Daytona Testing and Numbers Crunching
After finishing 8th in Saturday nights Chili Bowl, Tony finally takes to the track in a cup car today as the second week of Daytona testing begins. I’ll have speed updates as they become available.
In the mean time, I came across this interesting statistic today. Tony has started 320 cup races in his career. He has 32 wins (10%) and 32 DNF’s (10%). Weird. But when I read that, it got me to wondering about everyone elses numbers. I pulled up the active drivers list, narrowed it down to the those who have won at least 10 races, then eliminated those that won’t be running in the Daytona 500. Here’s how the numbers come out.
| Driver | Races | Win | Win % | T5 | T5% | T10 | T10% | DNF | DNF % |
| Gordon | 509 | 81 | 15.91% | 234 | 45.97% | 317 | 62.28% | 74 | 14.54% |
| Johnson | 219 | 33 | 15.07% | 86 | 39.27% | 134 | 61.19% | 24 | 10.96% |
| Stewart | 320 | 32 | 10.00% | 119 | 37.19% | 191 | 59.69% | 32 | 10.00% |
| Busch | 256 | 17 | 6.64% | 56 | 21.88% | 105 | 41.02% | 31 | 12.11% |
| Biffle | 186 | 12 | 6.45% | 35 | 18.82% | 61 | 32.80% | 24 | 12.90% |
| Earnhardt Jr | 291 | 17 | 5.84% | 76 | 26.12% | 121 | 41.58% | 41 | 14.09% |
| Elliott | 776 | 44 | 5.67% | 175 | 22.55% | 320 | 41.24% | 113 | 14.56% |
| Kenseth | 292 | 16 | 5.48% | 79 | 27.05% | 142 | 48.63% | 33 | 11.30% |
| Newman | 224 | 12 | 5.36% | 61 | 27.23% | 98 | 43.75% | 39 | 17.41% |
| Martin | 698 | 35 | 5.01% | 239 | 34.24% | 385 | 55.16% | 103 | 14.76% |
| Jarrett | 663 | 32 | 4.83% | 163 | 24.59% | 260 | 39.22% | 125 | 18.85% |
| Harvick | 250 | 11 | 4.40% | 49 | 19.60% | 101 | 40.40% | 12 | 4.80% |
| Labonte | 510 | 21 | 4.12% | 113 | 22.16% | 195 | 38.24% | 72 | 14.12% |
| Burton | 475 | 19 | 4.00% | 110 | 23.16% | 194 | 40.84% | 49 | 10.32% |
| Marlin | 732 | 10 | 1.37% | 83 | 11.34% | 216 | 29.51% | 146 | 19.95% |
With the numbers they have put in in their careers, it’s not hard to see why the top 4 drivers have 9 Winston/Nextel Cups between them.
The number that really jumped out at me is Kevin Harvicks DNF’s. 4.8%. He may not be winning races, or even finishing in the top 10, but that’s a pretty impressive DNF number.
I love the numbers!!!