Indycar Racing's Worst Drivers..............

[Matthew Little]

A couple of weeks ago, Speed's Marshall Pruett wrote an interesting article on who the worst Indycar drivers of all time..........besides Pruett, several other open-wheel journalists gave their opinions as well, including: David Malsher--RACER Magazine, John Oreovicz--ESPN.com, Jeff Ianucci--MyNameIsIRL.com, Jeff Olson--Versus.com and Robin Miller--Speed.com.


Here were the list of worst drivers they mentioned(and the cleanest nicknames I could find...... ....).....................
--Milka Duno(Milk & Doughnuts, 2% Milka, the 16th Turn, Milka 'Dunno-what-she's-doin'", etc.)
--Juan Caceres
--Fabrizio Del Monte
--Charles Nearburg
--Harry Sauce
--Patrick Lemarie
--Jon Herb
--Larry Foyt
--Dr. Jack Miller(the racing cavity)
--Dennis Vitolo
--Crockey Peterson(the racing crock-of- )
--Joel Camathias(Joel "Slow-as-a-Came-thias")
--Shigeaki Hattori(Caw Slide, Shiggy, the Shiginator)
--Jean-Pierre Frey

I'll throw in two more for humor's sake...................
--Hiro Matsushita("King" Hiro......)
--Marty Roth(Mad Dog Marty, Roth the Sloth)




A few days ago, Speed released the results of their Worst Driver Poll from the previous article and here were the results(think of it, as Speed's Pruett puts it, "an American Idol for the worst of them............")
1st: Milka Duno
2nd: Dr. Jack Miller
3rd: Jean-Pierre Frey
(FWIW, how Roth the Sloth, King Hiro or Caw Slide didn't make the top-3 is beyond me...............)


Anyway, I voted for Milka Duno; how she ever got an IndyCar ride is going to be one of the great mysteries of life. Put simply, she can't drive; the only thing keeping her in the car is the fat CITGO check Dale Coyne Racing gets from Venezuela(the perverse irony is it also let DCR hire a real driver in Alex Lloyd to drive the team's second entry...........).

How bad a driver is she? Well, at Chicagoland in 2007, ESPN's Scott Goodyear said on-air, "Milka's so slow right now she's in her own zip code." At Watkins Glen, she qualified 11 seconds behind polesitter Will Power(yes, you read it correctly..........ELEVEN SECONDS! ). Indeed, she was so slow in qualifying she ruined Ryan Hunter-Reay's flyer, which prompted this...............

Best Line of RHR's.....................

Milka, if you’re gonna go that slow, you’ve gotta drive [looking in] your mirrors, hon.

Just imagine what PT, Danica or some of the others in the paddock have said her Milka's *cough, cough* driving..............oh, wait, wasn't there another confrontation................

Okay, enough of the rant.................here's some classic worst driver highlights courtesy of King Hiro.........

Apparently Paul Page was channeling Murray Walker with this gem of a quote about Hiro,

He is now running up near the front of the field…though the field has come around to pass him…

Now I ask the Clip the Apex community.................who do you think is Indycar's worst driver?

 

[Nomad]

I have to vote for Milka, one of the worst paid drivers that I have ever seen.

I am glad that we haven't piled on Hiro; he was not as fast as most but he was a damned nice guy and a serious competitor. I was fortunate enough to know him in his FF and Formula Atlantic days when he was a Champion. In fact, we were fortunate to have him co-drive our Formula Ford in some endurance (1 1/2 hour) races and he was a joy to work with. I believe that he just took it a step too far with IndyCar. What most people don't know is that his is and was an exceedingly important businessman in that he was the USA boss of several major consumer electronics companies owned my Matshushita Electric and Electronics. He was also part owner of Swith Race cars and was very active in these businesses while he was racing.

Despite his wealth, he drove a older Japanese sedan and met his wife on a JAL flight where she was an Air Hostess. She also was a charming lady and agreed to marry Hiro without knowing who he really was.

You might guess that I like and respect the man.

 

[FB]

Is the requirement for a female Indaycar driver to look good in a bikini otherwise they don't get a drive? Not true in F1, I'd have paid notto see Desire Wilson or Lella Lombardi in their swimsuits.