As suggested in a comment on the last story, it might be useful to look at top-5s in the context of races run, and have a look at the percentage of races that these drivers were able to convert into top-5s.

For the sake of brevity, I’m going to look at the four drivers mentioned in the last post.

In order of top-5 percentage:

1) David Pearson – 574 races, 301 top 5s (52%), 105 wins (18%)

2) Richard Petty – 1185 races run, 555 top 5s (47%), 200 wins (17%)

3) Bobby Allison – 717 races, 336 top 5s (46%), 85 wins (12%)

4) Jeff Gordon – 700 races run, 300 top 5s (43%), 87 wins (12%)

UPDATE – decided to add Jimmie Johnson to this list:

5) Jimmie Johnson – 410 races run, 172 top 5s (42%), 62 wins (15%)

On this last podcast, we covered the fact that Jeff Gordon recorded his 300th top 5 of his career at Darlington.

Most reporting did not really give us a sense of the magnitude of his achievement.

On the podcast, I mentioned that Richard Petty, Bobby Allison, and David Pearson were the only other NASCAR drivers to earn more top 5s.

But the question remained – how many more does Gordon have to get before he moves higher up the list? I couldn’t find this information while we were recording, but according to an article on nascar.com, he doesn’t have far to go.

“[Gordon] now ranks behind only NASCAR Hall of Famers Richard Petty (555), Bobby Allison (336) and David Pearson (301) in career top-fives.”

So two more top-5s, and he’ll move ahead of David Pearson. 37 more, and he’ll move ahead of Bobby Allison. If he is able to earn a top-5 in about 30% of his remaining races (approximately his top-5 percentage from last year), it will take him 6 or 7 more races to pass David Pearson, and another 3.5 seasons to pass Bobby Allison, and another 24 seasons to pass Richard Petty.

If he maintained his current top-5 percentage of 43%, he’ll only have to go 17 years to eclipse Richard Petty. Either way, he will not be driving in the sport that long.

But he has a shot at the other two.

Just heard that Denny Hamlin does not have a backup plan, and is planning to be in the car for the entire race at Darlington.

Time to update my ESPN fantasy picks – Denny is great at this track, and 13th in the first practice.