Full Throttle

USA Today has published this years statistics that cover the number, location and drivers involved in crashes during the NASCAR season. Gregg Easterbrook was once quoted as saying “Torture numbers, and they’ll confess to anything”

Hard to argue that point and as USAT put the thumb screws to 2006 they found J.J. Yeley became the first full-time rookie to lead the list since the paper began analyzing wrecks and cautions in 2002. Yeley responded to the news by saying, “awesome,” with a smirk.

I doubt if Joe Gibbs or his fab shop employees were doing much grinnin’.

The rest of the stats package yielded the expected, a couple surprises and to my mind one puzzlement.

Over the last 5 years the three shortest tracks in NASCAR, Bristol, Martinsville and Richmond, have led the Series’ hit parade (literally) with 132, 128 and 92 accidents respectively.

Hardly surprising, in fact expected and dare I say, one of the reasons these three are among the fans favorite NASCAR venues. The biggest surprise is at the tail end of the list.

Talladega, of all places, sits at the bottom with only 34 crashes over the last 5 years. That’s Talladega, a track along with its kissing cousin Daytona, put the capitalization in “THE BIG ONE.”

Of course those numbers don’t account for THE BIG ONE. If the stats were on number of cars per crash the story would be different. But still, Talladega being at the bottom of any crash stats is unusual. (And don’t wag your finger at Daytona either, it sits 16th with only 47 incidents over five years)

USAT also compiled the stats for crashes and their location on the track. When the four turns, the frontstretch and backstretch are added up the sum total is 95.4% with turn 4 accounting for 28.7% of the total accidents in 2006.

And there’s the puzzlement, where the hell is the other 4.6%? According to USAT they occurred in a place called “other.”

The only “other” I can think of would be pit road. That calls into question the papers methodology and what they are calling a crash. The 4.6% only represents 11 crashes for the year.

Is it 11 incidents that knocked a driver out of the race? That hardly sounds plausible, I don’t recall any pit incidents that met that criteria, although there may have been one or two.

And surely their must have been more than 11 incidents that caused damage on pit road, I recall 3-4 during the Chase alone. Maybe “other” places for crashes are in the same location as NASCAR’s “debris cautions.” Whatever, it’s just a small puzzlement in the overall scheme of things.

One other interesting note. Check the individual driver listing of crashes. All the Chase drivers sit at the bottom. Dale Jr. leads with 9 during 2006, Kasey Kahne had the fewest with only 5. Jimmie Johnson had 6. (not counting the golf cart I presume)

Joe Gibbs should have the bottom half of that list tattooed on J.J. Yeley’s arm. With it as a constant reminder maybe he could approach teammate Denny Hamlin’s numbers in 2007.

All in all the stats are interesting, if only because the seasons over and the racing newswires are quiet as a church mouse.

NASCAR, NEXTEL Cup, Sports, J J Yeley, Auto Racing, Motorsports, Full Throttle