It’s been that long since open-wheel racing topped the sporting marquee on Memorial Day weekend, and you have to go back another 15 years or so before that, to the era of Rick Mears and the Unser, Andretti and Foyt dynasties, to find a time when the average fan could ID the defending champion.
The star of the circuit today, by contrast, could hardly be more recognizable. Danica Patrick doesn’t lack page views, exposure or appeal — or real driving skills — just results. She’s every bit as important to open-wheel racing as Tiger Woods is to golf, except that Patrick has zero majors to his 14, and exactly one win — 13 months ago in Japan — to Woods’ 76 victories worldwide.
With the decade-long civil war between Speedway boss Tony George and the drivers over, and the sport regaining some traction among TV audiences and sponsors, there’s no better time than Sunday for Patrick to remind people she’s more than just another pretty face.
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“I do the ads because I’m a driver. I’m in the magazines because I’m a driver,” she said Thursday during interview sessions at the Speedway. If looks could kill, her questioner would have been zapped on the spot.
“I know what comes first,” Patrick said.
Asked whether she was feeling the pressure to do just that — win — Patrick replied, “You want as many wins as you can get as a driver. That’s what we’re supposed to do.”
“So, yes,” she added, “that would be nice.”
Patrick said she hasn’t really thought about how much more popular winning the Indy 500 would make her.
“I don’t know what to expect. I’m fortunate enough, ” she said matter-of-factly, “to be a popular athlete in general and a popular female athlete as well.” The Associated Press
The other pressure on Danica comes from questions about her ability to regularly win races and contend for the series championship. Although she is now a steady top-10 runner, her oval qualifying form has not matched her rookie season when she claimed the three poles. And there are still doubts about her qualifying speed at road and street courses.
“I think that I was surprised probably in the beginning to find out that the ovals were something that came a little bit easier to me than the road courses,” she said. “I was even more surprised that the short ovals were even stronger than anything.”
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“I do think the road courses have really been coming along. It’s something that I’ve put tons of emphasis on over the last couple of years. There’s some incredibly good road-course drivers out there in the IndyCar Series and to run with them and to run with the likes of Dario Franchitti and Tony Kanaan is a big accomplishment. Now it’s time to really buckle down and get out there and beat them instead of just run with them. It’s hard, though. These drivers are not making it easy.”
Patrick said she used to feel like she had to prove to people that she was a serious competitor, that she felt finishing anywhere other than first was unacceptable. The way she tried to prove it was by getting mad. But she found there were drawbacks.
“It just doesn’t really pay off,” she said, “and it turns people off.”
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Not everybody, it doesn’t. Hang around Patrick in any situation where she interacts with the public and you’ll hear plenty of fans encourage her to kick some male-driver butt. To take no grief. To stand up for herself. Auto Racing Daily
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