In her second year of competition, Danica Patrick finished 28th in points, a sub-par performance compared to most standards in the industry.
“I think sub-par is a matter of opinion,” she stated. “I think in my second year in the Cup Series that I wanted to work on and we wanted to work on as a group, and I feel like there was drastic improvement there. The overall championship position didn’t show for that, but there was a lot of improvement in areas that we wanted to so I consider that a success.”
Certainly she’s right that finishing 28th in points doesn’t show for much, even more considering that she finished 27th the year before. But, she does make a valid point.
Her first year of Sprint Cup competition brought her a single top-10 finish, whereas last year she produced three top-10 finishes. She proved that she could race on the short tracks with a good run at Martinsville. She has always been strong on the plate tracks, but then again, so is everyone. She also showed the intermediate tracks are getting better with a sixth place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
She also had a higher average finish and average starting position, showing that she is slowly improving.
Even with that said, though, the season is sub-par by all standards.
Stewart-Haas Racing is one of the top teams in NASCAR right now, as evident by Kevin Harvick winning the championship. Both Harvick and Kurt Busch made the chase, and each won a race – and yet Patrick did neither of those. Tony Stewart didn’t do either of those either, but he had other stuff going on and came closer to pulling off a win then she did as the season wound down.
If you’re going to be in one of the best seats in NASCAR, you need to produce the results to back it up and right now, she’s not producing those results. There are many other drivers that could very well fill the seat in the No. 10 car that could do that and typically if a driver doesn’t produce, a driver gets the boot.
With Patrick, though, things have been a little different, we’ll say. Female standards, beautiful woman and Go Daddy willing to pay no matter what lead to cash flow for SHR and reasons to keep her in the seat. It’s the sexy appeal and cash flow that some say has gotten her up through the ranks, as evident by only one top-five in the XFINITY Series in 61 starts, and her lackluster Verizon IndyCar Series career.
Soon enough, though, that won’t be enough. Either the sponsor will get smart and move to a driver that can produce them results, or the team will give the seat to a more deserving driver that can get them wins. This year is a contract season for Danica Patrick and it makes the importance of producing results that much more important. It’ll be interesting to see whether she’ll remain in the seat beyond 2015 as Gene Haas stated during media week that he wants to re-sign her, but there may be a surprise if the improvement isn’t shown.
Oh, and the excuse measure isn’t going to take it. Beginning the year with a new crew chief – Daniel Knost, Patrick noted during the media tour that they will need time to kindle a relationship.
“Obviously with a new crew chief and group, we need to get to know each other – sooner than later – so I’ll be putting a lot of hard work into getting our communication going as quickly as possible,” she commented. “Then after that, it’s about picking up where I left off with Tony Gibson and his guys that taught me so much and really helped me get much further towards the front and qualifying much better and running much better. I’m sure they’ll be a little bit of a learning curve, but we can overcome that sooner than later.”
Using the excuse that you haven’t gotten it sorted with your crew chief is something that your boss won’t want to hear when he has people, whether sponsors or other in the organization, demanding results to happen. In other words, that relationship better start firing on all cylinders early this year.
Give her credit, though, as she feels hopeful. She says that having Knost opens up a new perspective on her team and brings forth new ways of possibly getting things done. But what if that new perspective is not enough? Then what happens?
Thank you Ashley for your input, at least you are not drinking the Nascar prescribed Kool Aid that so many happily drink…:)
I don’t think Danica knows what “hard work” is…. I feel bad for Daniel Knost…He’ll have to learn how to set up a race car with no driver input….
I would beg to differ as she has been able to offer some feedback so he will have a little to base the set-up off, but she could obviously improve in that department.
I used to think I was smart, now I am not so sure. How does one “improve” when they finished lower in the standings in 2014 then they did in 2013?
That’s a good question and something that I was a little thrown off at first. As stated in the article, the improvement was seen through a higher average starting spot, higher average finishing spot, more top-10 finishes, being near the front more in events. Now it’s about turning that into strong finishes all year to improve her overall points finish.
I am really tired of the “I’m still learning” excuse from Danica and her media machine..It is time to put up or get out. Money can buy you a lot of things but it wont buy her a win in NASCAR’s top series.
There will come a time when Go Daddy will want to see there car in victory lane, not getting lapped or wrecked. Sorry but she has not shown improvement
no matter what Darrell Waltrip or Bob Packrass say.
Yes she and Ricky Stenhouse are in contract years and I suspect one or both will be out of a ride at the end of the season.
You’re right that excuses won’t last. Hence why I said that this year rather than sit around and blame lack of inexperience, of crew chief, she needs to start to put up the results. And you’re right, Go Daddy will only accept this for so long. The question is how long?
As far as your last point about contract years, I think Ricky will be out versus her for the simple fact that it seems Go Daddy just likes to have their pretty face. Pretty sad if case be as Ricky has more talent, shown by his XFINITY championship.