On to Danica Patrick

As was begun in the last post here, the media adopts certain "darlings" in the world of sports. Danica Patrick most certainly qualifies.

Like most auto racers, she started out in go-karts as a kid and progressively moved up. Her travels eventually took her to England, where she participated in a minor league Formula series, then back to the US, where she somehow landed an Indy car ride at the tender age of 23.

Though still somewhat a novelty, Danica wasn't the first woman to qualify and race at the Indy 500. That honor went to Janet Guthrie way back in 1977. Guthrie's life and career as a racer is actually quite fascinating, and I'll be writing about that shortly. But back to Danica.

It's no big secret that the sport of open-wheel racing had basically self-destructed due to a long lasting feud between the powers that were, a couple decades ago. So when Danica came along, pretty face and all, it should have come as no great surprise that the Indy car PR folks, in conjunction with the media hypsters, trumpeted Ms. Patrick from every mountaintop. Surely, she would not only breathe life back into open-wheel racing, but be a frequent visitor to Victory Lane. The sport would quickly be restored to it's former greatness with Danica leading the way. Needless to say, it didn't quite work out like that.

When Danica was an Indy car racer, she had top notch equipment from top to bottom. First it was Rahal Letterman racing, and then Andretti Motorsports. Those two outfits were heavyweights in the Indy car world. Yet, despite the superior gear and unending hype, Danica couldn't seem to win. Yes, she won an obscure race in Japan, but the best she ever did at the Indy 500 was 3rd. What was almost comical was every year at the Brickyard, when the superior drivers were coming in for routine fuel and tire pit stops -- Danica was always left out on the track for another lap or two. That allowed the announcers to breathlessly scream, "Danica Patrick's leading the Indianapolis 500". After Danica had to come in for the same pit stop and the field reset itself, she would typically be back in the middle of the pack. But, by God, she was leading it for a few minutes, the hypsters would remind us. One word. Please.

Having unconquered that circuit, Danica decided to move on to greener pastures. NASCAR. It's certainly a bigger market and offers many more opportunities. Instead of just one marquis race a year like in Indy car, NASCAR has a bunch of them. No more worries about making a driving mistake and incidental contact that would trash her Indy ride. Now she could play bumper cars with the roundy-round boys and carry on. And the exposure? Holy cow. Bring on the drooling redneck fans every week, schedule the photo shoots, and line up the endorsements.

Thing is, Danica doesn't seem to be any better in a "stock" car than she was in an Indy car. In fact, it's gotten worse. Forget winning, she's not even competitive. On top of that, it's a rarity she can go through an entire race without totalling the car. At one point she'd participated in 7 races, and wrecked 6 cars. Like her Indy days, Danica is still sponsored by Go Daddy. What exactly is that anyway? Some sort of on-line business? What she used to say to her father when she was getting spanked for being a bad girl? Beats me, but whoever it is, they must be getting a little financially weary of how many cars they're getting cha-chinged for. Those things don't come cheap.

And this is only in the minor leagues of NASCAR, commonly known as the Nationwide Series. Danica is running a "limited" schedule with the big boys in NASCAR's major leagues -- the Sprint Cup Series. No doubt, the hypesters wait with bated breath and a bazillion sound bytes for Danica to become a full time participant on that circuit. If she ever somehow actually wins a big time race, the media blitz will be incredible. The chances of that happening? Hard to say. Anything's possible. Jim Leyland might decide to grow a ponytail. But I wouldn't count on it.

Danica's not that good as a race car driver.
She never has been.
Chances are, she never will be.

But the hype will continue, at least until those that bestow pseudo royalty can find another to anoint.