind their team car, and Hartley was the slowest and least dominant driver on his team, I don't think I can justify rating him higher.
Much like Ross Gunn, I primarily listed Hawksworth for the crushing blow he delivered his GTD Pro co-driver in terms of speed percentile, blowing out Ben Barnicoat by a margin of 66.48 to Barnicoat's 37.73. Interestingly, Gunn and Hawksworth were almost exactly tied in speed as Gunn's speed percentile was 66.28. Even though Hawksworth and Barnicoat finished only fifth in the championship due to inconsistent while Gunn was second, I think Hawksworth was probably better because he and Barnicoat earned a class win at the 12 Hours of Sebring with Kyle Kirkwood, which probably matters more than the championship anyway and Hawksworth was the major reason for the team's win as he led the most laps and was the TNL after passing Daniel Serra for the win, unlike Gunn who did not make a pass for the lead all season. Hawksworth was the only driver other than Laurin Heinrich to lead the most laps in two races in the class as he also did so at the 6 Hours of Watkins Glen, but just like I think Heinrich was a lot better than Gunn, I think Heinrich was a lot better than Hawksworth for the same reasons (won the title and won the most races in his rookie season). I suppose I could make a case that he might belong in the C tier rather than the C- tier, but I think the points finish and their general inconsistency meant the season was too weak for me to justify putting him higher.
Last year, I definitely considered Heim and would have listed him for sure if he'd won the Craftsman Truck Series, but I wanted to dock Heim for intentionally wrecking Carson Hocevar at the Phoenix finale and I felt Hocevar (although he's probably even dirtier) did more with the substantially worse truck he had (look at how Niece Motorsports collapsed without Hocevar; I don't think Tricon will collapse in the same way without Heim.) However, this year I suppose I'm also going to go contrarian again and argue that Heim was actually better than Christian Eckes. That's a difficult argument to make on the surface when you consider that Eckes had the best average finish since 1996 and the most laps led since 2010, but Heim did have some major advantages. First off, Heim did beat Eckes in wins with 6 wins to Eckes's 4 and he did beat him in the championship while Eckes kind of whiffed at Phoenix as he was the only driver in the Championship 4 who failed to lead. That's not completely meaningless. But the main reason why I think Heim was better is because he was a substantially more efficient passer. Heim had the best lead change percentage in the trucks by far, with his 24-13 record being substantially better than Eckes's 26-25 (whose record in turn was barely better than Ty Majeski's at 25-27), even if Eckes beat Heim in natural races led (17-12), lead shares (5.14-4.72), and CRL (5.75-5.35). The lead share and CRL numbers suggest that Heim was far closer to Eckes in dominance than the laps led difference of 1,050 to 682 implies (as Eckes tended to dominate short track races that had more laps than the superspeedway races where Heim dominated). Bear in mind that I didn't count any of Heim's passes at the Charlotte race where he was disqualified either. Heim had an insane run of leading the most laps in five consecutive races (becoming the only driver to do that in truck history) and winning three of them (the exceptions being a crash at Darlington and his DQ at Charlotte) and his drive from 33rd to win at Kansas was maybe one of the all-time great truck drives. He also beat Christopher Bell in the one truck race he started at Las Vegas despite starting 25th, which is impressive considering where I have Bell ranked. It seemed like Heim's trucks probably were not as fast as Eckes's and he was marginally more impressive given the truck he had in a similar way to how Hocevar was better than Heim last year. Ryan McCafferty agrees, as he rated Heim at 225.3 to Eckes's 205.04 in his model. In my model, Heim currently rates -.080, only barely behind Chase Briscoe's -.070 and I'm just gonna say it. Heim should have gotten the No. 19 car over Briscoe (or at very least the No. 35 car over Riley Herbst) and the fact that he is still not racing in the Cup Series in 2025 feels like an injustice.
Denmark's greatest domestic driver, Jensen won his ninth title in the last nine years. Although he races in the obscure and not very prestigious TCR Denmark championship, he just won his fifth title in a row and set a career-best nine wins in that series after previously winning the Danish Thundersport touring car championship in 2016, 2018, and 2019. He also won a second championship in the GT3 class of the Le Mans Cup in 2022, a year I probably should have listed him but didn't. I've never listed him before but I did place him as an honorable mention previously in 2021. I know TCR Denmark does not have nearly as much competition as many of the other TCR tours, which is why I am rating this so low but I'm starting to wonder if his cumulative record is impressive enough that I should start bumping up all his seasons to make him eligible for my 1,000 greatest drivers list. I'm leery about doing that because TCR Denmark has had next to no competition but the Danish Thundersport Championship has had a bit more as Jan Magnussen and Casper Elgaard also won championships there and those drivers are a lot better respected because of their numerous sports car wins while Jensen hasn't seemed to want to break out into international competition, which makes evaluating his career a big question mark. I suspect that at this point he's a grassroots driver I should seriously consider for the 1,000 in the same vein as Richie Evans and Dick Trickle, but he's never even competed in a major league so he's not even eligible for my touring car model nor were any of his teammates as far as I can tell. Evaluating him is a big question mark for me, but at this point I feel like he is worthy. Don't be surprised if I end up rating him a lot higher in retrospect.
With apologies to Hall & Oates, I once again put Kiss on my list for winning his fourth consecutive FIA European Truck Racing Championship. I have listed him in the C- tier for this accomplishment in all four seasons. You could make a case that this was Kiss's best year ever as he won 19 races in 28 starts. That marks a slight decline from his 22/32 wins last year, but it's possible he could have matched it if the Polish round had not been dropped and he had won three out of four races in that round. Kiss started the season with an impressive 11 consecutive wins and finished no worse than sixth for the entire season. Granted, that might not be as impressive as it seems since there were about 12 trucks per race and much like Kasper Jensen, I'm not sure what to do with him. He feels like another grassroots driver who should probably be recognized on my 1,000 greatest drivers list at this point with six titles and an astounding 120 wins. He almost certainly would have won the 2020 title as well had it not been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As with Jensen, Kiss does seem to look better cumulatively in retrospect than he does in any particular year. His six titles tie Jochen Hahn for the most in series history, but Hahn started a few years earlier and still leads Kiss by three wins. Presumably, Kiss will overtake Hahn to become the all-time championship and win leader next year, but the question is whether the level of competition is too weak to list him higher both on my annual lists and historically. At the moment, I'm saying yes as I think the series is probably less prestigious than even the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series even though it has full FIA backing, but as with Jensen, don't be surprised if I change my mind on this someday.
Ma was a driver who was periodically both on my list and off at various times, but I eventually decided to include him. He had his first multi-win season in international touring car racing this year with two wins, although admittedly both of them came in reverse grid races with field inversions so I wasn't hugely impressed, especially because he finished eighth and lowest in points among the four drivers on the top-tier Cyan Racing squad. Nonetheless, the Cyan cars arguably dominated the season as Cyan teammates Thed Björk, Yann Ehrlacher, and Ma were the top three in lead shares and all of them beat the champion Norbert Michelisz in that category. Although Björk and Ehrlacher definitely outperformed Ma by any measure, I do think Ma was better than the fourth Cyan driver Santiago Urrutia (even though he narrowly beat Ma in points) as Ma won two races while Urrutia failed to lead a lap for the entire season despite winning two poles. That left him 83rd this year in my touring car model with a rating of .086. Most of the drivers around him I did not list, but the fact that he had more lead shares than a deserving champion and only barely lost to Ehrlacher in that category makes a case for him. Even if the wins were in reverse grid races, he still had to maintain the lead which Urrutia couldn't after his poles. And Ma did have a last-lap pass for the win against Néstor Girolami in his home race at Zhuzhou. I'd have also felt like a jerk if I didn't list him after I decided to also list Martin Cao. I actually think Cao was better, but I definitely acknowledge that Ma earned more overall wins in a more prestigious series.
Macedo set personal records for points finish (2nd) and wins (12) in the World of Outlaws, but I don't think this was his best season. The only reason this looked like a better season than his previous few was because of the winged sprint car split between World of Outlaws and the High Limit Series. This year, High Limit was probably more prestigious because five-time defending WoO champion and High Limit series co-owner Brad Sweet defected from WoO to compete in High Limit full-time. Although Sweet still entered some WoO races and won the season opener at Volusia, his intentionally opting out of the WoO championship elevated David Gravel from 2nd to his first championship and Macedo from 3rd to 2nd without them really having to do anything, and it's hard not to figure that if Sweet had elected to continue in WoO that he would have won yet another title there, so I can't really rate Macedo's current season higher because his increase in performance is effectively canceled out by the field becoming shallower thanks to Sweet's departure.
By far the most dubious selection on Autosport's top 50 list, I wasn't even sure if he belonged in the top 200, but I ended up listing him reluctantly. To his credit, Makino broke through in Super Formula and earned his first two wins there en route to his best career points finish of third while simultaneously finishing second in Super GT alongside his teammate and three-time Super Formula champion Naoki Yamamoto. Normally, placing that highly in both series would make him an automatic placement on my list, but I feel his season was not as good as that implies. First off, even though he finished 2nd in Super GT, he and Yamamoto lost the title by 33 points to Sho Tsuboi and Kenta Yamashita, the largest margin of victory in season history and their team went winless as well. Furthermore, Makino's Dandelion Racing teammate Kaku Ohta finished fourth in points only one position behind Makino and also won two races and they were very similar in performance with Makino only beating Ohta 4-3 in their teammate head-to-head, although he did a lot better in Super GT than Ohta. What really gives me pause is that both Makino and Ohta have terrible ratings in my open wheel model and this year was no exception. Makino's career rating in my model is -.228 (comparable with Nolan Siegel) and Ohta's is -.383 (worse than Agustín Canapino). If you recall how awful Siegel and Canapino were in their IndyCar starts, it makes me feel that from a global perspective that Makino isn't any good. Because their ratings were so low based on their performances in previous years, Ohta ranked 79th at -.299 and Makino 80th at -.311 out of 85 full-time major league open wheel drivers this year. Is this really a worthy season, Autosport? I reluctantly decided it was since I will usually list most multi-win Super Formula seasons and he did have good points finishes in both series, even though Tsuboi utterly destroyed him at both. I know my models get it wrong sometimes (hi, Ryan Blaney and Tyler Reddick!), but his teammate ratings have historically been so far below usual competitive standards that I really didn't want to do this. I do kind of feel like I was forced to, but I definitely had no intention of listing both Makino and Ohta.
It was not a good year for Corvette Racing in the IMSA GTD Pro class as the perpetual championship contenders finished only third with Antonio García and Alexander Sims and eighth with Nicky Catsburg and Milner. Deciding which combination of these drivers to include was rather difficult. In terms of speed percentile they ranked: Catsburg (57.49), García (56.59), Milner (55.61), and Sims (44.27). Yet, I ended up choosing the two slower drivers and snubbed the two faster drivers. I'll explain why I chose Sims over García in his entry, but I mainly chose Milner over Catsburg even though Catsburg beat Milner in most statistical categories because he also competed in the GT World Challenge America series where he and teammate Alec Udell won a season-high seven overall wins and another in class, which was just barely enough to push him over the line for me and ahead of Catsburg, who won nothing except a pro-am class win in the 24 Hours of Spa (in a class where only two other cars finished). Catsburg admittedly led the class in poles with 3 and in lead shares with 2 (as there were two races where he won the pole with no passes for the lead), but the fact that he won three poles and couldn't execute and win a race in the class suggests maybe he doesn't deserve it despite being the fastest Corvette driver. Milner's one TNL came on track as he passed García on the opening lap before Laurin Heinrich eventually beat him out of the pits. I was marginally more impressed with Milner than Catsburg when considering everything, although all four Corvette drivers were essentially borderline and the drivers I selected were almost arbitrary.
I was originally planning on placing Mortara in the C tier because he was the highest-rated Formula E driver in my open wheel model and second-highest overall at .557 thanks to an 8-1 record against his Mahindra Racing teammate, former FE champion Nyck de Vries. However, there was one driver who I felt I needed to push up to the C tier who I originally placed here, so I ended up pushing Mortara down. Ultimately, he did not beat de Vries nearly as badly as that differential implies as he only outscored de Vries 29 points to 18 even though de Vries missed two races and Mortara scored points in one of them. Additionally, both drivers had the same best finish of 4th and de Vries actually beat Mortara in lead shares (0.07 to 0 as he did have a pass for the lead), they tied in CRL at 0.07 and de Vries actually beat Mortara in speed percentile (34.47 to 31.78). My model thinks this is a big blowout because Mortara consistently beat de Vries, but it really wasn't (not to the same extent as Nico Müller's blowout of even greater FE champion Lucas di Grassi, which was much more massive, although weirdly, di Grassi had a faster average speed than Müller too). Ultimately, a guy who finished 16th in points in a single-driver series should usually be a marginal selection anyway and although he did dominate de Vries badly enough to deserve a place on the list, I think my original placement of him in the C tier was too high, especially when considering who I'm replacing him with.
Ex-Alpine driver Ocon gets too much shit while Pierre Gasly gets too much praise. While I did rate Gasly higher, I don't think their performance difference was anywhere near as large as most people seem to. People are massively hyping Gasly due to a manufactured and dubious statistic that he cost his team no money in crash damage while Ocon crashed a lot. One of the biggest fan fallacies drivers in cars that are not competitive enough to win should be entirely judged by crash avoidance. I don't agree with that and I think their performance difference was very narrow. Indeed, Ocon actually beat Gasly 12-11 in qualifying, 9-8 in shared finishes, and .152-.135 in my model even though Gasly was more consistent and did admittedly have a much faster speed percentile, beating Ocon 35.68-22.58 by that metric. Although the redditor catchingisonething's on-track passing data were incomplete as he did not update his table since the São Paulo Grand Prix, through that point, Ocon had an overtake record of 43-69 (.384) vs. Gasly's 34-53 (.391), which is again an infinitesimal difference. Ocon of course also finished second in that race, where he led and Gasly didn't, giving the Alpine team its best finish since his own win at the Hungaroring. It is true that Ocon was taken out in two opening lap crashes while both of Gasly's retirements were mechanical and I do think he had the better season for his consistency as a result, but it wasn't really a massive difference yet a lot of people talk about Gasly like he's secretly great and Ocon like he's a hack when really they are similar drivers. Gasly deserves to be rated higher, but I still think he was the most overrated F1 driver this season.
The 21-year-old rookie son of perennial TC2000 Leonel Pernía, Tiago joined his father in the premier Argentinean touring car series and was immediately fast. Despite missing the first three races of the season, Tiago won on his debut at San Nicolás and won four of his first five starts en route to a third-place points finish as Leonel won his third straight title and was the only driver to win more races than Tiago. Although he doesn't even have a Spanish Wikipedia page yet, the fact that he nearly matched his father (who in my opinion is one of the best touring car drivers in the world) in his rookie season at such a young age means that he's likely on pace to become one of the world's best touring car drivers in the next decade, even if few people outside Argentina will care to begin with since these series are significantly underrated in the rest in the world and Agustín Canapino's failure in IndyCar will again lead to no one outside of South America taking them seriously again.
Although Randle finished 5th in the Supercars championship only one spot behind his teammate Cam Waters, they weren't even close in performance as Randle had 0 wins to Waters's 5, 1.33 lead shares to Waters's 5, 0.70 CRL to Waters's 3.42, 1 pole to Waters's 7, 1 fastest race to Waters's 2, and a speed percentile of 58.43 to 70.04. Randle finished a massive 519 points behind Waters, equivalent to nearly two full endurance races and 3.5 regular races. Randle finishing so highly in points was more a reflection of the overall mediocrity in the series right now than a very strong performance and I did rate four drivers who finished behind him in points in a higher tier. Randle and Waters did exchange the lead three times with Randle passing Waters at both Sydney and Adelaide after winning the pole before he got beaten out of the pits both times. Randle did win his second pole at Symmons Plains before Waters passed him on the opening lap and controlled the race start-to-finish. With 1.33 lead shares, Randle did admittedly rank 6th in that category in Supercars even though he ranked 9th in CRL (0.70), 6th in speed percentile (58.43), and 17th at -.019 in my teammate model. He performed as highly as 5th in almost no statistical categories other than the actual points standings, so maybe I have been slightly harsh here, but there were several drivers who finished behind him in points who I think were more impressive.
The superior Italian version of David Ragan started the year off with a 24 Hours of Daytona class win for Risi Competizione in the GTD Pro class with Daniel Serra, James Calado, and Alessandro Pier Guidi. I think he was the worst driver on that team as he led no laps in that race while Pier Guidi led 91, Serra led 79, and Calado led 45 and was the TNL. He was also substantially slower than Serra in their shared races in the Micheli Endurance Cup, where Serra posted a class-high speed percentile of 91.26 to Rigon's 51.04. However, I view him this year as essentially the inverse of James Calado. While Calado deserved to make the list based on his strong IMSA performances despite a mediocre WEC season, Rigon deserved to make the list based on his strong WEC performances despite a mediocre IMSA season. In Rigon's WEC LMGT3 starts, he passed Nicolas Costa to win at Fuji, which gave him the highest lead shares and speed percentile of all the AF Corse drivers in the class and he ranked second overall in speed percentile in that class behind only his teammate Alessio Rovera (who was definitely better). Admittedly, I can't rank him too highly since his team finished 7th while the other AF Corse team co-driven by Rovera finished 3rd. He also finished 5th in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup by himself but failed to win a race there. While I'm probably more impressed by Calado since the 24 Hours of Daytona is more prestigious than the WEC Fuji race and Calado had three passes for the lead to Rigon's one, but other than that they had essentially equivalent if polar opposite seasons.
I correctly predicted last year in my Tom Blomqvist entry that Blomqvist would bust in IndyCar and Rosenqvist would restore his cred, but even I underestimated the extent. I didn't expect Blomqvist to get fired before the season was half over and Rosenqvist ended up leading all IndyCar drivers in my teammate model and ranking third overall with a rating of .556 thanks to a 4-0 sweep of Blomqvist, a 2-0 sweep of Hélio Castroneves, and a 3-1 defeat of David Malukas, but how impressive is that really? Blomqvist entered the 2024 IndyCar season as the highest-rated IndyCar driver overall based on some strong minor league performances from over a decade ago even though I knew that would not accurately reflect his performance, so Rosenqvist's season was obviously overrated and even more overrated when you consider that Castroneves is washed up and not as good as he was and Malukas was very, very unlucky all season and ran at least equivalently to Rosenqvist and arguably outran him since he came closer to winning at Gateway than Rosenqvist has in years. Nonetheless, besides his wildly inflated open wheel rating which did not properly reflect his season, Rosenqvist still had an impressive season. His 12th-place championship finish was the best in history for Meyer Shank Racing and he easily improved upon his washed-up Indy 500-winning predecessors Castroneves and Simon Pagenaud. Rosenqvist also won the team's first pole at Long Beach, but his historical trend of being fast in qualifying before fading in the race continued as despite the speed he sometimes had in qualifying, he didn't really come close to contending for wins. Nonetheless, he still helped make the team better and should be recognized for that even if he faded from 5th in points early in the season to 12th and Malukas was starting to look faster by the end of the season.
The former World Rally Champion extended his record as the oldest "Dakar Rally" winner when he won his fourth "Dakar" at age 61. I was seriously on the fence about whether to include this since he became the first "Dakar" winner to fail to win a stage since Stéphane Peterhansel in 2007, the last time the event actually finished in Dakar and he only finished 4th in the World Rally-Raid Championship. He had a lot of help because his old WRC sparring partner Sébastien Loeb won a rally-high five stages but fell over an hour behind on the penultimate stage due to a broken suspension arm. Furthermore, he was greatly assisted by the fact that the top two World Rally-Raid points finishers Nasser Al-Attiyah and Yazeed Al-Rajhi both failed to finish the event. Nonetheless, while it still galls me that they call it the Dakar Rally and race in Saudi Arabia (it's as if CART had elected to call the U.S. 500 at Michigan the Indy 500), the rally continues to have prestige based on the quality of the drivers who enter it even if many of them are old rallying pros who certainly aren't as fast as a couple of decades ago. Even though I don't feel the post-Dakar Rally is as prestigious as it was when they actually raced to Dakar, I still think the winner should probably always be on this list and even though Sainz didn't have one of the most stellar drives in history, he was also 61 and that may be one of the best performances for a driver in his age group in history.
Even though Sims was the slowest of the four Corvette regulars in the IMSA GTD Pro class, I decided to list him over his more venerated teammate Antonio García this year even though García as usual had a major speed advantage, beating Sims by a margin of 56.59 to 44.27 in speed percentile. However, in most other categories Sims outperformed García as he had a full lead share to García's 0.33 and 0.96 CRL to García's 0.57. He was also the only driver in GTD Pro besides Laurin Heinrich who had no goose eggs with a natural race led, a win, a TNL, a race with the most lead shares, a race with the most laps led, a pole, a fastest lap, and a fastest race despite his overall lack of speed. Well, almost no goose-eggs as his lead change record of 0-2 could be considered a goose-egg, but García's 1-3 is hardly better. I went for Sims primarily because he was the most dominant of the four Corvette drivers and the only one who seemed to have a "complete" statistical profile, but they all had very similar seasons and they were all essentially borderline. I also give him more credit than García for their sole win at Mosport as he won the pole before Sims and García went on to lead essentially the entire race, thereby making him the TNL for the event while García was (relatively) along for the ride. While García is usually better than Sims, I don't think he was this year.
Although I decided not to list any drivers at the Formula 3 level this year, I did elect to list one at the Formula 4 level, but Slater is no ordinary prospect. After winning 16 of 20 races to win the entry-level British one-make sports car Ginetta Junior Championship in 2023, Slater committed fully to open wheel this year and simultaneously won the Italian F4 Championship, where he won 15/20 races and the Formula 4 United Arab Emirates Championship, where he won twice. He also won two of nine races in the overall Euro 4 Championship. Although the Macau Grand Prix (the most prestigious race for junior open wheel talent) is usually designed for Formula 3 talent (not Formula 4), Slater decided to enter it and was very fast, starting 7th and finishing 4th in the qualification race for that event before crashing while attempting to overtake Noel León for 3rd on the last lap. Even more impressively, Slater is still only 16 years old while most of the people he was racing against at Macau including his two Prema Racing teammates Alex Dunne and Dino Beganovic were either age 19 or 20. Slater, who was one of the best karting drivers in the world a few years ago, is making a remarkably ascent and seems two or three years ahead of his peers, making him a likely future Formula One prospect. If all else fails, I could easily see him ending up in IndyCar as well now that Prema has launched a team there.
After dominating the IMSA GTD class last year, Paul Miller Racing switched to the GTD Pro class in 2024, which usually has both smaller fields than the GTD class but also tends to have better competition since it has few if any amateur drivers making it significantly harder to dominate. Nonetheless, in their first year in the class Miller's long-term co-drivers Snow and Bryan Sellers had their fifth consecutive winning season with an overall win at VIR, where the prototypes don't compete. Snow was the leader of the team in that event and overall dominating it with 62 of 86 laps led while driving for two separate stints in a race where Sellers only led 2 laps. Since Snow also won the pole in a race that had no lead changes, that gave him a full lead share and allowed him to rank 3rd in lead shares and 2nd in CRL in a class where Sellers hardly led at all. He also significantly outperformed Sellers in terms of speed percentile 64.76-50.25, although heir part-time teammate Neil Verhagen was actually faster than Snow. Snow made the first pass for the lead in his class at the 12 Hours of Sebring but didn't really factor in too many others. The competition in that class was far too deep for me to push many of these drivers much higher, and I do think Snow, Sims, Hawksworth, Calado, and Gunn all belong in this tier even though they did not all have similar seasons.
At the last moment, I dropped Augusto Farfus from my list and replaced him with Sørensen after noticing that Sørensen beat Augusto Farfus in the GT World Challenge Europe Endurance Cup, not to mention that he won the 24 Hours of Spa overall with his two co-drivers in that series, Mattia Drudi and Nicki Thiim. Normally, I want to make sure I at least have one of the overall winners from each marquee sports car race, although I did not end up listing any of the winners from the Nürburgring 24 Hours this year because none of them really did much else this year (I could have picked Ricardo Feller, but I decided not to) and also because the race was ended after barely 7 hours so it sort of doesn't feel like it counts. Since Drudi didn't do much except for the Spa win and I didn't think Thiim deserved it even though he also had a DTM win because he finished 13th in the points in the year his teammate Mirko Bortolotti won the championship, Sørensen seems like the best choice. In addition to his GT World Challenge success, he was the third-fastest driver in the WEC LMGT3 class with a speed percentile of 83.78 behind only Alessio Rivera and Davide Rigon, and he was substantially faster than his teammates Erwin Bastard (62.97) and Clément Mateu (11.90). However, their team D'station Racing was rather mediocre and only finished 11th in the championship. He also dabbled in other series making starts in IMSA and Super GT. Although the wins weren't there, the speed was and his win at Spa narrowly pushes him over the line.
Suzuki was the only driver this year who attempted double-duty in Brazil's Stock Car Pro touring series and the TCR South America championship simultaneously and while running full-time in both series he earned top ten finishes in both, finishing 7th in Stock Car Pro and 8th in TCR South America while winning once in both series. He also won two additional races in the TCR South America class against the TCR World Tour regulars. Admittedly, both of his overall wins came in reverse grid races, which doesn't excite me. Additionally, his touring car rating of -.022 was below average and not great, but that isn't necessarily a disqualification if the rest of the record was solid enough (Jack Aitken had a substantially worse touring car rating this year and his season was great). Ultimately, I think I chose to include him because he did prove in Stock Car Pro that he had speed, winning back-to-back poles at Nova Santa Rita and Buenos Aires even though he won neither of those races. The combination of the speed he did have with his rare crossover to win and earn top ten points finishes in two touring car series that people rarely compete in simultaneously impresses me enough for the list.
Although Parker Thompson is not quite Connor Zilisch, he too had one of the most impressive full-time debuts in IMSA this year, although unlike Zilisch, he had run the Michelin Endurance Cup races last year and he is eight years older, so he wasn't as electrifying. Nonetheless, he led the IMSA GTD class with 2 full lead shares and 3 poles and had a massive advantage in speed over his teammate Frankie Montecalvo with a speed percentile of 70.87 to Montecalvo's 36.43. The latter driver was really not pulling his weight as the only race Thompson won this year at Long Beach came in the one race where Montecalvo was replaced by the veteran Ben Barnicoat, who drive for the same Vasser Sullivan team's GTD Pro class. Thompson's season in the GTD class was very similar to Nicky Catsburg's in the GTD Pro class as both drivers led their classes with 3 poles and 2 lead shares and I didn't list Catsburg, but the differences are that Thompson won and Catsburg didn't, Thompson was faster in his class than Catsburg, and Thompson was less experienced. I see why he's being hyped as one of the best Canadian drivers today although I do think Mikaël Grenier's season was probably better as he seemed more versatile. Nonetheless, Thompson also proved his versatility by crossing over from the GTD class to race in GTD Pro in Detroit, although Thompson and Montecalvo finished behind Barnicoat and Jack Hawksworth there. I suspect Thompson is being held back by Montecalvo and if he wants a run at a GTD title, which he can probably achieve someday, he'll likely need to do it with another teammate.
Vaxivière competed in both the WEC and the European Le Mans Series in 2024, but was significantly more successful in the latter. In the ELMS, he won the LMP2 Pro/Am championship with co-drivers Alessio Rovera and François Perrodo. He was actually the fastest driver in the class with a speed percentile of 87.68 to Rovera's 82.80 and Perrodo's 18.57. When considering how Rovera has been one of the fastest sports car drivers in Europe of late, beating him in speed is a major accomplishment and he actually had the fastest average speed in four of the six races in that class as well as a faster average speed than anyone managed in the "regular" ELMS LMP2 class. Admittedly, the fact that Vaxivière competed in a pro-am class while Charles Milesi (for example) didn't made it easier for Vaxivière to goose up his numbers, but his level of dominance was more impressive and unlike Milesi (who led the regular LMP2 category with a speed percentile of 86.12 along with class-best marks for poles with 2, fastest laps with 1, and fastest races with 1) Vaxivière actually won the title and won multiple races. His WEC performances weren't as impressive because Alpine's WEC team proved to be quite frankly substantially worse than their F1 team even. All seven Alpine regular drivers had below average speed except for Mick Schumacher, whose speed percentile of 63.07 was significantly better than his teammates, but I chose Vaxivière instead mostly for the ELMS title, while Milesi whose speed percentile of 49.69 was only barely ahead of Vaxivière's 47.65, which is not enough to overcome the fact that Vaxivière won the ELMS title and Milesi didn't, even though Milesi admittedly faced stronger competition. I really could have justified any of those three, but there definitely wasn't room to list all of them.
You can sort of echo what I wrote for Christopher Haase here. Weerts has had a great deal of success in the GT World Chalenge Europe Sprint Cup, where he won three consecutive titles from 2020-2022 with Dries Vanthoor, but it's hard for me to determine what portion of that success is his. I know Dries Vanthoor is the team leader and the much better driver and it does seem like Weerts has always been along for the ride, but until I'm able to find lap time data for the SRO series, I sort of have to take a guess about where to place drivers like him who have never raced in the WEC or IMSA. This year he and Vanthoor finished 2nd in points and tied the champions Maro Engel and Lucas Auer with three wins, but I have to figure Vanthoor was about 90% responsible for that success. Weerts did earn another championship this year in the Intercontinental GT Challenge, which included a win at the Indianapolis 8 Hours and a class win at the 24 Hours of Spa. Technically, he competed in the same class as Marco Sørensen, who won the race, but Sørensen's Comtoyou Racing team was ruled ineligible for Intercontinental GT, so Weerts and his teammates Vanthoor and Sheldon van der Linde were listed as the winners. However, both of Weerts's wins again came with Vanthoor so it seems like Weerts can't win without Vanthoor but Vanthoor definitely can win without him. However, Weerts did win the championship solo because he and the other two drivers split cars for the 7 Hours of Nürburgring with Weerts co-diving with Max Hesse and Dan Harper. While Weerts isn't as good as van der Linde and Vanthoor, I definitely think he's better than those other two drivers so the fact that he won the Intercontinental GT title while VDL and Vanthoor did not is largely down to him finishing the race in third overall and second amongst the eligible Intercontinental GT drivers while his superior teammates failed to finish. If I find lap data that convinces me Weerts is closer to Vanthoor in speed than I think, I might bump this up someday.
When I wrote my 1,000 greatest drivers entry on Wittmann, I was not originally planning to rate this season, but I did change my mind. Wittmann is not the overpowering superhero in DTM like he was in the 2010s when it was still a touring car series, but he was still a good performer even if performance was good but not great. In fact, even though he finished only 12th in the championship while his two Schubert Motorsport teammates René Rast and Sheldon van der Linde finished 4th and 6th in points, Wittmann was the most dominant driver on the team with 1.08 CRL to Rast's 0.93 and VDL's 0.61. Weirdly although all three drivers won, none of them had a pass for the lead, won a pole, or led any races naturally at all so a case could be made that Wittmann was more dominant even though the other two were more consistent. They were also closer in speed than I expected with Rast at 61.29, VDL at 59.46, and Wittmann at 55.36. Wittmann was in position to win the DTM season opener at Oschersleben in fact until suffering a mechanical breakdown with four laps left while leading, which handed the win to Jack Aitken. While Wittmann was the worst of the three Schubert drivers, he wasn't so much worse to keep from listing him, at least based on his DTM statistics. All three drivers also competed for BMW's factory WEC Hypercar team, but here Wittmann was a lot less impressive as his speed percentile of 33.81 was the second-slowest on his team. Although he was actually surprisingly faster than Rast (who has much more of a sports car pedigree, yet only had a speed percentile of 30.45), he was far off VDL there (59.24), not to mention Dries Vanthoor (who demolished all his teammates at 74.78). Wittmann is still good without question, but it's been a while since he was one of the world's elite drivers.
