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 Is it a cause for celebration when Danica Patrick finishes in the
Top 10 and beats her teammates at Stewart Haas Racing and the
Hendrick Motorsports Chevy drivers as well?
Finishing seventh behind winner Denny Hamlin at the Martinsville
Speedway on Sunday mostly meant Patrick is getting closer to the
front at the finish - her previous best at the Virginia track being
12th. (Her career best overall in 88 starts was a sixth in Atlanta
last year.) Will she ever get to the top of the heap in a Sprint Cup
race when the checkered flag falls?
Racing is an odd business when it comes to predictions. So far in
her career Patrick has been consistent, gradually pulling up her
average starting position and her average finishing position. Her
career numbers for those two categories are relatively similar to
those of Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Trevor Bayne and Austin Dillon, all of
whom have a similar number of starts. When compared to fellow Indy
car refugees A.J. Allmendinger and Sam Hornish, Jr., Patrick's
average start and finish numbers are also comparable.
But, not one of these drivers is considered a threat to win when the
command to start engines is given - unless it's on a road course,
where Allmendinger has scored one victory. Instead, the expectation
is these drivers may turn in an outstanding finish on any given day.
It should be pointed out that Bayne has also won a race - the
Daytona 500 during the one-off tandem draft era - and that
Stenhouse's best finish was a third at Talladega. Dillon has
finished fourth at Daytona. But Patrick has yet to threaten to take
home the checkers as the closing laps wind down.
No matter what the era, winning drivers in NASCAR's top series
consistently finish in the Top 5 before making a breakthrough. The
talent and aggression shows early, particularly among drivers who
are championship material. For Patrick, who clearly has the talent
to race in the Sprint Cup, what has been missing is the aggression.
She has spent a career in IndyCar and in NASCAR sustaining major
sponsorship in part by avoiding getting tagged as The Female Driver
Who Crashes.
Patrick's approach has been to index up to competitiveness by
gradually improving. Her focus has been on getting the car right and
if it's not right, then making changes during the course of a race.
When it comes to the big picture, Patrick said she spent her first
year at Stewart Haas trying to get the personnel and equipment she
needed to be competitive.
"A couple of years ago, if you had asked about how we all felt about
how it was going, there wouldn't have been a lot of positive things
to say," said Patrick in the post-race media conference at
Martinsville. "That's an example of an organization digging deep and
finding ways. By all means the last couple of years we've been a lot
stronger and we've been a much better team and we're having a lot
more fun out there."
Patrick praised her new crew chief, Daniel Knost, who took over this
year from Tony Gibson, and the team's three engineers. She said the
car arrives at the track with better preparation on chassis set-up
and that communication with Knost about mid-race adjustments during
pit stops has been improving.
"I can't do well if the team doesn't provide the people and the
equipment that I need to perform," she said.
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Patrick's approach while driving for the teams of Bobby Rahal and
Michael Andretti in IndyCar was similar in terms of demanding
internally what she needed to be competitive. How much that process
included making sure team members believed in the ability of a woman
to win races is an open question. But Patrick was never shy about
leveraging the fact she brought budget through sponsorship to a team
and that everyone would benefit if she was given the technical
support she wanted.
She believes she has that support in the Sprint Cup for a second
straight season. "Daniel and I have a very good working
relationship," said Patrick. "Don't get me wrong. We get along great
and have a lot of fun."
Still, there's the nagging question about whether Patrick pushes
hard enough behind the wheel. True to form, Patrick did not charge
her way to the front at Martinsville, where the usual front runners
from Stewart Haas and Hendrick all had issues or chose poor pit
strategy. Instead, after a slow start when the car wasn't working
well, Patrick advanced by hitting her marks on the track, proper
adjustments on pit stops and good pit strategy.
The strategy did not start out well. Knost gambled early by electing
to skip a pit stop for fresh tires during an early caution in order
to re-start at the front.
"We weren't very good at the start," said Patrick. "We took a chance
and stayed out and we ended up going backward in a hurry," said
Patrick. "I was not happy on the radio."
Once the handling of the chassis improved, despite some difficulty
turning in the corners Patrick motored to seventh while others
guessed wrong on a late caution coming out, including her team
co-owner Tony Stewart. She declared the results a good "ego boost"
for herself and the team. Indeed, racing 500 laps at Martinsville
and bringing a complete car back to the garage in the Top 10 is a
major accomplishment. Alas, what about the prospects for a victory?
Unlike IndyCar, where Patrick's lone victory came on the daunting
Twin Ring Motegi oval in Japan, the Sprint Cup competition is deep.
A driver generally has to learn how to lose a race or two after
getting close at the finish before he or she can win versus a
plethora of veterans who have been to victory lane before.
So far, Patrick has yet to demonstrate the needed aggressiveness
behind the wheel to put herself in position for a win.
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