Archive for the ‘Danica Patrick’ Category

Danica Patrick seems to have a good grip on reality.

One of the toughest lessons Danica Patrick has learned after two NASCAR races is that the desired results won’t come easy — or soon.

“I’m used to running up front. It’s shocking when you go that far back,” Patrick said after finishing 31st in the Nationwide race at California. “I have to disconnect from the results for quite some time. They’re probably not going to be what I’m used to.”

While Patrick reached a goal by finishing her second Nationwide race and gaining valuable stock car experience, the IndyCar Series star was three laps behind winner Kyle Busch and ahead of only six other cars still running at the end Saturday.

A week earlier in her much-anticipated debut at Daytona, she got caught up in a 12-car crash just past the midway point and was 35th.

“It’s an adjustment, it’s like starting from zero again,” Patrick said.

If you’re starting from zero, the only place to go is forward. Hang in there Danica.

The difficult part for Danica Patrick is still not knowing for sure how things are “supposed to feel” in a stock car and what is normal on the track.

“I really don’t have any of those answers at this point,” Patrick said Friday. “It’s only going to come from, in my experience, really having something good to go, ‘Oh yes, I want that again. I know I can achieve it.’ It just takes time.”

Maybe she’ll get a chance to finish this one.

With an average of more than 4.2 million people watching, ESPN2’s live telecast of the Nationwide Series season-opening race from Daytona International Speedway on Feb. 13 set a record as the most-viewed Nationwide Series race ever on cable.

Of course it was. Danica was racing.

The race telecast, which featured the NASCAR debut of open-wheel racing star Danica Patrick, earned a fast national household coverage rating of 3.2, averaging 4,271,365 viewers in 3,170,109 households. The viewership numbers eclipse the previous Nationwide Series cable records of 3,954,798 viewers and 2,946,951 households set by TNT for its telecast of the 2006 Daytona race.

Believe me, as exciting as the Nationwide Series can be, people did not turn out in record numbers just because.

Danica Patrick will make her NASCAR debut this weekend at Daytona International Speedway.

The IndyCar star will drive the No. 7 Chevrolet for JR Motorsports in Saturday’s second-tier Nationwide Series race.

The decision announced Monday to race at Daytona was made after team officials dissected her stock-car racing debut in the ARCA race at Daytona on Saturday. The team had left the option to race up to Patrick, who wanted to assess her first race before deciding whether to enter one of the most prestigious Nationwide races of the season.

This is excellent news. Who doesn’t want to watch Danica Patrick?