Boo!
Did I scare you?
It's Friday the 13th. A day filled with superstitions and "curses."
Why is Friday the 13th so unlucky?
Here are a few references to why the day became so "unlucky."
• There is a Biblical reference to the unlucky No. 13. Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus, was the 13th guest to the Last Supper.
• Numerologists consider 12 a "complete" number. There are 12 months in a year, 12 signs of the zodiac, 12 gods of Olympus, 12 labors of Hercules, 12 tribes of Israel, and 12 apostles of Jesus. In exceeding 12 by one, 13's association with bad luck has to do with just being a little beyond completeness.
• A particularly bad Friday the 13th occurred in the Middle Ages. On a Friday the 13th in 1306, King Phillip of France arrested the revered Knights Templar and began torturing them, marking the occasion as a day of evil.
In rolling with the times, I decided to take a look at some of the "unluckiest" car numbers to ever take to the track in NASCAR.
It was a long and drawn out process (much longer than I wanted it to be for free), but I think I came up with a good system to figure out which car number has had the worst luck.
And by luck, I really mean the least amount of success.
So here's what I did.
I took all 115 cars that have ever run in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series (the reason there are 115 is because several cars ran numbers such as 07, 09, 00 and so forth.)
After compiling all the stats I needed, starts, wins, top-fives, top-10s and poles, I came up with a formula.
It looked like this: (wins/starts) + (top-fives/starts) + (top-10s/starts) + (poles/starts).
(Basically, what I did was take the percentage of time each number win, or finished in the top-five or top-10 and sat on the pole.)
After putting each car through the formula, I was left with a number. I ranked the numbers from highest to lowest, with the lowest number being the least successful.
Unluckiest Car Numbers
In case you are thinking of starting a Sprint Cup team, the top number to stay away from appears to be 79.
The No. 79 came in at a pitiful .09. In 471 career starts, the number has visited Victory Lane zero times, has three top-fives and 39 top-10 finishes. The car number has also never sat on the pole, thus earning the honors of "Unluckiest Car Number."
Second place was tied at 0.11 with car numbers 65 and 52.
No. 65 has a considerably less amount of starts than 52 at 94 and 659, respectively.
The No. 65 has never visited Victory Lane, has one top-five and nine top-10 finishes, and has never sat on the pole.
The No. 52 has two wins, 11 top-fives, 60 top-10 finishes and one pole.
Rounding out the top 10 "unluckiest" numbers were:
3. No. 63 (0.12)
4. No. 66 and No. 01 (0.13)
5. No. 77 (0.14)
6. No. 61 and No. 13 (0.15)
7. No. 53 and No. 81 (0.16)
8. No. 96, No. 0, No. 09, No. 00, No. 58, and No. 74 (0.17)
9. No. 70 and No. 50 (0.18)
10. No. 57 (0.19)
Unluckiest Active Car Numbers
While the numbers above are interesting. I thought most would like to see what the "unluckiest" car numbers active today rank.
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