Welcome to the latest Happy Hour mailbag! You know how these work: You write us with your best rant/ joke/one-liner at happyhournascar@yahoogroups.com or on Twitter at @jaybusbee, we respond to your messages, everyone goes away with a smile on their face.
The Matt Kenseth business happened too late to make this round of the mailbag, but I'm having a hard time remembering a driver who was leading in the points deciding to leave his team in the middle of the season. It could have happened last year with Carl Edwards, of course, but didn't. Everyone insists that this won't hurt the team in any way, but since this is without precedent, how can we know? What do you think will happen with Kenseth and the soon-to-be-disbanded Killer Bees of his crew?
Have your say in the comments below. Meantime, your letters. We emphasize that these are real letters from real readers. You too can participate ... if ya got the guts.
I hope Danica Patrick does well but I don't get all the expectations. How has she done compared to the start of so many drivers who seemed to do pretty well their first few seasons? I realize that many of them started taking off in year two or three, but is she really showing signs that she will be any better than those who are consistently in the bottom half of the standings? I hope she will, but can you give any evidence to that end?
? Captain Running Man
Let's have some fun with statistics, shall we? Let's focus on the first three seasons of certain drivers' Nationwide careers, since that's the point where most of the big names made The Jump. To start:
? Danica Patrick, age 30: 39 races, zero wins, one top 5, four top 10s, one pole.
Now, let's consider some well-known drivers at comparable points in their careers:
? Tony Stewart, age 27: 38 races, zero wins, six top 5s, seven top 10s, two poles.
? Jeff Gordon, age 19: 31 races, zero wins, five top 5s, 10 top 10s, one pole.
? Kyle Busch, age 19: 41 races, five wins, 18 top 5s, 25 top 10s, five poles.
? Carl Edwards, age 25: 36 races, five wins, 15 top 5s, 21 top 10s, four poles.
Of note: Stewart would leap to Sprint Cup after the above and win three races his first year there. Gordon would go on to win three races his third year in Nationwide. Busch would finish second in the Nationwide series in 2004, included in the above results. And Edwards would win nine races across both Sprint and Nationwide in 2005, the last year accounted for above.
So what have we learned? Patrick generally doesn't fare too well in most of these comparisons, but bear in mind these are the best of the best. And once these drivers got past the initial learning curve, success came often. Also, there's a point at which most of these drivers launched into the stratosphere, and Danica Patrick is on the cusp of that point, career-wise if not age-wise. Do you think she's suddenly going to bust out with four wins in Sprint Cup next year? Yeah, me neither.
But before we go writing her off as a never-will-be, consider this set of career-starting Nationwide stats:
? Driver X, age 24: 39 races, zero wins, zero top 5s, seven top 10s, zero poles.
Remarkably similar to Ms. Patrick's, wouldn't you say? And that driver would go on to win a couple races. You probably know him ... fella by the name of Jimmie Johnson.
Source: http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nascar-from-the-marbles/?altcast_code=a8446fab8a
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