Sigh, It Never Stops

A Danica Patrick apologist, pretending to be a sportswriter, has a piece in USA Today yesterday saying claiming that Princess Sparkle Pony is actually much better than critics are giving her credit for. He compares Danica to “three IndyCar drivers [who] have tried to make the transition to the big taxicabs” recently:

“Sam Hornish was 33rd in the Cup standings after 19 races.”

Indeed. Sam won the IRL championship, three times no less, and the Indy 500 once, and let’s see where he is in the Sprint Cup standings today. Oh, he’s not. He’s currently running in the Nationwide series.

“Dario Franchitti was 37th after six races, at which point he was injured and ultimately returned to IndyCar.”

I don’t think that even requires any comment.

“Juan Pablo Montoya was 20th after 19 races.”

Indeed he was, after winning the Indy 500 and 7 Formula races, and his current standing, after seven full years in Sprint Cup, is 23rd. He’s also known as “Mister Hit Everything On The Track,” including the jet dryer during a caution.

“Patrick, heading into Sunday's Brickyard, is 27th in the points standings.”

Danica is also known as Miss Lapped 30 Times, is 0-91 in NASCAR, is 1-252 for her career and 0-21 for 2013, is ahead of exactly four drivers who've also done all 19 Cup races this year (and trailing 26 drivers), has never won a pro auto race in which none of her competitors ran out of gas, has never won a stock car race, has never won a street race and has never won a race over 300 miles, In her single Nationwide season she finished ahead of exactly one driver who ran all of the races.

Of the three drivers that Kravitz is comparing Princess Sparkle Pony to, all three had vastly better records than her in open wheel, only one is even remaining in Sprint Cup series, and he is doing more poorly now than he did as a rookie seven years ago. Do you see anything there that suggests that Danica is going to show much in the way of improvement in the NASCAR Sprint Cup series?

Further, NASCAR was not raving about how Sam, Dino and Juan Pablo were the greatest things ever to happen to NASCAR, spending half the race showing their cars in 37th place and raving about how well they were doing, and skipping seven top ten finishers after the race to go interview them after they finished 29th.

I am not opposed to women in stock car racing. On the contrary. There is a driver in the Nationwide series named Johanna Long, whose team is so poorly funded that she can only run in about eight races per year. If she were in the car that Danica is driving she would consistently be finishing in the top ten and would be showing us some really good racing.

If NASCAR was about racing instead of about “the show” she would be in the car that Danica is driving.