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Nationwide
NNS: Patrick Wrestling With Car, Future
Danica Patrick has had a humbling first year in NASCAR...
Danica Patrick answers questions from the press in the media center following practice for the NASCAR Nationwide Series Dollar General 300 at the Chicagoland Speedway. (Photo: Getty Images)
The numbers don’t lie.
• AJ Allmendinger, 98 career NASCAR Sprint Cup starts, no victories, one top-five finish.
• Robby Gordon, 357 starts, three victories, 16 top fives.
• Sam Hornish Jr., 90 starts, no victories or top fives.
• Casey Mears, 259 starts, one victory, 12 top fives.
• Juan Pablo Montoya, 127 starts, one victory, 16 top fives.
• Scott Speed, 58 starts, no victories, one top five.
And that doesn’t even include guys like Dario Franchitti, Jacques Villeneuve and Patrick Carpentier who came from stellar open-wheel backgrounds but quickly washed out in stock cars.
Of all the drivers who’ve come into the Sprint Cup series with a background of racing IndyCars or in Formula 1, Tony Stewart is the only one to enjoy a NASCAR career that truly can be considered successful year after year.
For whatever reason, drivers as talented as Hornish, a three-time IZOD IndyCar Series champion, and even Montoya, the brilliant former CART champion and Indy 500 and Monaco Grand Prix winner, have not been able to post anything near the results in stock cars that they did when they were racing open-wheelers.
Against that backdrop, Danica Patrick on Friday professed that her first year’s journey into NASCAR has been more difficult that she thought it would be.
“I’m starting to realize that this is really challenging, it’s really hard and I need not be so hard on myself and I need to just stay upbeat and take every lap as an improvement from the one before and that’s it, just keep marching forward,” Patrick said Friday at Chicagoland Speedway, where she will compete in her fifth NASCAR Nationwide Series race later tonight.
“I feel kind of bad that it’s not more amazing out there, I’m not higher up, because it’s more entertaining for the fans and a better story,” said Patrick, who has not finished better than 30th in her first four NNS races. “But it’s just very hard. It speaks volumes of how good these drivers are in stock cars.”
Patrick’s schedule calls for her to run 13 NNS races with JR Motorsports this season and a similar amount next year, while running full seasons in the IZOD IndyCar Series for Andretti Autosports both this year and next.
Sometime late in 2011, Patrick said she’ll decide where she wants to race.
“I have a tremendous amount to learn, and even if it was full time, would it be going better? Maybe,” Patrick said. “But it wouldn’t be some big, dramatic difference. Getting this base of knowledge now is the hardest part. We’re going to do the schedule like this for this year and next year and then we’ll sort of (decide) where we’re at and what we want to do in the future. Maybe it will be more of both. Maybe it will be one. Maybe it will be the other. I’m really not sure.”
Patrick’s presence in stock cars has been beneficial on several levels. When she appeared in the season-opening ARCA race at Daytona, television ratings on SPEED went up 59 percent. Likewise, her NASCAR Nationwide debut at Daytona saw ratings shoot up 32 percent. Her souvenir trailer at NASCAR races consistently has drawn huge crowds and she commands tremendous media attention. And without question, her GoDaddy.com sponsorship was a huge relief for JR Motorsports, which had struggled to find dollars.
But enormous popularity has absolutely no correlation to on-track performance, as Patrick is finding out. And it appears that the novelty of her presence might be wearing off on her peers.
“When she comes over and races with us in NASCAR, I giggle at that,” said Kurt Busch during a Friday press conference at Chicagoland Speedway. “It’s only Nationwide, it’s not the big show. You have to be in the big show if you want to race with the big guys.”
And then Busch compared her situation to LeBron James.
“Right now, she’s very limited because she’s still committed to the IRL schedule,” Busch said of Patrick. “This is just a work in progress. We’ll have to wait and see the final product when she decides what road she’s going to go down. She’ll probably have a one-hour ESPN primetime special when she wants to announce it.”
And so for Patrick, the education in the school of hard knocks will continue for the near future as she tries to work with crew chief Tony Eury Jr. to learn the nuances of driving a stock car.
“I don’t always know the difference between setup issues,” said Patrick. “Is it the spring, is it the camber, is it the (track) bar, is it geometry? I don’t have any idea. I’m not very good at helping Tony Jr. go in a certain direction. All I can say is what the car is doing. I wish I could help out more with that, but that’s just going to come with time.”
Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.
• AJ Allmendinger, 98 career NASCAR Sprint Cup starts, no victories, one top-five finish.
• Robby Gordon, 357 starts, three victories, 16 top fives.
• Sam Hornish Jr., 90 starts, no victories or top fives.
• Casey Mears, 259 starts, one victory, 12 top fives.
• Juan Pablo Montoya, 127 starts, one victory, 16 top fives.
• Scott Speed, 58 starts, no victories, one top five.
And that doesn’t even include guys like Dario Franchitti, Jacques Villeneuve and Patrick Carpentier who came from stellar open-wheel backgrounds but quickly washed out in stock cars.
Of all the drivers who’ve come into the Sprint Cup series with a background of racing IndyCars or in Formula 1, Tony Stewart is the only one to enjoy a NASCAR career that truly can be considered successful year after year.
For whatever reason, drivers as talented as Hornish, a three-time IZOD IndyCar Series champion, and even Montoya, the brilliant former CART champion and Indy 500 and Monaco Grand Prix winner, have not been able to post anything near the results in stock cars that they did when they were racing open-wheelers.
Against that backdrop, Danica Patrick on Friday professed that her first year’s journey into NASCAR has been more difficult that she thought it would be.
“I’m starting to realize that this is really challenging, it’s really hard and I need not be so hard on myself and I need to just stay upbeat and take every lap as an improvement from the one before and that’s it, just keep marching forward,” Patrick said Friday at Chicagoland Speedway, where she will compete in her fifth NASCAR Nationwide Series race later tonight.
“I feel kind of bad that it’s not more amazing out there, I’m not higher up, because it’s more entertaining for the fans and a better story,” said Patrick, who has not finished better than 30th in her first four NNS races. “But it’s just very hard. It speaks volumes of how good these drivers are in stock cars.”
Patrick’s schedule calls for her to run 13 NNS races with JR Motorsports this season and a similar amount next year, while running full seasons in the IZOD IndyCar Series for Andretti Autosports both this year and next.
Sometime late in 2011, Patrick said she’ll decide where she wants to race.
“I have a tremendous amount to learn, and even if it was full time, would it be going better? Maybe,” Patrick said. “But it wouldn’t be some big, dramatic difference. Getting this base of knowledge now is the hardest part. We’re going to do the schedule like this for this year and next year and then we’ll sort of (decide) where we’re at and what we want to do in the future. Maybe it will be more of both. Maybe it will be one. Maybe it will be the other. I’m really not sure.”
Patrick’s presence in stock cars has been beneficial on several levels. When she appeared in the season-opening ARCA race at Daytona, television ratings on SPEED went up 59 percent. Likewise, her NASCAR Nationwide debut at Daytona saw ratings shoot up 32 percent. Her souvenir trailer at NASCAR races consistently has drawn huge crowds and she commands tremendous media attention. And without question, her GoDaddy.com sponsorship was a huge relief for JR Motorsports, which had struggled to find dollars.
But enormous popularity has absolutely no correlation to on-track performance, as Patrick is finding out. And it appears that the novelty of her presence might be wearing off on her peers.
“When she comes over and races with us in NASCAR, I giggle at that,” said Kurt Busch during a Friday press conference at Chicagoland Speedway. “It’s only Nationwide, it’s not the big show. You have to be in the big show if you want to race with the big guys.”
And then Busch compared her situation to LeBron James.
“Right now, she’s very limited because she’s still committed to the IRL schedule,” Busch said of Patrick. “This is just a work in progress. We’ll have to wait and see the final product when she decides what road she’s going to go down. She’ll probably have a one-hour ESPN primetime special when she wants to announce it.”
And so for Patrick, the education in the school of hard knocks will continue for the near future as she tries to work with crew chief Tony Eury Jr. to learn the nuances of driving a stock car.
“I don’t always know the difference between setup issues,” said Patrick. “Is it the spring, is it the camber, is it the (track) bar, is it geometry? I don’t have any idea. I’m not very good at helping Tony Jr. go in a certain direction. All I can say is what the car is doing. I wish I could help out more with that, but that’s just going to come with time.”
Tom Jensen is the Editor in Chief of SPEEDtv.com, Senior NASCAR Editor at RACER and a contributing Editor for TruckSeries.com. You can follow him online at twitter.com/tomjensen100 and e-mail him at Jensen is the author of “Cheating: The Bad Things Good NASCAR Nextel Cup Racers Do In Pursuit of Speed,” and has appeared on numerous television and radio shows. Jensen is the past President of the National Motorsports Press Association and an NMPA Writer of the Year.
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