Vroom Vroom does Dover
And goodbye to the Lakers
It’s a Vroom Vroom day on the podcast, as Addy and Jesse went to Dover for Casual Diehard’s first live race coverage, and return to discuss it with Britt and Katie. You’ll hear from drivers Ryan Ellis and Parker Retzlaff from the NASCAR Xfinity Series, as well as ARCA drivers Toni Breidinger, Lavar Scott, Zachary Tinkle, and Connor Zilisch.
We’re also looking forward to the F1 race at Miami, and not looking past Denny Hamlin’s third win of the NASCAR Cup Series season. That win for Hamlin came after a very cringe moment for Hamlin, when Kevin Harvick asked the Joe Gibbs Racing drivers to choose between Chase Elliott and Dale Earnhardt Jr., and 2017 Cup champion Martin Truex Jr. calmly noted Elliott having won a championship, which Earnhardt did not, and crucially, neither has Hamlin — and you could see the sting in Hamlin’s face, even after multiple cuts before getting back to him.
Harvick said it was the hardest question those drivers would have to answer, and he’s wrong about that. Even as a Dale Jr. fan, you don’t even need the championship to set the two apart.
Earnhardt made 631 Cup starts, while Elliott, who’s currently 28 years old, has made 297. Earnhardt had 26 wins and 260 top-10 finishes, while Elliott is at 19 and 157, respectively. That’s a 6.4% to 4.1% advantage in win rate for Elliott, and 53% to 41% for finishing in the top 10.
The real question, and where you want to ask how much difference a championship makes, would be Elliott against… well, against Hamlin. Denny has made 661 starts, but won way more races than Dale Jr., with 55 now, a win rate of 8.3% that’s more than twice Earnhardt, and significantly better than Elliott. With 344 top-10 finishes, Hamlin has a 52% rate for his races, basically equivalent to Elliott — they’re 0.72% apart on that stat. And Elliott took his championship in the 2020 title race where Hamlin had one of his shots to seal his legacy.
Earnhardt is one of the greats, but his impact on racing goes well beyond his on-track performance at the Cup Series level, which by itself would have him on more of a level with Greg Biffle, Geoff Bodine, and Ricky Rudd — and that’s no insult, those are all great drivers. Elliott, in the middle of his prime, has himself at a Davey Allison/Dale Jarrett/Terry Labonte level of the conversation among the all-timers, and a lot more room to reach his ceiling, which is much closer to Dale Sr. than it is to Dale Jr. … so, no, the question of Chase vs. Dale Jr. isn’t that hard, and the JGR drivers all got it right rather easily, with the bonus of making Hamlin wriggle awkwardly in his seat.
The Nuggets finished off the Lakers last night, 108-106, marking the second time that Los Angeles has been closed out by that exact score. The first one was Game 7 of the 1969 NBA Finals. Please enjoy this presentation of the Converse Rubber Company:
Game 4, the Lakers’ only win in the series, was 119-108, a reverse of last year’s Denver-L.A. score from Game 3.
While the Nuggets didn’t get the first-round sweep this year, the Thunder did, finishing off the Pelicans, 97-89. That’s a new score for a closeout game, but the last time we saw 97-89 in the playoffs was also part of a sweep, Game 1 of the 2015 Cavaliers-Hawks series.