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NASCAR Nationwide Series
ARCA: Daytona Welcomes Danica
Danica has officially arrived...
Mike Hembree  |  Posted February 04, 2010   Daytona Beach, FL
Danica Patrick will make her stock car debut this Saturday in the ARA race at Daytona International Speedway. (Photo: LAT Photographic)
DanicaMania has begun.

On NASCAR Media Day Thursday at Daytona International Speedway, other drivers wandered by a huge congregation of journalists and flashed grins. At the center of the throng on one side of the media tent complex was Danica Patrick, fresh from open-wheel land and new to everything stock car.

If the rest of the NASCAR driver corps got a little less attention Thursday at one of the biggest motorsports news media events of the year (think pre-Super Bowl), Patrick was the problem. Dressed in a bright green fire suit and showing the smile that has carried more than one advertising campaign, she talked in depth Thursday morning about the immediate challenge – her first stock car appearance, in Saturday’s Automobile Racing Club of America event – and the more important long-term test that her part-time Nationwide Series schedule will present.

And about those television lights…she’s used to those.

“I’ve felt this kind of stuff before,” she said. “I’m very flattered that I can still be in a position where people are interested in me. I’ve also been blessed with a lot of journalists writing nice things about me and writing about me in general. It kind of feeds the system. I ‘m lucky to be in this position.”

She is scheduled to hit the track for the first time during a noon ARCA practice session today. How she performs in Saturday’s ARCA 200-miler will be a contributing factor in the JR Motorsports team’s decision on whether she will race in the Nationwide Series opener here Feb. 13. That decision is scheduled to be announced Monday, but there was significant pressure building from numerous angles Thursday for Patrick, a new public relations magnet for NASCAR, to enter the Nationwide event.

“I think it’s probably good we’ll announce whether or not on Monday,” Patrick said. “I just want to be smart. This is the biggest race of the year for everybody. There are guys who are going to be out there running for a championship this weekend and next weekend. It’s been recommended that it’s not the best idea to start (Nationwide racing) here, and I’m not going to ignore the people who have given me advice.”

She said she is more concerned about how Saturday’s ARCA race develops than how she finishes in it.

“I’d like to do better than just finish,” she said. “I don’t know how it’s going to go. A lot of these guys have done it for a long time. I don’t think I can put a number on it. I never do that. I think the idea is for me to improve on myself and the car all weekend. Then see where it shakes out.

“It’s going to be a lot of getting a feeling. I might have a great race, but maybe for some reason I didn’t have to be challenged in some kind of a way. What if I’m pulling into pit lane and no one’s in front of me and it’s easy to see my pit stall. That will be different than (in the Nationwide race) maybe having 20 or 30 cars in front of me.

“But if I don’t finish well but feel good about what I’ve learned that could be enough.”

The most important thing she learned in test runs, Patrick said, is that the stock car experience will be a much “closer” one.

“You run so much closer in these cars than in Indy cars,” she said. “In Indy cars you’re a couple of car lengths back and you’re as close as you’re gong to get and you’re probably on your way to passing. But in these cars I had to close that from two car lengths. And you feel a little claustrophobic being that close to a car turning into a corner. You’re just not used to that distance.

“I’m going to have to learn. If I’m part of an accident, if I make a mistake, I’m going to learn from it. I can’t change that.”

Mike Hembree is NASCAR Editor for SPEEDtv.com and has been covering motorsports for 28 years. He has written several books on NASCAR, including "NASCAR: The Definitive History of America's Sport" and "Then Tony Said To Junior: The Best NASCAR Stories Ever Told". He is a six-time winner of the National Motorsports Press Association Writer of the Year Award.


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