Welcome to the RACER Mailbag. Questions for any of RACER’s writers can be sent to mailbag@racer.com. We can’t guarantee that every letter will be published, but we’ll answer as many as we can. Published questions may be edited for length and clarity. Questions received after 3pm ET each Monday will appear the following week.
Q: Call me an old codger, but the current Pennzoil Dallara is not “The Yellow Submarine.” That title has always and will always belong to the Chaparral 2k. The late Al Unser Sr, Lone Star JR and the late Jim Hall are being dissed. The current Penske team members and NBC broadcast crew who continue to promote this falsehood are disrespecting the history of Indy. Probably many of them were not even alive when the original Yellow Submarine dominated Indy. Rant over.
Dale, Chesterfield, VA
Marshall Pruett: You’re an old codger.
Q: With Josef Newgarden winning two championships and now two 500s (and counting on both), Where do you think he’ll end up when all is said and done with his career? Judging by his age and assuming he stays at Penske (or if he ever left you’d assume a powerful team would be his destination) he’s got another 10-12 years of high level driving still (maybe more based on Dixon and Power) Is he going down as the greatest American driver not named A.J. Foyt?
Steve
MP: We did have Rick Mears, Al Unser, Bobby Unser, Louis Meyer, Johnny Rutherford, Wilbur Shaw and a few other Americans who Josef would need to first equal or exceed in the major accolades before he’s slotted into P2 at home.
But, if he keeps going for another 7-10 years, he could easily join the four-timers club at Indy, and stack 3-4 more championships onto his CV. He’s the best of his generation, without question for me, and that was before his first Indy 500 victory. Where he ends up beyond that is what we’ll be watching until he retires.
Josef, or Dixon, could beat all of his records and I don’t think a single person who saw A.J. at his peak would say anyone was better on pavement, dirt, open-wheel, stock cars, sports cars and so on. A.J. will always be in a category of his own.