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IndyCar
INDYCAR: Worst Driver Results
It's like the results episode of American Idol, except we're voting IN the worst and jettisoning the ones with talent...
Marshall Pruett  |  Posted September 04, 2010  
Which IndyCar driver was named the W.O.A.T -- the Worst of All-Time? Read on...
Welcome to the results feature from SPEED.com’s Worst IndyCar Driver of all-Time Hall of Fame voting.

After a tense two weeks in IndyCar-land where owners and management fought like drunken CEOs at a country club cocktail party, we could use a good laugh.

(For the record, I would have supported a winner-takes-all golf match for the control of the IZOD IndyCar Series. How brilliant would it have been to see Randy Bernard dressed up like Judge Smails from Caddyshack, and Chip Ganassi dressed like Rodney Dangerfield’s character? Instant classic. Or maybe they should have a dance off…)



As we mentioned in the feature, there were to be two or three rounds of voting for W.O.A.T. HoF nominees, but a funny thing happened. After the wild success of Round 1, about half of the original contributors decided to chicken out step back.

Those writers felt that doing more than one round would be cruel, unnecessary and would be horribly undignified. We sent them diapers, pacifiers and wished them luck in their new roles as bloggers for PETA.

Rather than draft in replacements, we decided that in the tradition of the best one-hit wonders, Round 1 would stand as a single, shining example of the kind of fun that can be had at the expense of bad IndyCar drivers.

That’s not to say the list of first-ballot HoF drivers was perfect – a lot of you wrote in to tell us just who we left out that should have been a mortal lock on Round 1 – so with our tail between our legs, we’ve gone ahead and adjusted the HoF voting to include one driver who was a major oversight on our part.

What you have below is the voting for the 14 drivers in Round 1, and a lot of honorable mentions from your letters for those drivers you said must be included in the pantheon of putrid IndyCar pilots.

Without further delay, let’s unveil the podium for the Worst IndyCar Drivers of All-Time.

Your votes made it clear that one driver stands above the rest when it comes to being the Worst of All-Time, and with 63.4 percent of the vote, that honor goes to Milka Duno.

We could write a long description of why she is so deserving of the title as the W.O.A.T., but we’ll let this clip featuring Milka and Ryan Hunter-Reay do the talking.



I’ll go ahead and nominate RHR’s quote of “Milka, if you’re gonna go that slow, you’ve gotta drive [looking in] your mirrors, hon,” as one of the funniest lines of the year.

The runner-up position went to the biggest cavity in IndyCar’s history, Dr. Jack Miller, who earned 12.68 percent of the votes.

Dr. Jack’s impact on the IRL was so great, not a single photo or video during his five seasons in the series can be found on the IndyCar.com media site, or on YouTube. Ouch.

The ‘racing dentist’ did leave behind a rather amazing statistic, though – one that will probably stand forever – and that’s his finishing percentage. Of the 22 IRL races he participated in, Miller made it to the finish just five times, earning a 22.7 percent finishing record. 22 starts…17 DNFs… He’ll need a 64oz shot of Novocain to dull the sting from that statistic.

The final step of the podium went to Switzerland’s speedy banana slug, Jean-Pierre Frey, who despite being a total mystery to most open-wheel fans, still managed to earn 9.72 percent of the votes.

We left very little on JPF’s bones to pick from in our original Round 1 piece, but we did omit one interesting fact as Max Leitschuh wrote in to tell us: Frey partnered with W.O.A.T. write-in nominee, Marty Roth, to drive in the 1989 24 Hours of Daytona. Would you be surprised to learn they failed to finish?

The rest of the W.O.A.T. voting went like this:

4: Shigeaki Hattori: 4.22%
5: Dennis Vitolo: 2.81%
6: Larry Foyt: 2.55%
7: Harry Sauce: 1.54%
8: Jon Herb: 0.66%
9: Joel Camathias: 0.63%
10: Patrick Lemarie: 0.47%

The voting was close for the final spot in the top-10, with Charles Nearburg just missing the cut.

(I caught up with my old friend Jon Ennik, the 1998 Championship Auto Mechanics (CAM) Indy 500 mechanic of the year, at the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion last month. Ennik, who now prepares Nearburg’s vintage Williams F1 car, reported his driver wasn’t overly excited to be a first-ballot W.O.A.T. candidate. Sorry, Charlie!)

11: Charles Nearburg: 0.46%
12: Fabrizio del Monte: 0.34%
13: Juan Caceres: 0.32%
14: Crockey Peterson: 0.2%

And that’s how the voting went. Congratulations to all of the nominees.

But as I mentioned earlier, there was a major oversight on our part. We received a ton of emails about this feature, and almost every one included some form of statement along the lines of “I can’t believe you idiots left out _____ ! He was the worst!”

The driver with the most write-ins was none other than Hiro Matsushita, AKA, the Milka Duno of CART.

The video below is beyond hilarious. If you watch the part where they show Hiro’s footcam, pay special attention to the sound of the engine in comparison to where his is on track.

When the car is pointed straight, he’s on the throttle. When one of those menacing corners comes into play, the gas pedal is… um…used sparingly.

For those of you who race, take note of how long the pause is between lifting off the throttle and applying the brakes. It’s an eternity.

Best of all, Paul Page utters the classic line “He is now running up near the front of the field…though the field has come around to pass him…”

The understated contempt in Page’s voice is a broadcasting gem. How do we get Paul back in the IndyCar booth?



Based on your feedback, we have to cram Matsushita onto the W.O.A.T. podium. Had he been included in the Round 1 voting, my guess is that he’d have beaten out Dr. Jack for second.

Finally, Matsushita earned possibly the best nickname in IndyCar racing, “King Hiro,” thanks to Emerson Fittipaldi. I won’t repeat the story here, but if you read the account on Hiro’s Wiki page, it’s rather amusing.

It makes me think that if Emmo was still driving today, we'd hear the term “King Milka” quite often.

We asked you to send in your comments and nominees for inclusion in the Worst Hall of Fame, and here are the best of those rants, complaints and original submissions: (Page Two)
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