Danica Patrick stays positive amidst criticism
Danica Patrick is one of NASCAR’s most polarizing drivers. Since her move to NASCAR, she has been the center of attention. She has many fans, but also many critics. It also seems that some members of the media try to make her a story, for everything she does, no matter how insignificant. This past week someone even tried to make it a bog deal that she was seen getting out of a Ford street car, though she is a Chevy driver.
Her name was thrust back into the spotlight again this week, when former NASCAR driver turned TV analyst, Kyle Petty, made some comments about her.
During a Speed interview with Matt Clark, Petty said, “Danica has been the perfect example of somebody who can qualify better than she runs. She can go fast, but she can’t race. I think she’s come a long way, but she’s still not a race car driver and I don’t think she is ever going to be a race car driver.”
Clark followed up by asking why she wouldn’t be a driver in his opinion, Petty replied, “…too late to learn.” Petty made no bones about the fact that he, himself was not a great driver saying, “I was not a great driver, and I’ll be the first to admit it. I was a journeyman driver.”
At least Petty is consistent with his comments. In 2010, he had very similar comments towards the Go Daddy driver. When Patrick was announced as the driver of the No. 7 Go Daddy Chevrolet for JR Motorsports in the Nationwide Series, Petty said, “If she gets in that car and doesn’t win races, it’s not the car, it’s not the engines, it’s not the team. They only changed one thing. Initially, she’ll have an impact on the sport. If she’s successful, she’ll have a long term impact on the sport.” He went to compare her to other open wheel drivers who have made their way to NASCAR, saying, “Juan Montoya is probably, car control wise, one of the most amazing human beings you’ve ever seen in a car and he struggled for three years at this level, and she’s not Juan Pablo Montoya.”
On Friday, Patrick had a scheduled press conference at Kentucky Motor Speedway, of course the Petty comments were a major topic of discussion. Patrick did an excellent job handling those questions. When asked if she knew about Kyle Petty’s comments, she replied, “Read it, yes. I just think it’s funny how he said I could qualify, but I can’t race because those of you who actually watch what I do know I can’t qualify for crap. In the race things go much better.”
Patrick seems to be right on this account, her average starting position this season has been 32.0, but her average finishing position is 25.8. An indication that she races a little better than she qualifies.
When she was asked if it mattered to her what people said about her and if it motivates her if someone speaks negative of her, Patrick said, “Thanks (Kyle) for motivating me. I really don’t care, I don’t, it’s true that there are plenty of people who say really bad things about me, I hear about them or I read about them on Twitter. People want me to die. At the end of the day, you just get over that kind of stuff and all you can do is trust that you’re doing a good job and that’s all that matters and the people around you believe in you.”
She also took time to explain why she was driving a Ford street car last week. “For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you would have seen that it was taking a really long time to get into the track, and he (boyfriend Ricky Stenhouse) had a team meeting at the top of the hill. That was a long walk and he was going to be late if we parked down in the paddock area, so being the nice girlfriend that I am, I said I would just drive the car down and park it and you get on with your meetings. So it was as simple as that.”
Patrick obviously gets over-hyped by a large portion of the media. We should keep in mind that she has only started 26 races in the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series. She is a rookie. Rookies struggle, they wreck cars and have a lot to learn especially on tracks they have never been to before. This is, however, the premier stock car series in the world.
After a conversation on social media on Friday, I decided to compare her stats to another NASCAR driver. At first I wanted to pick a driver with a similar background, but someone said she should be compared to other NASCAR drivers for a fair comparison, not someone who came from open wheel. So I decided to make it tough. I picked a driver who a proven he could win in other NASCAR series, then made the huge step into the Sprint Cup Series. I chose Travis Kvapil. Travis won the Camping World Truck Series championship in 2003. In 143 starts, Travis compiled nine wins, 51 top-5’s and 85 top-10’s. A pretty impressive resume’.
Travis made the jump to Sprint Cup in 2005 after 96 of those truck series starts and of course the championship. An obvious proven driver in a NASCAR series. So let’s compare:
Travis Kvapil first full season in Sprint Cup:
Starts – 36, Poles – 0, Top 5 – 0, Top 10 – 2. Laps led – 36, RAF – 29, Final position in points – 33rd
Danica Patrick Cup career (two partial seasons) so far:
Starts – 26, Poles – 1, Top 5 – 0, Top 10 – 1, Laps led-5, RAF-22, Position in points (16 races) – 27th
The two drivers compared pretty close. One stat that needs to be noted is – Running at Finish (RAF). This is one of the most crucial stats for a rookie. Keeping the car in the race is a very important first step becoming a successful driver.
When assessing Patrick, we also must consider the fact that until recently, her team, Stewart-Haas Racing, has also struggled. Her teammate, Ryan Newman, has 420 starts in the series and this season only has an average starting position of 18.9 and an average finishing position of 18.2. Not considerably better, given how much more experience he has. Newman is a proven performer, he has a total of 16 wins, and 173 top-10’s.
The team will get better, without a doubt. Will Patrick get better? Only time will tell. One thing she has definitely learned, is how to play the media game and to not let negativity affect her.
Keselowski anticipating success on his ‘Race for the Chase’
Before Brad Keselowski ran off and won the 2012 NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship, he ran off with the victory at Kentucky Speedway.
The win, at the time the third of his season, helped catapult him into the Chase as he was sitting 10th in points at the time. Now, a year later he finds himself in a similar position, ninth, entering a weekend in which he’ll run all three [Truck, Nationwide and Sprint Cup] races. While some in the garage are beginning to feel the heat of both the summer and pressure of making the Chase, Keselowski says he’s focused on the task at hand.
“This is a key time not just for my team, but for all the teams. There’s only a few that I would really consider locked into the Chase,” said the defending race winner on Thursday at Kentucky about the upcoming schedule.
“Realistically if you have two or three wins you’re in a pretty good spot. We don’t have those but we have had solid runs where we’ve been close to winning and a lot of coulda, shoulda, woulda but those don’t count for anything.”
The ‘Race for the Chase’ starts this weekend in Kentucky, giving teams just 10 more weeks to make the postseason. As the defending champion, Keselowski expected more from he and his team at this point in the season. Winless, yet having come close such as the Daytona 500 and Bristol, two races that stick out for Keselowski, which he felt he could have won had cautions and other circumstances fallen his way.
Instead he began to slide through the standings, right around the time his team found themselves in a continued battle with NASCAR. Beginning with a failed inspection at Texas in April, resulting in NASCAR taking away 25 points and suspensions for key players of his team, including crew chief Paul Wolfe.
Keselowski lashed out at NASCAR feeling that his team was being targeted, which was then followed by his car being picked for random inspection. Then another failed inspection [Dover] that resulted in the loss of more points. Now, with the team back in the full swing of things, Kentucky is the perfect place to get their season rolling, plus Keselowski feels he has the most experience at the speedway and wants to add to his continued success there.
“Now it’s our time to really shine and I think thankfully, if you look at the tradition of my team if you could say there is one, over the last two seasons is that we really seem to hit our mark about this time of season and I don’t think that’s a coincidence,” he said.
The summer months have been kind to Keselowski as he alluded to. He’s won at three of the upcoming tracks, including Kentucky this weekend and was apart of one of the most memorable finishes in Watkins Glen history a year ago but finished second. And while he’s not yet out of Chase contention or even on the outside trying to climb in, the team is fighting as if they are. Going for wins and those valuable bonus points, which he expects to begin racking up on Saturday night coming from the eighth starting spot.
“Kentucky Speedway really fits my style, there’s a couple of unique characteristics about it and that’s why I really picked this weekend to run all three [races] because I felt like here and Bristol are probably two of my best tracks and we need to capitalize on that,” Keselowski noted.
“Certainly on the Cup side, have another strong run and hopefully come away with the race win which I think we have a very strong shot at.”
Kyle Busch – A Kentucky Thoroughbred?
Saturday night’s Quaker State 400 marks the third time in NASCAR Sprint Cup Series history that the race will be held in the Bluegrass State at Kentucky Motor Speedway. Over the years the state of Kentucky has developed a reputation for high quality horse racing. They have produced a myriad of thoroughbreds throughout the years, and this weekend we shift from the idea of thoroughbred horses to thoroughbred NASCAR drivers.
The inaugural Quaker State 400 at Kentucky Motor Speedway was held on July 10, 2011. Joe Gibbs Racing driver of the No. 18 Doublemint Toyota, Kyle Busch, led six times during the race for a total of 125 laps to become the noteworthy winner of NASCAR’s top series in the state.
Even though 2011 marked Kentucky’s first Sprint Cup Series first race, Busch’s winning history at Kentucky began eight years earlier when he was 18 years old.
In 2003, an eighteen year old Kyle Busch, won The Channel 5 205 NASCAR ARCA Series race. That win marked the beginning of Busch’s stock-car stardom at Kentucky. Busch has won one race in each of the stock-car divisions at Kentucky Motor Speedway.
His Kentucky victories consist of the 2003 Channel 5 205 ARCA Series race, the 2004 Meijer 300 Nationwide Series race, the 2011 UNOH 225 Camping World Truck Series race, and the 2011 Sprint Cup Series Quaker State 400.
When asked if he could put his finger on why he has been so good at Kentucky in all divisions, Busch commented, “I can’t actually, but I can remember going there for the first time back in 2003 and it was my second-ever ARCA race and the first time on a 1.5 mile oval. It was a big deal and it was a fast racetrack and I ended up winning that weekend. I had to do some maneuvering around Frank Kimmel to win. It wasn’t easy. But since then, going there in Nationwide and being fast there every time, and going back to race when Sprint Cup didn’t have a date, yet, just getting your feet wet for when that opportunity came when Sprint Cup did go there. When we went with the Cup car, we were fast right when we unloaded. Dave Rogers was my crew chief and he had won there several times as a Nationwide crew chief prior to that and had a lot of notes to understand what it took to get around Kentucky, and we ended up winning the first Cup race there.”
Reflecting on how it feels to be the Inaugural Sprint Cup winner at Kentucky, Busch said, “I think it’s cool. You look at some of the new venues we’ve been to over the years and Jeff Gordon got to win a number of inaugural races, like the Brickyard, Fontana, and Kansas. He was always the guy who was known to figure out places the fastest, but we were able to be the ones to do that at Kentucky. There aren’t many opportunities these days to go to a new venue, so for us being able to win the first race there was extra special.”
Hoping to add to his Kentucky legacy, Busch will be running all three NASCAR races this weekend.
When asked what he enjoys about running races in all three NASCAR divisions, like at Kentucky this weekend, Busch said, “It’s a lot of on-track time. On Thursday we practice all day, and then there’s the truck race that night. It’s a busy schedule and you are running back and forth between garages and it’s typically hot there in Kentucky. The biggest thing you get to work on, and enjoy, is essentially the on-track time and getting to figure out the bumps there, and you get extra track time to figure out if you need to get through them better or if you need to get your guys to give you a better setup to get through the bumps. I have three divisions worth of chances, and three crew chiefs who have different mindsets that, by the time I get to Saturday, I have a feel for what I need to win the Cup race with our Doublemint Camry.”
Unfortunately, Busch fell short of a win in Thursday night’s NASCAR Camping World Truck Series 3rd Annual UNOH 225 with his No. 51 ToyotaCare Toyota finishing in third place. However, if Busch’s theory of benefiting from his extra track exposure this weekend pans out and he improves with each race, he is already only two improvements away from victory lane.
With six Nationwide Series wins and two Sprint Cup Series wins under his belt this season, his impressive history at Kentucky Motor Speedway, including being the inaugural Quaker State 400 winner, is it safe to say that Kyle Busch is a top Kentucky thoroughbred? Can there be any higher accolade in the Blue Grass State?
Track surface a hot topic at Kentucky
Kentucky Motor Speedway has only been on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series schedule for three years. The 1.5 mile speedway, however, has been in operation since 2000. As with any racetrack, the racing surface ages and changes due to environmental factors such as weather.
This weekend the track’s surface became a hot topic in the garage area. Drivers were commenting on the condition and “raceability” of the speedway nestled in northern Kentucky.
The most recent winner on the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series, Martin Truex Jr. asked about the bumps at Kentucky replied saying, “The bumps, yes – it’s so rough. So difficult with these cars to get them working. We’re on bump stops. The splitter is very close to the ground in these cars.” continuing, “It’s kind of a fun to be able to do that. Definitely a cool place to race, for sure. Very, very challenging obviously. It’s a good place to race – I enjoy it.”
Truex was also asked if there could be more passing than in previous years. Truex commented, “That’s directly related to the banking on the track, the bumps on the track, There’s just not a lot of grip up high. Right now today, if you got out of the black it was pretty treacherous.”
Truex also had the same opinion of many other drivers, that he would not want it re-paved. “You hate to even say the word re-pave. I hate to say it because I’m not a big fan of re-paves.”
Richard Childress Racing driver, Kevin Harvick, who was fastest in first practice on Friday, was asked if had noticed any change in the surface this year. Harvick replied, “No, the track surface is pretty consistent. This is just a really rough race track. There is nothing wrong with the race track; it is just rough. We’d rather see a rough race track than a re-paved race track. I don’t feel that we had much difference from last year.”
Harvick’s Budweiser team used one of the four test permitted by NASCAR to test here at Kentucky, and was probably a major factor in the speed the team showed here on Friday. Harvick pointed out the reason he believes the decided to test here saying, “This one doesn’t really fall into much (comparing with other tracks) but we hadn’t run very well here, so I think that was probably why they decided to come here.”
Another point of discussion has been turn three and how hard it is to get into that corner without having a problem. Harvick said, “Turn three is just really flat getting into the corner, so you kind of drive into the banking and it progressively gets a little bit more as you come off of the corner. It’s really flat there, and you are carrying a lot of speed. You just wind up being loose into the corner for the most part. As you go through the weekend that will be the toughest part to navigate for sure.”
Many times we see the tracks with rougher surfaces and less grip produce better racing. When tracks are re-paved they are smooth and have a lot of grip. That leads to one groove racing. Ideally, we could see a fantastic race at Kentucky if we couple the rough surface with a tire that falls off a lot during a fuel run.
When lap times fall off one to two seconds during a run, a driver must move around, try different grooves in search for grip. This tends to lead to teams being on different strategies, and drivers having to “get up on the wheel” and drive. Some cars are falling back, while others with new tires are coming to the front. In these situations, the drivers ability comes into play much more, putting more emphasis on talent and less on aerodynamic downforce.
All of these factors are a recipe for a much more exciting race. The Quaker State 400 will go green Saturday night at 7:30pm local time.
