Feb 17, 2018

  • Bob PockrassNASCAR

    Shut

      • NASCAR writer for ESPN.com
      • 2009, 2013 NMPA Writer of the Year
      • More than than 25 years feel covering motorsports

DAYTONA Embankment, Fla. -- For anyone who thought Danica Patrick would win races in NASCAR and stop better than 24th in the standings over five seasons, Patrick has a message:

She'southward flattered.

"What I came to [realize] in the end was I'thousand honored there was thwarting [from fans]," Patrick said every bit her final NASCAR race approaches Dominicus with the 2018 Daytona 500 (two:xxx p.one thousand. ET, Pull a fast one on). "I'm disappointed because it meant you expected more, and I did too, correct?

"You saw me through my optics. You saw the potential. You hoped for what I hoped for and believed it was possible."

But information technology didn't happen. What went incorrect? Or did cipher become incorrect? Was Danica Patrick among a long list of IndyCar drivers -- including past champions Dario Franchitti and Sam Hornish Jr. -- who attempted to transition to NASCAR and failed to gain much traction? Or did something else stymie her efforts over the past vii years?

Experience

"I had xx years on her when she started in a stock car," said 2014 NASCAR Cup champion Kevin Harvick, her teammate at Stewart-Haas Racing for the past four seasons. "That is experience and the things that come with that. Yous are never going to make up that ground. As long as I am still racing, I am going to be 20 years ahead regardless."

With one win in an IndyCar race and a third-place finish in the 2009 Indianapolis 500 among her accomplishments, Patrick tried to make the transition to stock cars equally smooth as possible, competing part-fourth dimension in the Xfinity Series in 2010 and 2011 while also competing in a full IndyCar schedule. She then competed in the full Xfinity schedule -- she finished 10th in the standings, the highest for a female in that series -- in 2012 and raced select Cup events earlier heading to Loving cup full time in 2013.

She knew so little about stock cars that when her first crew chief, Tony Eury Jr., talked in their first test almost the "yaw" of the automobile as it turned, she thought he was maxim "y'all" and couldn't figure out what he meant.

"She had a swell opportunity financially to come into NASCAR," said Dale Earnhardt Jr., co-owner of JR Motorsports. "There was a lot of money there. Anyone would accept taken that opportunity, but information technology was more of a challenge than anyone could have accomplished. Not just a female."

"She is breaking barriers downward, which I think puts her in a special category. She needs to be praised for what she'due south washed and accomplished."

Fob Sports analyst Jeff Gordon on Danica Patrick'south career in NASCAR

The biggest difference between an IndyCar and a stock car -- and there are plenty -- is most apparent when an IndyCar twitches because information technology ofttimes means a difficult crash a few seconds later. A stock car, when driven by the stars of the sport, often twitches.

"If an IndyCar moves around in the dorsum, you wreck," said Eury, who will be her coiffure chief for her concluding Daytona 500 on Sunday. "These things move around. You can hang them out. That was her biggest learning curve.

"Before she got hither, she didn't wreck race cars. She didn't tear up any cars. She'south tore upwards some stuff in Cup just from the unproblematic fact of trying also hard or not of her ain doing, somebody taking advantage of her considering she'south a girl and, 'Hey I ain't going to get beat by a girl.' Those are the kind of things that take plagued her."

Eury said when he would work with Patrick, he tried to make sure he had the car gear up with certain aspects so she could handle information technology well. They had some success, winning an Xfinity pole at Daytona in 2012, a fourth-place cease at Las Vegas in 2011 and that top-10 finish in the standings.

"She didn't come into the sport to set a motorcar upwards, she came to the sport to learn to drive information technology," Eury said.

Not all drivers are knowledgeable on setups. Those who tin can perform despite not having that knowledge don't have anything to sweat. Those who don't volition find a toxic atmosphere.

Patrick, 35, had a roller-coaster ride in Cup. Driving for Stewart-Haas Racing, Patrick earned seven top-10s -- a tape for a female in the NASCAR Cup Series -- merely it took 190 career starts. She finished in the lead lap in 38 percentage of her races.

"I don't think she was ever really comfortable running a loose car," said Stewart, co-owner of SHR. "That'due south just inherent of anybody that runs an IndyCar, because IndyCars, you're sitting so far frontwards in those cars that when they get loose, you don't normally salve them.

"These cars just inherently in the last five years have gotten freer, freer and freer."

Patrick sat on the pole for the 2013 Daytona 500, the only such achievement for a female in NASCAR history, which spans 2,534 Cup races. Her eighth-place finish in that effect marks the best finish for a female in NASCAR'due south biggest race.

"They just didn't empathize what she needed out of the machine," said Juan Pablo Montoya, an Indy 500 champion and former Formula One winner who won two Cup road-grade races in 7 total NASCAR seasons at Ganassi. "For me, it was tough because it took me a couple of years to actually get the hang of information technology, and and then I did.

"And once I did, they started changing everybody [on the team] and so commencement changing people. And when you start irresolute people around yous, then the new people, when things didn't piece of work, they always want to cover their ass."

Support

Patrick has insinuated that at times she didn't experience the full support of her team, maxim every bit far back as September that "I don't remember it's always abiding" that she had people fighting for her. Only that is natural at about teams when drivers struggle, and her teammates oftentimes outran her. Concluding year, Harvick and Kurt Busch made the playoffs and Clint Bowyer finished 18th in the standings while Patrick was 28th.

Obviously, SHR feels it did everything it could, and Stewart pointed to a disagreement between Patrick, him and SHR competition director Greg Zipadelli over whether to keep Tony Gibson as her coiffure chief late into her second season or to go to an engineer, which she was more used to on the IndyCar side. The team made the modify.

"We gave her everything nosotros gave everybody else on that team," Stewart said. "She was the one that didn't believe in [competition director] Zippy and me when nosotros told her that Tony Gibson was the right crew chief for her, and she insisted on a different coiffure primary.

"I've kept that nether my belt the whole time. Lately, I'thousand hearing that she keeps saying that the team didn't believe in her, which isn't right. We all believed in her. But the best crew main that we had and the best pairing for her was the i she didn't desire. She was her own worst enemy in that equation."

Information technology certainly wouldn't go downwards in history as the first disagreement over who should coiffure chief a driver, and the results showed the two different crew chiefs she had subsequently Gibson didn't brand much of a difference as she continued to struggle behind her SHR teammates.

"I saw cars that were put on the race runway just similar everybody else's, and at our shop, all the cars are prepared and finished by the same people," Harvick said about whether Patrick had full support. "A lot of that goes back to input.

"You have to have the input to aid build your team going forrad, so some of those things fall curt possibly from perchance not getting the input that the team needed to push button the cars in a good direction."

Patrick readily would admit she couldn't give the input that information technology might take to become fast.

"We are all unique in our abilities and what we feel," Patrick said. "Having a car that is correct for y'all is the most important. I recall probably i of the things that hurts me in my lower experience level in stock cars is that I just don't always know what to inquire for to either get to that point or make it like that more than oftentimes.

"[There are] sure traits that the car needs to accept that will make it consistent over a run or good from practice to the race."

Asked if given more than time to develop whether she would go to that point, she said: "I have no idea. I feel like yous get better as a commuter every year. The slope [of improvement] slows downwards."

Eury feels given the correct situation, she could be successful. But the onetime coiffure chief for Earnhardt Jr. likewise knows how things become in the sport when a high-profile driver struggles.

"[Blaming people], it's got no choice just to happen because it is a loftier-contour driver," Eury said. "Information technology happened to me. If your driver is a high-contour driver, the fingers always are going to showtime getting pointed when things go bad.

"Never practice y'all see people rally around somebody and say, 'This is how we're going to fix it, let'southward try to go far improve.' Information technology always turned into a finger-pointing deal."

Technical problems

Earnhardt said he believes Patrick coming into the sport when NASCAR started taking away downforce as part of its rules package probably hurt her.

"Everyone that gets out of an IndyCar and goes into a stock car is kind of crazy to begin with because they're completely different," Earnhardt said. "They but don't have anything similar about them. ... She came into the Xfinity Series and I was really surprised she did also as she did in our JR Motorsports cars.

"They take more downforce, less ability, and they were, for a lack of a better word to describe it, easier to drive. She showed in those cars, in my opinion, that she is a driver."

The departure in NASCAR was the quality of cars varied from team to team more than an IndyCar, Patrick said, where she felt they were more similar across the board.

Even how the stock cars reacted in practice was foreign to Patrick.

"The one thing nigh open-wheel to stock cars is open-wheel cars tend to stay very consistent throughout a run -- the final lap on runway before the race in practice is the fastest," Patrick said. "The first lap hither [is fastest].

"At that place'southward a lot of transitions that the auto goes through in stock-car racing, and then having more experience to know what those are, anticipate those, that always helps."

4-time Loving cup champion Jeff Gordon, now an analyst for Pull a fast one on Sports, said Patrick has done not bad, especially when because that Franchitti, a four-time IndyCar champion, had a sour NASCAR feel equally he finished in the elevation-ten in ii of 18 Xfinity races and never won in 10 Cup starts.

"Danica has been given as good of an opportunity every bit anybody has ever been given," Gordon said. "I've seen days where she's had amazing equipment."

Learning how to maneuver the bigger, heavier automobile, though, appeared to be a challenge.

"You lot actually lift on the straightaway in an IndyCar, then you're full throttle through the corners -- that is 100 percent opposite, 180 degrees [different than] in a stock auto where nosotros're always lifting in the corners because our cars are and then heavy and they're lacking downforce," said 2017 Daytona 500 champion Kurt Busch, who finished 6th in the 2014 Indianapolis 500.

Confidence

The best open up-wheel drivers who suit to NASCAR often have dirt-track oval feel, where Gordon said drivers learn how to search the track for the best racing line during an event.

"The dirt-track racing experience I had taught me to search lines, to arroyo the corner different when I am behind somebody, to attempt to discover a way to go by them, and that'south what you have to accept, especially on the short tracks in NASCAR," Gordon said.

"That'due south where I saw that she struggled. She could have a fast machine, make fast laps, go up to somebody and take difficulty getting by them. And if you have difficulty getting by them, information technology sort of breaks your momentum and stops you in your tracks. I saw that as a fairly consistent affair with her."

Gordon did say that once a team loses confidence in a driver, it is difficult to get it back.

"There'south no doubtfulness that I recollect people lost confidence in her," he said. "I'd be curious if she lost confidence in herself."

Did she?

"Oh god, I've came and went with conviction my entire career since I was a go-kart driver," Patrick said. "That's just homo nature, to have dubiety, to question.

"But I'thou as well very coachable. For me, I ever tell people let me know what I need to do different. I'chiliad the easiest matter to fix. Just tell me."

Along with peaks and valleys in the conviction in her, Patrick said the challenges included staying mentally stiff throughout a 36-race schedule. A NASCAR season typically had ii or three weekends off with 38 races during a 9-month stretch, while the IndyCar schedule had 17 races over six months.

"The relentlessness of the schedule actually makes yous have to get your attitude and your listen right," she said. "Y'all can't let one weekend bleed into the side by side if it's a bad weekend.

"That'due south probably the other side of the competition that I had to go used to early on on. I let that bear on from weekend to weekend. I had to learn existent fast that was not going to be productive."

While she hasn't achieved the success she had wanted, many view her fourth dimension in NASCAR as a successful venture.

"She is breaking barriers downwards, which I remember puts her in a special category," Gordon said. "She needs to be praised for what she's done and accomplished.

"She's a very spirited competitor, and and then she doesn't look at information technology that way. She wants to be looked upon as any other competitor."