Danica Patrick already attracting plenty of attention
Jeff Owens
Jeff Owens has been covering NASCAR since 1991 and began covering the circuit full time in 1993. He has been with Street & Smith's Sports Group since 1998.
She hasn’t run her first stock-car race yet, but Danica Patrick is already one of NASCAR’s biggest stars.
It showed Thursday at NASCAR media day. Patrick was scheduled to meet with the media at 9:50. By 9:30, media was already crowded around her table, waiting.
By 9:45, the crowd had swelled to more than two dozen. By the time she arrived for her 20-minute session, more than 50 reporters and photographers crowded her, snapping pictures and hanging onto her every word.
Patrick, who has become an international star, was a bit taken aback by the attention.
“You see stuff like this at the Indy 500 when something big is going on, but there is just more. It’s very cool,” she said.
There are two big questions surrounding Patrick’s experiment with NASCAR: One, can she drive a stock car? And two, what will she do the first time a driver roughs her up or puts her in the wall.
She comes with a reputation as a fiery competitor with a bit of a temper, and she has shown that she won’t back down from anyone.
She plans to bring the same approach to NASCAR.
“I think earning respect of other drivers, you walk this very fine line of being more of a wimp and taking their crap and not doing anything about it and also being too overly aggressive and making yourself look silly,” she says. “I had to do it in IndyCar and I think I earned all their respect.
“… It takes a lot of time, but if someone does something to me that I don’t like, you have to expect that you get something in return, and I have fenders now, so that’s pretty exciting.
“I plan to respect everybody from the start and then if they give me a reason not to respect them, then I won’t. That’s just the way it goes.”
Patrick is learning about NASCAR from her Nationwide Series crew chief Tony Eury Jr., who spent years working with his cousin, Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Patrick tells an amusing story about one of her first encounters with Eury Jr., a North Carolina native and one of the sport’s good ol' boys.
“He’s telling me, ‘Once you get that car into that yaw …. ’ And I’m like, ‘You said ‘y’all’ for how the car feels?’ And he’s like, ‘No, it’s like Y A W, actually, it’s a technical term.’ And I’m like, ‘OK, I’m dumb now.’”
Patrick is not dumb. She’s highly intelligent and a brilliant marketer.
Now, can she drive?
