It seems that every year, somebody in Winston Cup is complaining about another car make. This year is no exception. After the Cracker Barrel 500 at Atlanta, the top cars of each make were taken to the nearby wind tunnel for testing. Apparently, the Monte Carlo of Jeff Gordon's showed some advantages over the Taurus. Jeez, it took a wind tunnel to tell us that the car was very good aerodynamically? Last year, the Taurus had the advantage. A few years ago it was the Monte Carlo, and before that the Thunderbird. And the beat goes on. Who knows what next year will bring. Will the new Monte outdo the new Taurus? Time will tell. I know one thing for certain. If the mission of NASCAR is to reach parity among all manufacturers, then they have succeeded. A simple statistical analysis will prove me out.

Through ten races, there have been 430 available starting positions. Ford captured 203 of them, Chevy 150 of them and Pontiac 77. That means that Ford has been 47.2 % of the field each week, while Chevy has been 34.9% and Pontiac the remaining 17.9 each week. Here is where it gets interesting. Because qualifying was rained out last week, there have been only 9 Bud Poles given out so far. Ford has 3 of them, Chevy has three of them and Pontiac has three of them. Doesn't get much more even than that. That was the easy part. The tough part is weighing the top finishes. Sure, Ford has a lot more top five and ten finishes this year, but remember Ford makes up almost half the field each week. Lets see where they stack up. In ten races, there have been 50 top five finishes available. Ford grabbed 26 of them, 52%. Chevy nabbed 13, which is 26% and Pontiac 11 top five finishes, 22% of all the top five finishes available. Based on how many of each make is in the field, to Ford and Pontiac are doing better than expected while Chevy is doing worse than what someone looking for true parity wants to see. Lets move on to top ten finishes. In 10 races, there are 100 top ten finishes available. Ford got 41, Chevy 34 and Pontiac 25 top ten finishes. Now what we have is almost exactly the same percentage of Chevy's in the field each week getting a top ten. (34.9% of the field Chevy and 34% of the top tens also being Chevy) Ford drops off a bit in top tens compared to how many start each race. (over 47% of the field only getting 41% of the top tens) Pontiac may be the smallest make in terms of the amount of the field, but they are getting a quarter of the top ten finishes. For the people that still want to say that Chevy is being handicapped and want to point at Fords advantage in top 5 finishes, remember that Chevy has won 50% of the races, Ford 40% and Pontiac 10%. I think this adds to the idea of parity because even though Chevy may be getting a little less of the top fives, they are making up for it with wins.

Competitors are always going to point at their opponents and complain that they have an unfair advantage. It happens in all sports. The Kansas City Royals think that the New York Yankees have an unfair advantage, small market teams in the NFL don't like the way the Dallas Cowboys do business and so forth. NASCAR, in their quest for parity must be sitting back and smiling at a mission accomplished.