Greatest?

Greatest Driver of the three?

  • Dale Earnhardt

    Votes: 2 33.3%
  • Richard Petty

    Votes: 4 66.7%
  • Jimmie Johnson

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    6
  • Poll closed .
If David Pearson was one of the choices, I think the best 4 would be up for consideration.

Picking one of those four would make me crazy. Good arguments could be made for any one of those four.
 
I don't believe you could accurately choose the best driver out of the three available choices.
They're all from different eras of racing and subsequently all three faced different challenges.
 
Petty would never get 200 wins in this era. I'm not saying it wasn't an amazing accomplishment, but it was decades ago, with a different field of competitors.
You cannot compare different eras; it is apples to oranges.
Jimmie Johnson probably wouldn't have won a Championship, back then. Without HMS and Chad Knauss, Jimmie Johnson isn't a six-time Champion. Can you picture Jimmie, with a football helmet on, sitting on a bench seat, gripping a plastic steering wheel, peering under a flap visor, looking at a chalkboard instead of listening to a headset?
Dale Earnhardt wouldn't have won 7 Championships against the drivers of today.
Each of the available choices were the best of the best, in their own times. I don't believe any of them would be as competitive in another's era.
JMO.
 
As others have said before. Tough to gauge levels of greatness from one era or another. Pearson, Petty, Earnhardt, Johnson, even Gordon with the way he paved the way for the young generations of drivers.. Tough to say really. I can't say.
 
It's harder to win at present than it ever had been in the past.
Jmho
 
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