5 of the Most Dominant Performances in Auto Racing History
5 of the Most Dominant Performances in Auto Racing
History
By Brian Cotnoir
To some people Auto Racing isn’t much of an exciting sport. To most it’s just driver (or rider) presses
the accelerator and they go fast, but it’s much more than that. A successful racing team not only needs a
great driver, but a great crew, engineers, strategy, sponsors, and even a
little bit of luck. All these factors
combined can lead to unprecedented dominance in the sport. Just look at the recent success of the
Mercedes team in Formula 1 or rider Marc Marquez’s dominance in MotoGP, or
Steve Kinser in the World of Outlaws, and even NASCAR drivers like Kevin
Harvick, Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin, and Brad Keselowski have been dominating in
NASCAR. It takes a lot to dominate in
any form of Auto Racing, but for a brief while these teams and drivers were
absolutely dominantand—darn near—unbeatable!
1.) Frank Kimmel, 8 Straight ARCA Championships
The ARCA Racing Series was the premier stock car
racing series in the Midwest for decades, and the best stock car racing series
not related to NASCAR (until they merged together). ARCA’s best driver was without a doubt driver
Frank Kimmel. Kimmel won his first ARCA
championship in 1998, and 2 years later he went on an unprecedented tear of
dominance. Kimmel won 8 straight
drivers’ championships and won 54-of-80 career races during that span.
Kimmel would win his 10th and final
drivers’ championship during the 2013 season.
And although, he never had much success in any of NASCAR’s Top 3 Series,
his #46 Advanced Auto Parts car was always the car to beat in the ARCA series.
2.) Giacomo
Agostini, 4 straight years without a loss Motorcycle Racing
I’ve only recently got into MotoGP racing, so I’m
afraid I do not know much about Italian rider Giacomo Agostini. From 1968-1972, Agostine dominated the 350cc
and 500cc Motorcycle classes. He won
every race he entered from 1968-1970 and won every 350cc & 500cc
championship during that time too. The
500cc class was the predecessor to the modern MotoGP, where he won 68 Grand
Prix and 8 championships. Overall his
Motorcycle Grand Prix racing career contains 122 wins and 15 World Championships
(both All-Time Records).
Greg Moore was gone too soon, and if not for his
tragic death in 1999 he most assuredly would have gone on to become a champion
in IndyCar. In the Indy Lights, Moore had
a break out year with the Players/Forsythe Team in 1995. Moore won 10-out-of-the-12 races and his
worst finish with 5th. He
easily won the championship by over 100 points!
4.) Richard
Petty’s 1967 NASCAR Season
Richard Petty is “The King of NASCAR”. He still holds the lion share of records in
NASCAR including Most Career wins (200), Most career poles (123), and most
career starts (1,185). Petty’s best season
came during the 1967 season. Petty won a
Career high 27-out-of-49 races that season including another record ten in a row! Petty won on short tracks, superspeedways,
dirt tracks, and paved tracks. Petty easily won the 1967 Drivers Championship
as well. Both of these records will
never fall.
5.)
McLaren’s 1988 Formula 1 season
In 1988 McLaren Formula 1 team released the McLaren
MP 4/4. The combination of Steve
Nichols design and the Honda V-6 powered engine led McLaren drivers Ayrton
Senna & Alain Prost to a combined 15 wins.
In fact there was only one race McLaren didn’t win that season, the 1988
Italian Grand Prix. That was the
highest win percentage by an F1 team.
Ayrton Senna won his first drivers championships.
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