Top 25 IndyCar drivers of all-time
By Asher Fair
Top IndyCar drivers of all-time: #21 – Wilbur Shaw
This list isn’t simply a “greatest Indy 500 drivers of all-time” list, but Indy 500 success certainly factors into these rankings, and nowhere is that more evident than in the case of the great Wilbur Shaw.
Shaw won just six races in 38 starts over 15 years, but he ended his career as a three-time Indy 500 winner, having won the race three times in four years from 1937 to 1940, and a three-time champion.
Even with only six career victories and fewer starts than several of the other three-time champions and three-time Indy 500 winners have wins, his stat line when it comes to winning races, championships and the Indy 500 is only matched by six other drivers, and it is surpassed by only three of them.
Shaw became just the second driver to win the “Greatest Spectacle in Racing” three times, and he very well could have been the first four-time winner. He is also one of only five drivers to win the race twice in a row, and he became the first to do so with his third win in 1940.
To this day, nobody has won it three times in a row, but he very well could have the following year. He led 107 of the 151 laps he completed around the four-turn, 2.5-mile (4.023-kilometer) Indianapolis Motor Speedway oval in Speedway, Indiana in what would be his final start in the race in 1941, but a late crash knocked him out of contention.