Bob Pockrass: For now, it’s OK if Danica Patrick doesn’t know what she’s doing
Danica Patrick's California results should be a good indication of her skill. But those results should be from her second start at Auto Club Speedway instead of her first.
// LaDon George, NASCAR Illustrated
FONTANA, Calif. – Auto Club Speedway in California is the perfect place to evaluate whether Danica Patrick has true stock-car potential.
But the date for that analysis didn’t come February 20, 2010. It will come October 9, 2010.
That’s the day when Patrick will return to the 2-mile track that gave her such headaches Saturday as she ran the entire race and finished three laps down in 31st.
It is believed to be the first time in her major motorsports career that she has ever driven in an entire event without incident and had such a bad result. Welcome to NASCAR, Danica.
If this was a young driver’s second career NASCAR start and that driver completed the entire event and finished 31st, it would be called a learning experience. For the 27-year-old Patrick, though, her accomplishments as the first female IndyCar Series driver to win a race and the highest-finishing female ever in the Indianapolis 500 (third) – not to mention the plethora of advertisements and photo shoots she does – make her far from the normal race-car driver.
At least Patrick is willing to admit the obvious: “These drivers, they all know what they’re doing out there for the most part. And I don’t.”
That comment has people riled up – if she doesn’t know what she’s doing, then why is she out there?
Well, the answer is that she knows what she’s doing in general terms in a race car but she doesn’t know these cars. Would you expect the same honest analysis out of a driver such as Kyle Busch if Busch struggled in a car he never raced?
Patrick has shown throughout the first couple of months that she’s not afraid to admit her ignorance of things NASCAR. She joked about how she didn’t know the length of the Daytona track when she first tested. She accidentally hit the ignition toggle once Saturday instead of another one instructed by her crew – and she told them right away.
There are young drivers who would never admit that, afraid they’d lose their rides. But Patrick already has a ride (in the IRL) and she’s thrown herself into this arena without being too proud or insecure to try to hide what she doesn’t know.
She’s learning a whole new automobile. She has shown that she has car control but not an understanding of the momentum of the cars. Maybe she’ll eventually get it. Maybe she won’t. But after only two races, perhaps it’s a little too early to judge.
The California track is the only circuit this year that Patrick will visit twice. When she returns in October, she’ll only have five more stock-car races under her belt, but she’ll come to the track knowing the basics of what racing lines might work – and even more significantly, which ones don’t. She might not know what’s the right feel, but she’ll have a better idea of the wrong feel.
Patrick should be frustrated by her 31st-place performance. Even if, as she puts it, “it’s a whole new ball of wax,” drivers don’t enjoy watching the field race away in front of them and it only adds insult to injury when drivers get lapped. Considering JR Motorsports teammate Kelly Bires finished seventh, Patrick knows her team puts good cars on the track.
Fans have a right to be frustrated, too. This is the highest NASCAR developmental series, and to have someone learning stock cars in it seems to devalue it. While that’s a nice theory, it can’t be ignored that Patrick added value in television ratings and likely to attendance.
The crowd last week at Daytona looked as if it was significantly bigger than a year earlier and at least part of that can be attributed to Patrick. The crowd Saturday in California looked like the typical 20,000 or so that generally show up for a Nationwide event here, and whether she had a hand in that is a little more difficult to determine. Sponsors don’t know the Patrick factor as much as the data they see. Higher ratings and attendance will lead to more sponsorship money for all the teams.
She didn’t cause any accidents that might have impacted the championship, which can’t be said about other young drivers in the past learning their way through the series. So what was the harm of her racing Saturday at Auto Club Speedway?
The true measure of Patrick comes back here in October. If she finishes 31st and still doesn’t know what she’s doing out there then she should consider whether this whole new ball of wax is really for her. If she can keep pace with the field, though, it would be a sign that she might be able to hang with the good ol’ boys.
