Youngest winner?

[Ray Bell]

David Bruce-Brown seems to be in with a shot on this one, but we're not sure of his exact age...

Who was the youngest driver ever to win a major openwheeler race (Grand Epreuve status)?

[DaveL]

Originally posted by Ray Bell:
Who was the youngest driver ever to win a major openwheeler race (Grand Epreuve status)?

Scott Dixon.

[Ray Bell]

I guess he'll come close... what age?

Troy Ruttman gets a guernsey, I'm told, 22 yrs and a couple of months..

[TxIndyFan]

I think Scott Dixon is the youngest to win in a Champ/Indy car. Sam Hornish, Jr. is the second youngest. Dixon eclipsed Hornish's win of earlier this year. Both are younger than 22. I think Sam Hornish is 21 and Dixon is 20. Is this correct?

I am happy to see such young drivers doing so well in o/w racing.

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If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten

[StatMan]

Originally posted by DaveL:
Scott Dixon.

This one could be the right answer. How old is Scott? Could be Sam Hornish, although I doubt it - I'm pretty sure Dixon is younger than Sam. I've got a feeling there will somebody even younger we aren't (or at least I'm not) thinking of: somebody from way back when, before my time.

-StatMan

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I have never met a statistic I didn't memorize

[FLB]

Howdy Wilcox I was younger than Hornish when he won a race at IMS in 1910: http://www.indyracingleague.com/pres...-03272001.php3

However, Dixon is younger than both.

Ray, I've read that Bruce-Brown was only days past his 19th birthday when he won at Savannah in 1910 (I don't remember where however, it may have been in Court's Grand Prix Requiem)


[This message has been edited by FLB (edited 05-30-2001).]

[Ray Bell]

That being the case, which seems unlikely, but is possible, he is still in the running. If he was just 19, however, it means that his death came in his 23nd year... even more tragic than Peter Helck recording his death as being at age 24.

There is conjecture about this point, is there anyone capable of checking into it and finding out something concrete. It's been suggested that if anyone knows where he was living in 1900 or 1910 that public libraries in the USA have microfiche records from the census that may give his birth date.

Anyone have any idea... and is anyone volunteering?

In the meantime, the Howdy Wilcox story adds a new dimension to it all, and Scott Dixon's win (surely they've logged his exact age somewhere?) brings in a modern perspective.

Again, checking might be possible to learn if Jimmy Davies et al are in the running...

[DaveL]

Dixon was born on July 22, 1980. When he won at Naz he was 20 years and 10 months old. His win made him the youngest winner in any series be it CART, F1, NASCAR, or the IRL.

Imagine how good he'll be when he gets some experience

[FLB]

Ray, they're having a discussing about Bruce-Brown's age on a board you might be familiar with...
http://www.atlasf1.com/bb/showthread...threadid=22554

[Ray Bell]

Actually, Hans started that because I put the question on ten-tenths.

I've come to Trackforum because there is a lot of knowledgeable people here, and it is an American subject.

It's interesting to see the different posts occurring on the three bbs... And the knowledge will get to all this way...

[Belanger99]

Some people are saying that Jimmy Davies may have been the youngest winner of a championship race when he won at DelMar in 1949.

Lied about his age to get a license.

[Ray Bell]

Yes, the link given by FLB makes that point, and also suggests there may have been others. What we're looking for here, however, is some kind of real evidence of the age so we can be sure.

[DaveL]

Originally posted by Ray Bell:
What we're looking for here, however, is some kind of real evidence of the age so we can be sure.

Dixon's win at 20 year and 10 months was reported by the racing press as being done by the youngest driver ever in a major series.

I'm not writing this as a pro-CART thing. I'm just going by the best available evidence.

[Ray Bell]

And Bruce-Brown's? Jimmy Davies'?

Dixon's is easily checked, hence you were able to put it up rapidly, but it's the others who may have been younger who are in doubt.

[This message has been edited by Ray Bell (edited 06-01-2001).]

[DaveL]

Originally posted by Ray Bell:
And Bruce-Brown's? Jimmy Davies'?

Dixon's is easily checked, hence you were able to put it up rapidly, but it's the others who may have been younger who are in doubt.

If it can be documented that the two you listed are indeed younger, I would be the first to post it. The purpose of this forum is to bring out the historical truths and nothing else.

So far, the best documented evidence that anyone can come up with shows that Dixon is the youngest. If new evidence shows up, great. That's what historical research is all about.

[Gerald Laurie]

There was a lot of finagalling of birth certificates (some counties didn't even start issuing them until the late 30's) in the early history of motorsports in the USA. I'm sure there were a lot 22 to 25 year olds in the 20's and 30's who were really teenagers. There were even a few in the 40's and 50's. The problem is proving what the proper age was. My Mother swears she was born in 1915. The hospital record says 1913, the county records say 1914, and the baptismal records say 15. Go figure. When her parents were alive, her mother said 15 and her father just got a strange look on his face when the subject was discussed.

[Ray Bell]

In Bruce-Brown's case, there is a lot of movement in the opposite direction, to make him younger than the mainstream would have him.

[Vitesse]

Right, let's get this one back to the top!!

Ray Bell and I have both been involved in this search to find more info re David Bruce-Brown, specifically his birth date. It seems fairly certain that he was only 20 when he won the American Grand Prize on 11/12/1910. Another source says he was eighteen when he won the Ormonde Beach Trials in 1908, so we have two pointers to him being born sometime in 1890 (or the last two months of 1889), but I don't have an exact date for Ormonde Beach, which would perhaps enable us to narrow it down a bit more.
I've also noticed a post in another thread on this forum that says he was born in New York - might the New York Times have printed an obituary for him? He died on October 1 1912 in practice for the Grand Prize at Milwaukee, so there might be something in the Milwaukee papers about that time ...

After all, if he was twenty in 1910, then Scott Dixon might not be the youngest winner so, if anyone can help solve this one, please put Ray and me out of our misery!!!

Incidentally it surprises me a bit that Bruce-Brown is not better-known "across the pond" - among European cogniscenti he is considered to be one of the pre-WWI greats: works Fiat driver, twice winner of the American Grand Prize and desperately unlucky not to win the 1912 French GP - all 956 miles of it!!!

Finally, there's been a thread running at Ten-Tenths.com Historic Racing Forum in which Bruce-Brown and others feature prominently - it's called "The greatest who ever lived?" See you there maybe ...

[This message has been edited by Vitesse (edited 06-11-2001).]

[Don Capps]

From the New York Daily Tribune of 20 November 1910, page 12:

David L. Bruce-Brown, driver of the Benz car that won the second international road race for the Automobile Club of America's Grand Prize Gold Cup at Savannah on November 12. was horn in New York City on August 13, 1887. He did his first automobile driving in September, 1906, when Louis Warren, father of Arthur Warren, the racing driver, taught him how to handle an automobile. The car he learned with was a machine owned by Mrs. R. A. Bruce-Brown, his mother, and David says, "I:
soon put it on the bum, thinking I was already a racing driver."

This seems to have been overlooked for years, the other contemporary source providing his birth date coming after his death in another newspaper article that was similarly overlooked.

[Michael Ferner]

Howdy Wilcox I was younger than Hornish when he won a race at IMS in 1910: http://www.indyracingleague.com/pres...-03272001.php3

I realize this is probably not within Ray's original scope of "Grands Épreuves", but on seeing Howdy Wilcox and his minor 1910 win mentioned one should perhaps point out that Troy Ruttman did not win one, but ten AAA Sprint Car main events when he was only 19 years old! Not quite Indy or a Grand Prix, but he did win those ten races out of only 16 starts, with three seconds to go along, and while beating all of the US "hotdogs" of the day, including Indy winner Bill Holland and National Champion Johnnie Parsons, and also Rex Mays in his very first AAA start when he was only 18. He also led more than half of the race distance in his first ever start in the National Championship before retiring, and finished third in his fourth race, also at the age of 19. He took his 11th Sprint Car win the day after turning twenty, and three more before going to Indy as odds-on favourite to win the '500' while still too young to be officially allowed to even only take a practice spin.

[MichaelP]

Dixon's win at 20 year and 10 months was reported by the racing press as being done by the youngest driver ever in a major series.

I'm not writing this as a pro-CART thing. I'm just going by the best available evidence.

Until Marco Andretti won Infineon in 2006 at 19 yrs., 5 mo., 14 days, which was eclipsed when Graham Rahal won St. Pete in 2008 - 19 yrs, 3 months 2 days.

[JThur1]

And Jimmy Davies was the youngest prior to Marco, as he was 20 years, 2 months, 29 days when he won at Del Mar on November 6, 1949. He is never listed and yet still ranks as third youngest and was younger than Dixon.