NASCAR: Should Danica Patrick be a Hall of Famer?

Getting down to the basics

There are 32 drivers currently in the NASCAR Hall of Fame. That’s it, not that that number really matters given how poor a lot of these statistics that I am about to present you with are. Whether there are 32 drivers or 320 drivers in the NASCAR Hall of Fame really should make no difference in judging whether a driver with the following statistics deserves a spot.

Here are the statistics.

• 180 career Cup Series starts
• 0 wins
• 0 top 5 finishes
• Career-high 6th place race finish
• 7 top 10 finishes
• 1 top 10 finish in last 90 races
• 4 full seasons completed
• Career-high 24th place standings finish

You probably guessed that those are Danica Patrick’s numbers. However, leaving name, gender and all of that other stuff that has nothing to do with the sport itself out of the equation, do those stats even warrant Hall of Fame consideration?

Here is a list of the 32 drivers that are already in the Hall of Fame.

• Dale Earnhardt
• Junior Johnson
• Richard Petty
• Bobby Allison
• Ned Jarrett
• David Pearson
• Lee Petty
• Richie Evans
• Darrell Waltrip
• Cale Yarborough
• Buck Baker
• Cotton Owens
• Herb Thomas
• Rusty Wallace
• Tim Flock
• Jack Ingram
• Dale Jarrett
• Fireball Roberts
• Bill Elliott
• Fred Lorenzen
• Wendell Scott
• Joe Weatherly
• Rex White
• Jerry Cook
• Bobby Isaac
• Terry Labonte
• Curtis Turner
• Richard Childress
• Mark Martin
• Benny Parsons
• Red Byron
• Ron Hornaday Jr.

Patrick’s NASCAR career has been nowhere near as successful as the careers of any of those 32 Hall of Fame drivers. So to answer the question asked to close out the previous paragraph, absolutely not, and seeing as how it’s the NASCAR Hall of Fame, that should be the end of the story.