I first reported on this site back in October that Danica Patrick was in talks to sign with Dale Earnhardt Jr. to enter into NASCAR on a limited basis. This past week, they finally made it official. Next week, Danica will make her NASCAR debut at Daytona – sort of. It’s just a test run. She won’t race until February when she’ll take the wheel in an official NASCAR event for the first time.
The plan is for her to drive for Junior before and after her Indy car season, which runs from March through October. It will be interesting to see how well she handles the jumps back and forth between the open-wheeled cars of the Indy series and the closed wheel stock cars of NASCAR. She’s certainly not the first driver to attempt the transition. Some have fared well, others not so much.
Most observers agree that there are significant adjustments that must be made when transitioning from open to closed wheel cars. The learning curve is said to be quite steep, and some good Indy car drivers never quite adjust. But they probably didn’t have the support of Dale Junior and his top quality team behind them. They also didn’t have the scrutiny that comes with being a woman entering into a man’s sport, either.
Danica handled the pressure well when she broke into Indy car racing. There’s no reason to think that she won’t bear up well in NASCAR too. She’s got the skills, and she’s got a strong support network behind her. She’s also got the collective hopes of NASCAR hedging on her success as well. Take a look at NASCAR’s website. She has yet to sit behind the wheel of a stock car, but already there are more stories, pictures, and links associated with Patrick on their home page than any other driver. Including Jimmie Johnson, who just did a little thing like win his fourth consecutive Cup just recently. OK, the pictures I can understand.
There’s a lot of pressure on Patrick to succeed in NASCAR, but she’ll have a lot of people working behind the scenes to make sure she does just that.
To Danica, all the best in the NASCAR race. Nowadays there is nothing like a man’s sport, I am happy that women are giving men lots of competition in what was once upon a time known as a man’s sport and they are performing even better than men!!!!