BUY TICKETS: See the Daytona 500 live!
In the game ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon,’ contestants attempt to link an actor or actress to Kevin Bacon in six movies or less. The game became a fad more than 20 years ago (seriously, it’s been 20 years?), but it’s still fun to play (perhaps with an updated actor such as Ryan Gosling instead).
However, whether you’re matching Bacon or Gosling, degrees of separation are fascinating, so when TriStar Motorsports decided to bring back the No. 72 for Cole Whitt for his attempt at running in this year’s Daytona 500, we just had to check out the history of such an intriguing number choice to see what the connections were.
So in order to do so, we went to Racing Reference (racing-reference.info) and to the bottom of their homepage, under miscellaneous, where you can find a treasure trove of stats categories to explore, including “Stats By Car Number.”
Click there and then onto the No. 72, and this is where the meat of this story (and the smell of Bacon) begins:
— The last time the No. 72 was used in a NASCAR premier series race, it was 2006 in the fall race at Phoenix.
— The driver was Brandon Whitt, who is Cole Whitt‘s cousin. Brandon Whitt finished 37th in that race as the car went out after 123 laps because of a rear-end problem.
— Brandon Whitt was born in El Cajon, California, on Oct. 15, 1982.
— Jimmie Johnson was born in El Cajon, California, on Sept. 17, 1975.
— Johnson finished second to Kevin Harvick in the 2006 fall race at Phoenix and took home the first of his five consecutive NASCAR premier series championships.
— Kevin Harvick has the same first name as Kevin Bacon.
Winner, winner, BLT dinner! And just look at all the fun we had by wondering, ‘What’s in a number?’