Aric Almirola has already done as well as nearly any 2-race Danica Patrick stretch

It’s early days, but the driver switch in the No. 10 Ford is already working out to the benefit of Stewart-Haas Racing.

This is the time of the NASCAR season when everyone cautions not to read too much into what’s happened so far. Since Daytona and Atlanta are very much their own animals, the wisdom of the masses says that we won’t be able to identify trends that will impact the rest of the year for a couple more races. Still, numbers don’t lie, especially in the case of what Aric Alimrola has done replacing Danica Patrick.

The lasting image most fans have of Almirola two races into his Stewart-Haas Racing stint is being dumped into the wall by Austin Dillon and losing out on a Daytona 500 victory on the final lap. If he would have held on to win instead of finishing 11th, that would have ended any and all comparisons to Danica, who never won a NASCAR Cup Series race, let alone the Great American Race.

Almirola followed that with a relatively nondescript 13th-place finish at Atlanta, and it’s a testament to how strong the Stewart-Haas cars were there that he was actually the lowest finisher on the team. So after two races for his new organization, he’s got an average finish of 12th.

How many times has Patrick had an average finish of 12th or better over any two races? Only three times: once in 2014 (when she came in sixth at Atlanta, then a fall race, and 16th at Richmond), once in 2015 (seventh at Martinsville followed by 16th at Texas) and once last season (13th at New Hampshire, 11th at the Brickyard). That’s it.

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One of the reasons Almirola-Patrick comparisons are so fascinating is that they’re Cup Series careers are nearly identical. Almirola got a one-year head start at Richard Petty Motorsports, hopping into the 43 full-time for the 2012 season. Danica arrived a season later, and both drivers stayed with the same teams from 2013-2017.

Over those five seasons, Almirola handily topped Patrick in top-10 finishes, 17 to seven, and grabbed his lone Cup Series victory in the 2014 Coke Zero 400 at Daytona. Yet he never finished higher than 16th in the season-ending standings, so calling him a slam dunk to do better than the driver he is replacing is a bit of an overstatement.

At 33, he’s also not part of the youth movement gripping other parts of the NASCAR Cup Series garage. The fact that Smithfield was willing to come over with him was undoubtedly part of his appeal, but the thought was that maybe better equipment would allow Almirola to better show his true measure as a racer.

Next: Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series standings after Atlanta

An argument could certainly be made that perhaps Almirola partially lucked into joining Stewart-Haas Racing at exactly the right time, as strong as its cars have looked early in the 2018 season. Still — and with no disrespect intended to Patrick — it’s only taken two races, unique though they might be, for him to prove he’s likely a step up.