57
THE FAN
||
culture
succeeding at the sport itself? “I’m really not worried,” Patrick says
of her 2012 performance. “This year has always been about finding
my feet in a tough sport. I’mgoing to school on the crazy-good talent
out there. Just watching Smoke [Tony Stewart] has been like ge ing
a degree fromHarvard.”
A NASCAR RACE CAR
is not really a race car at all, which is what
makes the sport so tough. It has almost no downforce to keep it on
the pavement; with850horses under thehood, it’swayoverpowered;
and the rest of the 43-car field is always bearing down on you.
Plus, the other drivers are, as Patrick says, crazy-good. Jimmie
Johnson or Tony Stewart—just about any of the elite competitors
out there, really—can break a single second down into a hundred
pieces, take a spin on a 2-mile lap and determine precisely which
adjustment to make to find speed.
“
When you’re driving these particular cars, you’re really just
barely keeping them in control,” Patrick says. “It’s an art more than
a science or a sport. And you go a have a heck of a lot of laps to
know how to make
good
changes.”
Consequently, almost all the open-wheel racers who have
a empted the transition to stock car racing in the past decade have
flamed out or struggled mightily. The list is long and remarkably
distinguished, but the most notable might be Dario Franchitti,
three-time winner of the Indy 500 (and husband of Ashley Judd).
Will Patrick join their ranks? It depends on the yardstick with
which success is measured. There are many great race car drivers
in the U.S. who toil in obscure regional series that cost a lot and
provide li le in return but bragging rights. The difference between
a driver’s success and failure hinges on talent, but also on the ability
to “pull eyeballs,” as the marketing experts say.
That balance can be pushed only so far, though. Patrick has
earned her wheel time and she’s more than earned the marketing
money. But unless she finds a way to bring both games to the same
level, she’ll eventually follow Franchi i back to Indianapolis.
For now, she’s taking it one race at a time. “I’mnot trying to be the
figurehead of the sport,” she says. “I leave that to Junior and Smoke.
I’m just trying to get around the track a li le bit faster each time.”
MIKE GUY,
whose work has appeared in
Rolling Stone
,
Vanity Fair
,
New
York
,
Details
and others, is a former editor in chief of
Hemispheres
.
TOM PENNINGTON/GETTY IMAGES FOR NASCAR
SPARKS FLY
Danica
Patrick’s #10 Chevy gets
pulled into a crash in last
year’s Daytona 500
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