Jun 22, 2009

Danica to be Good Ol' Boy?

Is Danica Patrick poised to leave IndyCar for NASCAR? As the Magic 8-Ball might say, “My indications are yes.” Of course, since Danica is as much about marketing as she is about driving a race car, she is not about to make an announcement on her future right now. In fact, she recently called a press conference to announce that she wasn’t going to announce anything. With much of the IndyCar season remaining to be run, she can continue to do her thing with Andretti Green Racing on the IndyCar circuit while continuing to fuel speculation about where she might end up next. The “whither-goest Danica” story is already overshadowing every other story coming out of IndyCar, so why not ride it for a while, and at the same time, improve her visibility for a possible switch to NASCAR?

It is the fact that Danica is such a marketing machine that makes a switch to NASCAR seem very likely. After all, not only do the ratings for individual NASCAR Sprint Cup races dwarf those of the typical IndyCar race, but there are so many more of them that Danica is potentially much more valuable as a commodity in NASCAR.

“NASCAR has so many viewers and so many partners,” Patrick told reporters on a recent conference call. “There are lots of options inside and outside the car. And it looks like fun. Oval racing always is fun.”

Beyond the sheer strength of the Sprint Cup series, there are other reasons to believe that Danica will bolt for NASCAR next season. Among them is the fact that she is represented by sports marketing conglomerate IMG, and IMG President George Pyne used to be a ranking executive at NASCAR. That, of course, doesn’t mean he would steer his client to a Sprint Cup team if the money wasn’t there, but all indications are that Danica stands to make a lot more money on the NASCAR circuit than in IndyCar. Just imagine the hoopla that would surround the entrance of a female into the good ol’ boy world of NASCAR, and you can see why this might be absolutely the right play for her.

Of course, you might legitimately wonder, would Danica have a legitimate shot at winning a Sprint Cup race? Other open-wheel wonders, among them Dario Franchitti, have found the Sprint Cup circuit more daunting than expected. But when you come right down to it, Danica has only won a single IndyCar race anyway, so winning doesn’t really seem to be the issue in her case.