NASCAR: Jimmie Johnson/Danica Patrick comparison is completely inaccurate

A recent comparison between seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion Jimmie Johnson and Danica Patrick is completely inaccurate on so many levels.

Following Jimmie Johnson’s rough start to the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season, which included one wreck in each of the three Daytona races (the Clash, the first Can-Am Duel, and the Daytona 500) and a spin at Atlanta, a ridiculous comparison has been made between Johnson and Danica Patrick, who retired from Cup Series competition after her Daytona 500 crash a few weeks ago.

There is so much evidence to debunk this comparison that I don’t even know where to start, so I’ll keep it simple.

First of all, Johnson, who is driving in his 17th full-time Cup Series season for Hendrick Motorsports, is a seven-time champion of the sport. He won his all-time record seven championships in an 11-year span, which is a far shorter span than Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt needed to win their seven titles.

Patrick, meanwhile, drove in 191 Cup Series races and finished in the top 10 in just seven of them despite the fact that she was a full-time driver for Stewart-Haas Racing, one of NASCAR’s top-tier teams in 180 of those races.

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In other words, Johnson has as many career championships as Patrick has career top 10 race finishes.

In fact, Johnson has won seven or more races in a season four times in his Cup Series career. He won eight races in the 2004 season, 10 races in the 2007 season, seven races in the 2008 season and seven races in the 2009 season. Again, Patrick recorded just seven top 10 finishes in five full-time seasons combined.

In addition to having only seven career top 10 finishes, Patrick also never finished a single race in the top 5, much less won a race. Meanwhile, Johnson has won 83 races, which is one win away from a 4th place tie on the all-time wins list, and he has racked up 222 top 5 finishes and 341 top 10 finishes.

But after his slow start to the 2018 Cup Series season, which came after a rather slow ending to the 2017 season, Johnson is now on a career-long winless streak of 26 races. His previous career-long winless streak was 24.

Because of the fact that he kept wrecking at Daytona before spinning at Atlanta, a comparison has been made between Johnson and Patrick since she crashed so much throughout her Cup Series career.

If you want to take the crashing angle as opposed to the results angle, that’s fine, but again, the evidence shows that there is still no real comparison.

In 582 career Cup Series starts, Johnson has failed to finish just 56 races, meaning he has finished 90.38% of the races he has started. Meanwhile, Patrick failed to finish 30 of her 191 career races, meaning she finished just 84.29% of the race she started.

This means that Patrick has failed to finish more than half of the amount of Cup Series races that Johnson has failed to finish despite the fact that Johnson has driven in more than three times the number of races that she has driven in.

Again, there is no comparison — at all.

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The recent comparison between Jimmie Johnson and Danica Patrick could not be more ridiculous. The fact that this even has to be said is ridiculous enough. Sure, some people have made jokes about Johnson’s slow start to the 2018 NASCAR Cup Series season. That’s fine. However, some people are taking the jokes way too far and actually trying to compare Johnson and Patrick, which is just plan ridiculous. There is no real comparison, and there is nothing to even remotely suggest that there ever will be. Period.

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