NaroEscape

So...Danica get pole and ends up 8th in a NASCAR race, and a Porsche emphasized Forum spends 226 posts (and counting) discussing the merits of her accomplishments.

so...who again is responsible for all this 'hype'??

I'd say Nascar and Danica have both won here...

ltc

The pole at Daytona seems so long ago.

30th in the standings after only 3 races.
http://www.nascar.com/en_us/sprint-c...standings.html

Bad luck like this can't last forever, things have to turn around soon.

But she was #2 on the cheer fan ratings...


LAS VEGAS -- Dale Earnhardt Jr. got the most noise during Sunday's pre-race driver introductions at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, perhaps showing he has an inside track over Danica Patrick for this season's Most Popular Driver award.

Earnhardt has been named Most Popular Driver in 10 straight years, but there was speculation Patrick might be able to topple him this season.

Veloce Raptor

Yawn...

ltc

I was actually hoping that someone could explain what has happened to Danica post Daytona.

The suggestion that the Daytona pole was based more on car rather than driver was rejected with extreme prejudice, so what is the reason behind such a subpar (4 laps down) performance at Las Vegas?

Oh, never mind, it was the result of a concussion received Thursday night.

http://aol.sportingnews.com/nascar/s...-phoenix-crash

Talladega can't come soon enough.

SCOTITUDE

dont care if she wins or not. she's a car chick that can race and she's cute.
I still wanna bang her.
just sayin...

bobt993

Lewis I would not jump to conclusions on the season yet. She had a blow out in one race and struggled in the next learning how to get the car setup for shorter track racing. Ask any road course driver how hard it is to adapt to Nascar short track and they will give 10 pages.

ltc

I still don't believe that she will make The Chase for the Championship cutoff, whatever and whenever that is.

Daytona was more about car and "the plate" IMHO.

If I am not mistaken, she is familiar with PIR, which I would not qualify as a short track, nor would I classify Danica as a road course driver ( although she was given power steering by the IRL so she could "test it during the season")

How could a road course driver have setup a car so well for Daytona?

The race where she blew out a tire was just bad luck, but how far from pole was her starting position at that race?

Sorry, the performance will never live up to the hype. NASCAR is going to have a major issue if she fails to make the Chase...but if Dale Jr does, it's a good consolation prize.

PT Barnum rule still applies in NASCAR.

mglobe

The haters care about this. The rest don't. Funny thing how the haters add to the publicity machine. She's the driver you guys love to hate.

She's doing better than virtually any of us here could do. She races clean, and hard (though sometimes probably not hard enough). She's cute. She's got a personality that is out there, sometimes for the good, sometimes not so good, but always colorful and interesting. She brings tons of new fans into racing.

jakermc

Ask Dario Franchitti about how tough the transition to NASCAR can be:

http://www.driveraverages.com/nascar...php?drv_id=330

mglobe

Rob, don't obscure the discussion with facts...

SeanR

Obviously Dario is not a good driver.

mglobe

Same for JPM who somehow managed to win some races in F1. Only reason either of them are racing at all is because of their looks I guess.

Veloce Raptor

And the Rolex 24 this year

mglobe

Meh, luck, fuel strategy, Grand-Am fixed the race to let him win,...

peterbigblock

I'm not much of a NASCAR fan -- it simply doesn't entertain me; not making a judgment against it, just saying I find myself not entertained. I haven't followed Patrick's career very closely, but it does seem to me that much of the attention focused on her seems to be due to her being cute and female and not much due to her level of success. She's been mediocre, really, in almost all the series she's raced in. A non-cute-female driver would be noticed, of course, for taking the pole at Daytona, but then would be relegated to the back bench for what she's done both before and after.

As such, she seems more a marketing creation than anything else. Of course she's a better driver than we are. That's really moot. She gets the level of attention of someone who has been consistently successful, and she has certainly not done that. In that regard, I find her equally boring. A curiosity, to be sure, but nothing lasting to hold my interest. (I don't find her particularly attractive, but that's me.)

The fact that she competed with so few females for her "place" in the sport is sort of a double-edged argument. Sure, it means she had few role models. But, in terms of providing Brand X Race Series with a pert female driver who wasn't ridiculous, she had almost no competition. Certainly not from the "millions of guys" who all want to drive race cars.

So, really, she is the equivalent of so many of today's female pop-music stars. They are the best singers (with a lot of help from Autotune) among the hotties qualified for the job in the first place. If Danica were a guy, she'd likely still be racing because she obviously has enough skill to hang with the average drivers over the course of time. But she wouldn't be anything more than that and no one would pay much attention to her. Good for her, obviously, but does nothing for me.

In interviews, she's prickly and unfriendly, aloof even. If she were a guy, she'd be a jerk. But since she's not she gets a pass here, too.