Crunching the Numbers

I'm not a numbers kind of person. In fact, most of the time, I do my best to avoid anything involving math of any kind, including balancing my check book, measuring for appliances and calculating lunch money for my kids. Numbers perplex and confound me, yet today I find myself putting together a little table of sorts, the kind of table that involves numbers. Yuck.

Yesterday was a good day in NASCAR for me because I like Tony Stewart. Yes, he can be tempramental and he gets pretty excited about stuff, but to me, that's just part of what makes him the amazing driver that he is. His passion for racing shows up in a lot of ways.

Of course, I openly admit that I am not a big NASCAR fan and I am not ashamed of it. To me, racing involves Midgets and Sprints, preferably without wings of any kind. And racing should always be done on dirt. That's just the way it is.

With that thought in mind, I thought it might be kind of fun to start tracking the NASCAR drivers who got their start in the Sprint and Midget arena. Off the top of my head, I could think of five, and I have listed them in a table, along with how they did this week, and their current points. It seemed to me like it might be kind of interesting to track these guys and see how well they do. The chart is over in the right hand column and will be updated after each week's Cup race.

Currently, Jeff Gordon is the points leader, which is great, but poor Dave Blaney is way out of Chase contention, which is a shame. Dave is a great Sprint Car driver, and I think he would do well in NASCAR but he just can't seem to catch a break. Kind of like Junior these days.

Anyway, these are the five I could think of because I know for sure they have raced Sprints and/or Midgets on dirt. Most of them I have seen in action. If anyone reading this knows of other Cup drivers who got their start running at least a full season or two of Sprint/Midget racing, drop me a line and I will add them to the table. I hope you guys enjoy looking at the numbers. Maybe some day it will all make sense to me.

Of course, I could probably come up with a list of Busch and Truck drivers who started out in Sprints too, but with the way they keep showing up on the police blotters for alleged illegal drug possession, I think I'll just stick with Cup drivers for now.