Thursday, February 19, 2015

Tortured Logic

Jared Turner, of Fox Sports, indulges his fantasies of Danica Patrick stardom by giving us “3 reasons Danica can nab career win No. 1 in the Daytona 500.” His reasons are, to say the least, a sterling example of tortured logic.

Reason number one, he says, is, “her past Daytona success.” The facts rather contradict his starry-eyed thinking, because Danica has run the Daytona 500 three times, finishing 40th, 8th and 38th, for an average finish of 27th. That does not actually suggest high odds on her winning the race this year.

Reason number two is, according to him, that “Daytona loves Cinderellas.” He goes on to cite the number of times that rookies and underfunded teams have won at Daytona, but Danica has run the race three times and is therefor not a rookie, and her team, sponsored by GoDaddy and backed by Hendrick Motorsports, is one of the best funded and technically advanced teams in NASCAR. She hardly qualifies as a “Cinderella.”

The third reason he gives is that restrictor plates make the race an absolute crap shoot with all cars being equal, and means that any car in the race might win. That would mean that her chances are one in 43 of winning, which is hardly the best odds she will have all year. They are, in fact, the same odds she will have in the entire season.

Since this Danica fan wrote this piece of hyperbole, Danica crashed in practice, destroying her car completely, and will be going to a backup car for today’s qualifying race. Awesome.

1 comment:

  1. bruce4:07 PM

    So she has as good a chance as anyone else, basically. Unless she does something stupid, like wreck her car. Or gets caught in someone else's stupid, like wrecking their car and getting hers as collateral damage. Awesome indeed. Should be a good show.

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