Danica Patrick has consistently been one of the worst drivers in the NASCAR Cup Series despite the fact that she is driving for a top-tier team in Stewart-Haas Racing. Which drivers who are stuck driving for smaller teams are more deserving than she is of her ride in the #10 Ford?
When it comes to Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series drivers that are undeserving of their rides with top-tier teams, particularly from a results standpoint, Stewart-Haas Racing’s Danica Patrick, 35, sets the gold standard.
Why? Because despite the fact that she has driven for the team for five full-time seasons and has had top-tier equipment, she has never come close to winning a race in 177 career starts, 167 of which in her time at Stewart-Haas Racing. In fact, she has never even finished in the top 5 and has just seven top 10 finishes, with only one of those top 10 finishes coming in the last 87 races (10th place at Dover earlier this season).
Just once in her previous four full-time seasons with Stewart-Haas Racing has she finished higher in the championship standings than another driver driving for a top-tier team, and that, once again, does not look like it will happen this season, as she is currently six spots lower than the next lowest driver who drives for a top-tier team.
That one driver was Tony Stewart in the 2015 season, and despite the fact that he is a three-time champion of the sport, he is now retired. Meanwhile, she has never finished higher than 24th place in the standings and still has her ride…with Stewart’s team, mind you.
Here are the top 10 drivers who currently drive for small and underfunded teams that are more deserving of Danica Patrick’s ride in the #10 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford than she is. While a few of these drivers may definitely come as surprises to you, keep in mind the fact that these drivers are not driving for organizations nearly as prominent as Patrick is at Stewart-Haas Racing.
#10 – Reed Sorenson, Premium Motorsports, No. 15 Toyota
In 13 seasons as NASCAR Cup Series driver, Reed Sorenson, 31, has only ever been a full-time driver in five of them, most recently in the 2014 season. He hasn’t had a ride with a solid team since the 2009 season when he drove for Richard Petty Motorsports following three seasons of driving for a rather solid Chip Ganassi Racing team.
Have a look at all of these teams he has driven for since the 2010 season. It’s no wonder he hasn’t finished in the top 10 in over seven years. In the 2010 season, he drove for Braun Racing and Team Red Bull. The following season, he drove for Robby Gordon Motorsports.
In the 2012 season, Sorenson drove for Turn One Racing, FAS Lane Racing, Humphrey Smith Racing and Go Green Racing. The following season, he drove for Leavine Family Racing before getting another full-time ride in the 2014 season with Tommy Baldwin Racing.
It doesn’t end there. In the 2015 season, he drove for Team Xtreme Racing, RAB Racing, Front Row Motorsports and Premium Motorsports before driving for Hillman Racing and Premium Motorsports again in the 2016 season. So far in the 2017 season, he has only driven for Premium Motorsports.
Through all of this, he still has better career statistics than Danica Patrick, whose five full-time seasons have all been with Stewart-Haas Racing. Sorenson has driven in 279 career races and has finished in the top 10 a total of 15 times, with all but one of those top 10 finishes coming in his seasons driving for Chip Ganassi Racing and Richard Petty Motorsports.
Meanwhile, Patrick has just seven top 10 finishes in 177 career races, with 167 races of those races coming in her time at Stewart-Haas Racing. And Sorenson also has five top 5 finishes with a career-high finish of 3rd place, while Patrick is still searching for her first career top 5. Sorenson’s career-high finish in the championship standings is 22nd place, while is two sports better than Patrick’s career high of 24th. He has never driven for a team as good as Stewart-Haas Racing, either.
#9 – Cole Whitt, TriStar Motorsports, No. 72 Chevrolet
Of the 10 drivers on this list, Cole Whitt, 26, is without a doubt the least proven. He has driven off and on in the NASCAR Cup Series since the 2011 season, but only in the 2014 season did he really start driving in pretty much every race, with the 2016 season being an exception, as he only drove in 26 of the 36 events that year.
Whitt, like Reed Sorenson, who was discussed on the previous slide, has driven for all kinds of smaller underfunded teams. In the 2011 season, he drove two races for Team Red Bull. In the 2012 season, he drove three races for Turn One Racing and two races for Circle Sport.
Then in the 2013 season, he drove seven races for Swan Racing Company before driving full-time in the 2014 season for Swan Racing (renamed from Swan Racing Company) and BK Racing. In the 2015 season, he continued driving full-time for Front Row Motorsports before driving the majority of the 2016 season’s races for Premium Motorsports. He currently drives for TriStar Motorsports.
Whitt’s statistics over the course of his 135 career Cup Series races, unlike the statistics of many of the other drivers in this article, are actually worse than Danica Patrick’s. In fact, he has never finished a single race in the top 10, although he has come close with a 12th place finish at Indianapolis this season, an 11th place finish at Daytona last season and a 13th place finish at Talladega in 2015. He also has several other top 20 finishes.
The reason why Whitt is more deserving of Patrick’s ride in the #10 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford than she is despite the fact that her numbers are better than his is due to the fact that her numbers are only slightly better than his and hers have been generated by driving for a top-tier team, the same top-tier team, for five seasons. Driving for a top-tier team, she has just seven top 10 finishes in 167 starts with no finishes inside the top 5.
Whitt, on the other hand, has switched teams at least once per season throughout his Cup Series career, and he’s never driven for a team that has anywhere near the resources that Stewart-Haas Racing has to offer. The fact that he has even come close to finishing in the top 10 driving for some of the teams he has driven for shows he is more deserving of Danica Patrick’s ride than she is.
#8 – Landon Cassill, Front Row Motorsports, No. 34 Ford
Landon Cassill, 28, like Reed Sorenson and Cole Whitt, has switched teams frequently throughout his NASCAR Cup Series career, which began back in the 2010 season but did not become a full-time gig until the 2011 season.
In the 2010 season, Cassill drove for Phoenix Racing, TRG Motorsports and Gunselman Motorsports before driving for Germain Racing and Phoenix Racing the following season in his first full season, although he still did miss four of the 36 races on the 2011 season schedule.
After the 2011 season, Cassill has never driven for more than one team in a season. However, he has still changed teams plenty of times. In the 2012 season, he drove for BK Racing before hopping over to Circle Sport for the 2013 season.
In the 2014 season, Cassill drove for Hillman Racing and then continued with the team in the 2015 season when it was renamed to Hillman Smith Motorsports. In the 2016 season, he started driving for Front Row Motorsports, which is the team he currently drives for.
In most ways, Cassill’s statistics do not match up to those of Danica Patrick’s. He has driven 246 career races and has just one top 10 finish, while she has seven top 10 finishes in 177 races. However, she is driving for a top-tier organization and still failing to produce solid results.
Cassill, on the other hand, has driven for lots of small and underfunded teams, so it’s amazing that he has produced the small amount of solid results that he has. While he does only have on career top 10 finish, it was far better than a 10th place effort, which we’ll touch on below. He also has four other finishes of either 11th or 12th place, so he’s been solid given the fact that he has never driven for a team nearly as good as Patrick has in Stewart-Haas Racing.
Now about that lone top 10 finish Cassill has to his name. He, unlike Patrick, has actually finished a Cup Series race in the top 5. While Patrick’s career-high Cup Series finish is only a 6th place effort at Atlanta in the 2014 season despite the fact that she has driven and is driving for Stewart-Haas Racing, Cassill’s career-high finish is a 4th place effort at Talladega in the 2014 season, and he did it driving for Hillman Racing.
#7 – Matt DiBenedetto, Go FAS Racing, No. 32 Ford
Admittedly, it may have been a bit of a stretch to say without a doubt that the first three drivers in this article deserve to drive the #10 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford more so than Danica Patrick does. After all, Sorenson, Whitt and Cassill has one combined top 10 finish since the 2010 season, with Whitt and Cassill having just one combined top 10 finish in 381 career NASCAR Cup Series races. It is still, however, certainly arguable for all three drivers.
But now things get serious. From #7 all the way through #1 is where the small-team drivers are who, without a doubt, deserve Patrick’s ride more than she does. Let’s really start getting things going here with Matt DiBenedetto.
DiBenedetto, 26, is a relatively new driver in the Cup Series. He came to the Cup Series in the 2015 season as a full-time driver, and he has driven full-time in the series ever since. In his first two seasons, he drove for BK Racing, and he now drives for Go FAS Racing.
It took him until his 41st career race to finally finish higher than 18th place, but he did so with a 6th place finish at Bristol last season, already tying Patrick’s career-high result. He added two more top 9 finishes in the 47 races that followed that, as he finished in 9th place at Daytona and 8th place at Indianapolis this season.
DiBenedetto has earned three top 9 results over the course of the last 51 races, while Patrick hasn’t finished in the top 9 in any of the last 87 races dating back to the 2015 season. Let’s not forget the fact that he earned these results driving for BK Racing and Go FAS Racing while she has failed to perform as a Stewart-Haas Racing driver.
#6 – David Ragan, Front Row Motorsports, No. 38 Ford
David Ragan, 31, has spent some seasons driving for some solid teams in the NASCAR Cup Series. Unlike Danica Patrick in her time at Stewart-Haas Racing, however, he has actually performed well for the teams he has driven for, and that’s despite the fact that none of the teams he has ever driven for have been as good as Stewart-Haas Racing.
Ragan began driving full-time in the 2007 season for Roush Fenway Racing, and he kicked off his time there with a 5th place finish at the Daytona 500. Right away, he secured himself a top 5 finish, something Patrick is still searching for after 177 career starts.
Ragan drove for Roush Fenway Racing from the 2007 season through the 2011 season before driving for Front Row Motorsports full-time from the 2012 season through the 2014 season. He drove for Front Row Motorsports in the 2015 Daytona 500 before hopping over to Joe Gibbs Racing to replace the injured Kyle Busch for a few races.
After nine races in relief of Busch, Ragan drove for Michael Waltrip Racing for the rest of the 2015 season. In the 2016 season, he ended up with BK Racing before making a return to Front Row Motorsports this season.
In 385 career Cup Series starts, a total that is just over twice as many starts as Patrick has in her career, Ragan has more than twice as many top 5 finishes (15) as she has top 10 finishes (7) and more than five times as many top 10 finishes (38) as she has.
Ragan also recently finished in 6th place at Daytona seven races ago, a result that would tie Patrick’s career-high, while she hasn’t finished higher than 10th place in any of the last 87 races. Ragan, unlike Patrick, has also won a race in his Cup Series career. In fact, he has won twice.
#5 – Michael McDowell, Leavine Family Racing, No. 95 Chevrolet
From #5 all the way through #2, these four drivers are all currently higher than Danica Patrick in the championship standings despite that none of them drive for a team anywhere near as good as the team she drives for in Stewart-Haas Racing.
Michael McDowell, 32, like many of the other drivers already mentioned in this article, has driven for team after team after team in his NASCAR Cup Series career. In his nine previous seasons in the sport, he has never driven a full season, although that appears as though it will change this season, as he hasn’t missed any of the 23 races already contested in 2017.
In the 2008 season, McDowell drove and finished a bunch of races for Michael Waltrip Racing before driving for Prism Motorsports and Tommy Baldwin Racing the following season and failing to finish a single race in eight attempts. In the 2010 season, he also drove for Prism Motorsports in addition to Whitney Motorsports, and he only finished one of the 24 races he contested that season.
In the 2011 season, McDowell finished just two of the 31 races he drove for HP Racing, but he did finish the one race he drove in relief of Kyle Busch at Joe Gibbs Racing. The following season, he drove for Phil Parsons Racing and finished just five of the 30 races he contested.
The story of not finishing races continued for McDowell in the 2013 season when he drove for Phil Parsons Racing, Front Row Motorsports and Phoenix Racing, and he finished just seven of the 33 races he contested. However, he did secure his first career top 10 finish with a 9th place finish at the Daytona 500 driving for Phil Parsons Racing.
Finally in the 2014 season, McDowell got himself a ride with the team he still drives for today, and that team is Leavine Family Racing, where he has not had any real issues finishing races on a regular basis. He recently recorded his career-high Cup Series finish driving for this team at Daytona with a 4th place effort, a finish better than Patrick’s career-high of 6th place for Stewart-Haas Racing.
McDowell has four other top 10 finishes in his 236 career Cup Series races, three of which coming since he began driving for his current team. While he hasn’t quite been as productive as Patrick has over the course of her career, the fact that he is as close as he is with a career-high finish better than hers despite the fact that he has driven for teams nowhere near the level of Stewart-Haas Racing illustrates why he is more deserving of her ride in the #10 Ford than she is.
Also, so far this season, no driver has completed more laps and more miles than McDowell has. Now that he has a car that he can actually finish races with, he hasn’t been a bad driver at all. Now imagine what would happen if he actually drove for a top-tier organization.
#4 – AJ Allmendinger, JTG Daugherty Racing, No. 47 Chevrolet
AJ Allmendinger, 35, is like Danica Patrick in that he has spent several seasons in both the NASCAR Cup Series and in IndyCar. While neither driver has really been anything special in the Cup Series after several solid seasons in IndyCar, Allmendinger has certainly outperformed Patrick despite the fact that he has never driven for a team as good as she has in Stewart-Haas Racing.
Allmendinger started out his Cup Series career in the 2006 season for Team Red Bull, but he failed to qualify for the two races he entered. He drove full-time for Team Red Bull the following season, but he qualified for only 17 of the 36 events on the schedule.
In the 2008 season, Allmendinger drove for Michael Waltrip Racing and Gillett Evernham Motorsports. When he finally made his first career Daytona 500 start in the 2009 season driving for Richard Petty Motorsports, the team he drove for from the 2009 season through the 2011 season, he finished in 3rd place, which is three positions higher than Patrick’s career-high finish in any Cup Series race to this day.
In the 2012 season, Allmendinger drove for Penske Racing and Phoenix Racing. He continued driving for Phoenix Racing the following season before hopping over to JTG Daugherty Racing towards the middle of the season. He has driven for JTG Daugherty Racing to this day.
In his 322 career Cup Series races, a total that is a little bit less than two times what Patrick’s total is, Allmendinger has one race win and 10 top 5 finishes to his name, two things Patrick does not have in 177 races. Allmendinger’s total of 52 top 10 finishes is also well above Patrick’s total of seven.
Thanks to a 9th place finish at Watkins Glen, Allmendinger has more top 9 finishes in the last two races than Patrick has in the last 87 events. Her top finish over those 87 races is just a 10th place effort at Dover earlier this season. The fact that she drives for a team far superior to the one he drives for and still doesn’t perform as well as he does goes to show that he is more deserving of a top-tier ride than she is.
#3 – Chris Buescher, JTG Daugherty Racing, No. 37 Chevrolet
Chris Buescher, 24, made his NASCAR Cup Series debut as a part-time driver for Front Row Motorsports in the 2015 season before officially becoming a rookie with the team the following season. It took him until his 27th career race to finally finish a race higher than 14th place, but when he finally did so, he did it in a big way, winning at Pocono to lock himself into the Chase in his first full season of competition.
While many will argue that Buescher’s win at Pocono was a fluke, what isn’t a fluke is the fact that he has definitely developed into somewhat of a solid driver since then, especially given the fact that he hasn’t driven for a top-tier team like Danica Patrick has at Stewart-Haas Racing and has still done well.
Two races after his maiden Cup Series win, Buescher finished in 5th place at Bristol, giving him two top 5 finishes in three races. Meanwhile, Patrick is still searching for her first career top 5 finish in 177 races.
In his first season for JTG Daugherty Racing, which is this season, Buescher didn’t get off to the hottest start. However, he has since kicked it up a notch, finishing in 10th place at Daytona, 9th place at Indianapolis and 6th place at Michigan over the course of the last seven races.
So while Buescher has three top 10 finishes in the last seven races, Patrick has just one top 10 finish in the last 87 events. What’s also impressive and proves the fact that he is more deserving of her current ride in the #10 Ford than she is is the fact that he has pulled this off driving for JTG Daugherty Racing while she has struggled to do well at Stewart-Haas Racing.
#2 – Ty Dillon, Germain Racing, No. 13 Chevrolet
As a NASCAR Cup Series rookie driving for Germain Racing this season, Ty Dillon, 25, has flown under the radar, especially with rookies Erik Jones and Daniel Suarez becoming regular contenders to win races. But of the small-team drivers, of which most are listed in this article, he is the highest in the championship standings out of all of them up in 23rd place, which is five spots higher than Danica Patrick’s position, and she drives for a top-tier organization in Stewart-Haas Racing.
Dillon has driven in 41 career Cup Series races, 23 of which this season. In the 2014 and 2015 seasons, he drove some races for Richard Childress Racing. Last season, he drove some races for Leavine Family Racing and Stewart-Haas Racing. While he has yet to finish a race in the top 10, he has consistently brought his car home in one piece, which is impressive given the fact that he drives for just a one-car team.
So far in his 41-race Cup Series career, he has failed to finish just three races, with two of those DNF’s coming this season. In the 21 of 23 races that he has finished so far this season, he has finished in the top 20 on 15 different occasions, which is impressive for a rookie, especially given the fact that he is driving for Germain Racing.
In several races, including those at Talladega, Dover and Daytona, he has been a factor late to potentially earn his first career victory. But despite establishing himself as a race contender, he hasn’t been able to pull through yet and has only finished as high as 13th place at Talladega.
Still, for Dillon, a rookie who has finished no higher than 13th place in a race, to be five spots higher than Patrick in the championship standings driving for Germain Racing while she drives for Stewart-Haas Racing is very telling, and it shows that he deserves to drive for a top-tier team such as Stewart-Haas Racing more so than she does.
#1 – Aric Almirola, Richard Petty Motorsports, No. 43 Ford
Aric Almirola, 33, is the only driver from #5 through #1 that is not currently higher than Danica Patrick in the championship standings. The reason he trails her by two positions is because he missed seven races due to a back injury he suffered in a crash involving her and Joey Logano at Kansas. He was well ahead of her before the accident took place, and again, he still only currently trails her by two positions.
Almirola’s NASCAR Cup Series career began back in the 2007 season when he drove one race for Joe Gibbs Racing and a few races for Dale Earnhardt, Inc. The following season, he drove a few races for Dale Earnhardt Inc. before hopping to Earnhardt Ganassi Racing to drive a few races in the 2009 season as well as Phoenix Racing to drive two more races, although he only qualified for one.
In the 2010 season, Almirola started out driving for Phoenix Racing before hopping to Tommy Baldwin Racing for one race, a race he failed to qualify for. He wrapped up the 2010 season driving for Richard Petty Motorsports before sitting out the entire 2011 season as a full-time Nationwide (now Xfinity) Series driver.
In the 2012 season, Almirola picked up where he left off at Richard Petty Motorsports, and he has been driving for the team ever since. He has driven in 231 career Cup Series races, and he has one career win to his name at Daytona in 2014.
Almirola’s 10 career top 5 finishes give him 10 more top 5 finishes than Danica Patrick has had in 177 career Cup Series races, and that’s despite the fact that Almirola has never driven full-time for a team as good as the team that Patrick drives for in Stewart-Haas Racing.
In addition to that, Almirola’s 29 career top 10 finishes give him more than four times the amount of top 10 finishes that Patrick has to her name (7), again, despite the fact that she drives for a far better team than he does. Therefore, it’s not a stretch to say that he is more deserving of her current ride in the #10 Ford than she is.
Closing Thoughts
Sure, a few drivers on this list have career statistics that aren’t as good as Danica Patrick’s. But when you compare the roads that their careers have taken to the one hers as taken, there is really no comparison.
Patrick has never had to drive full-time for some of the small, underfunded and, most importantly, slow teams that pretty much all 10 of these other drivers have. In each of her five full-time seasons in the NASCAR Cup Series, she has driven for Stewart-Haas Racing, a team far superior to any of the teams that these other drivers have driven for. Yet she has still been unable to perform at a high level.
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Also, given the fact that all of these drivers except for AJ Allmendinger are younger than Patrick is, it is pretty clear that most if not all of them are better options for Stewart-Haas Racing to put behind the wheel of the #10 Ford than Danica Patrick is.
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Even if it’s not somebody like Matt Kenseth or Kasey Kahne taking her seat, the team would be making a wise choice by picking one of these 10 under-the-radar drivers who currently drive for small and underfunded teams that don’t have the speed that Stewart-Haas Racing does.
The fact that some of these drivers have still outperformed Patrick over the course of their Cup Series careers with a few others being close to her level illustrates why the #10 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford should be in the hands of someone other than Patrick, and there are plenty of drivers to choose from who deserve that ride more so than she does. And the fact that some of the other drivers who haven’t outperformed her are even close to her from a performance standpoint adds evidence to that claim.
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Which driver of a smaller team do you think would perform the best if they had the chance to drive the #10 Stewart-Haas Racing Ford? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to follow 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.