NASCAR: Danica Patrick’s “Hot Streak” Is Exactly What You’d Expect

Danica Patrick is currently on the hottest four-race stint of her NASCAR Cup Series career. But that stint still hasn’t been anything to write home about.

Athletes in all sports go through hot and cold streaks. NASCAR drivers are no exception to that. The best drivers sometimes go through cold streaks, and the worst drivers sometimes go through hot streaks. But in these cases, hot and cold are relative terms, especially in the case I am about to present.

Stewart-Haas Racing’s Danica Patrick is a driver with 175 career Cup Series starts. Her career-high finish is only a 6th place effort at Atlanta, and she has finished in the top 10 in just seven of those 175 races, with only one of those top 10 finishes having come over the course of the past 85 events. And that top 10 was only a 10th place finish earlier this season at Dover.

Her career-high finish in the championship standings is just 24th place, which she has done twice, and she has been the lowest-finishing driver in the standings among drivers driving for top-tier teams in three of her four full seasons in the sport. But there has been all kinds of hype surrounding her current “hot streak” that she is on heading into Watkins Glen.

Well, for a driver who has done as little as she has done over the course of her career, her “hot streak” is exactly what you’d expect. Coming into the New Hampshire race, she had never finished in the top 15 in two consecutive races. She had just finished in 15th place at Kentucky, and she backed it up with a 13th place performance at New Hampshire, which gave her her first career two-race top 15 streak.

After having never finished in the top 15 in two straight races before, she didn’t stop there. She made that two-race streak a three-race streak with an 11th place finish at Indianapolis, and she made that three-race streak a four-race streak with a 15th place finish at Pocono despite the fact that she was caught up in an early crash.

Over the course of a few weeks, she went from never having finished in the top 15 in two straight races to being on a streak of four consecutive top 15 finishes, a major accomplishment…for her, that is.

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The fact that her current four-race stint is even considered a “hot streak” goes to show just how relative the terms “hot” and “cold” are. During this “hot streak”, she has not even finished in the top 10!

If any other driver on a top-tier team like Stewart-Haas Racing, Joe Gibbs Racing or Hendrick Motorsports or even a solid smaller team like Team Penske, Chip Ganassi Racing or Furniture Row Racing would be on this kind of streak, it would never, ever, ever be considered a “hot streak”; it may even be considered a cold streak for the majority of those teams’ drivers. Yet for Patrick, who drivers for Stewart-Haas Racing, this is considered a “hot streak.”

While Patrick is hotter than she usually is, the fact that her current four-race stint is considered a “hot streak” is laughable. Sure, the term is relative in any sport. But she’s driving for a top-tier organization and is apparently on a “hot streak” despite the fact that she has not even finished in the top 10 in any of the four races which make up that streak.

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Do you think Danica Patrick can keep up this “hot streak” with another top 15 finish at Watkins Glen? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to follow me on Instagram as well as Beyond the Flag on both Instagram and Twitter. Also, don’t forget to follow along with Beyond the Flag for the latest news, opinions and analysis stemming from a number of different motorsports series. You don’t want to miss any of it.