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The Indianapolis 500 is Sunday and we know this because we’ve been treated to a month of questions to Danica Patrick about when she’s going to give NASCAR a try.
Jimmie Johnson has heard the questions and Patrick’s open-ended answers about the possibility of a jump. As NASCAR’s Sprint Cup champion three years running, Johnson’s advice to a potential opponent is pretty simple.
Come on over, although not until you’re ready. And, trust me, you’re not ready.
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His suggestion is for Patrick to re-sign with the Indy Racing League and spend her free time driving on minor league stock car circuits so she can learn to handle the vastly different machine. It’s not her lack of talent, he says, it’s her lack of experience.
“If she’s serious about doing it, she needs to spend a year or two, while racing IRL, running ARCA, running trucks, running Nationwide and really understanding the difference in the vehicles,” Johnson told Yahoo! Sports last week.
“Otherwise, she’s going to be put in a tough situation. … You can’t just show up in the Cup Series and go.”
He wants her to not just come to NASCAR, but to succeed in it. He isn’t naïve to the financial windfall of having her in the circuit.
“For our sport, I’d love to see it,” he said. “This is where I make a living; this is the sport I love and whatever we can do to make our sport stronger I’m in favor of.”
He just cautions that the move isn’t as simple as Patrick wanting to do it. She wouldn’t be the first open-wheel driver to try NASCAR, and the track record isn’t strong. Juan Pablo Montoya, Sam Hornish and Dario Franchitti all had better open-wheel careers than Patrick, only to experience mixed results in NASCAR.
“They just need time,” Johnson said. “They have worked their entire lives to learn an open-wheel vehicle, the characteristics of that, the adjustments. It’s just two totally different worlds.
He compared it to Joe Gibbs investing in Joey Logano, the 18-year-old rookie phenom who made the jump to Cup racing a year before he was ready. The difference is Logano had extensive experience in stock cars before making the jump. Patrick doesn’t.
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Danica doesn’t sound deterred, though. She eyes NASCAR because it’s the major racing platform in the United States and, if nothing else, she’s a major-league kind of person. She loves attention, and NASCAR would provide it. Heck, just batting her eyes at NASCAR provides attention. Yahoo! Sports
Patrick is in the final year of her contract with Andretti Green Racing in the IndyCar Series this season. Ironically, she used the threat of jumping to NASCAR as leverage in 2006 when she was in the final year of her contract at Rahal Letterman Racing. That earned her a lucrative deal with AGR. Auto Racing Daily
