She is a mediocre driver who is getting a ridiculous amount of publicity based solely on her gender and appearance and not her ability. A 50 lb. weight advantage in open wheel racing is huge. Anyone who doesn;t think so has clearly never spent time behind the wheel. Danica in Nascar would be a joke. She doesn't have the upper body strength to handle a stock car and will likely wind up seriously hurting either herself or another driver.
From IRL to NASCAR a step down? In what respect? Many more millions of fans in NASCAR. Its her agent's dream. Her income on endorsements alone will likely triple, or more.
i agree w/ all your comments w/ the exception of the upper body strength comment. the orientation of steering wheel to the seat is designed to take the upper body fatigue element out of the drive. power steering as well. i have lots of laps at charlotte and rockingham. the cars are quite fun and turn in effortlessly w/ the additional aid of tire stagger. back to danica...way too much hype. like i said earlier, she is the equivilent to ana kournakova in tennis!
true that! if you have ever been to a nascar even and don't leave thinking "wow what an event" you can't be serious. if sports car racing in this country could garner half of the support of nascar, we would all have paid for rides! the nascar circus actually makes me jealous...i really wish we had that in road racing.
No, I don't have open wheel experience but quite a bit of seat time in sports cars and I literally live on a race track. Here are listed weights of a few drivers: Lazier 175 Carpenter 165 Cheever 170 Rice 150 Hornish 165 Herta 155 Weldon 157 Roth 170 Kanaan 147 Castroneves 147 Andretti 135 By your logic Lazier, Cheever, and Roth must be the most talented drivers in the world to overcome their huge size and Andretti must be the most over rated driver in history. Hell, Hornish weighs a massive 165 and is #1 in the standings. Please tell me why we don't see more drivers of Andretti's size if it were such a huge advantage? How could a 165-175 pound guy ever hope to compete? If you were a team owner wouldn't you rather develop someone Andretti's size rather than spends millions upon millions to find that next tenth of a second. Opinion aside, the evidence speaks for itself. Bigger guys are able to compete with smaller drivers and no one is actively looking for small people to put behind the wheel. Its not on the list of criteria when on a driver search.
The comparison of Danica and Anna K dose not work. Danica is in a drivers suit inside a car. Anna K. is in that skimpy little tennis outfit. Stretching for the ball. Pulling the lines of her clothing where they do not belong. Sweating all down the front of herself. I watched Anna lose a lot longer than I will watch Danica lose.
These arrogant morons @ CART committed financial suicide in probably 1 of the dumbest big business deals of the 20th C Bill France just stepped in and took all the business they left behind Its not his fault the guys at CART & IRL were morons I'm not a big NASCAR fan but I respect France's business sense & the courage & skill of the drivers
The knock on Sara Fisher was she was a good qualifier, but not a good racer. "Stepping down" to NASCAR didn't seem to hure Tony Stewart much. Dave
well..truth is danika is not hot like anna either...not even close! but...it is a fair parallel and seems to be the closest thing we have to a little talent hottie that gets more ink for her little bod than she does from her ability to win races.
She's better than the people behind her. Why not move to NASCAR? You only go around once; might as well follow the money instead of being stuck in a has-been racing series that no one cares about.
I know of a woman driver who has credentials way beyond Danica's wildest dreams and for icing on the cake she's also fantastic in her double sporting career of three-day eventing - talk about a a sport more demanding that driving a car. She's far better looking, well educated and doesn't get "exploited" as Danica. From what I read on Autosport, it sounds more like Danica's manager (her daddy) seems to be the one so set on NASCAR. Wonder what her elder husband has to say about all this?? Seems like hubby rides in the back seat. Carol
I couldn't agree more. What that moron Tony was thinking is beyond me. Let me clarify the point I was making about Danica. NONE of the current drivers in Indy save maybe three of them are worth a damn. 15 years ago NONE of them would have had a ride in open wheel cars. NASCAR on the other hand has so many feeder series it's not even funny. Sure it's a shame the cars don't have more technology in them. I'd love to see every stock car replaced with a DTM equivelant and a more mixed bag of drivers but that's not how it came down the pike.
True, but part of that is also securing a future for yourself. Think about it: You're a hot name in racing at the moment. The future of your series is a complete unknown. You have no contract for next year. NASCAR is the biggest ticket in racing in this country. I mean, it's noble and all to stick it out in open wheel here in the States, but for the last decade that has become more of a career dead end than anything else. Do you think they even remember the name Sebastian Bourdais over in Europe? Even if IRL and CART merge--and let's hope it happens--it will be years before the unified series rises to prominence/significance here. So, yeah, it's about the $$$$. But it's about making any money versus none at all.
Jack, your posts always hit it right on the head. I hope there is a unification to keep the Open Wheel Drivers from migrating to NASCAR.
For what is worth NASCAR is the best run racing enterprise of all time. Their drivers are quickly becoming household names. The costs are reasonable compared to other high profile forms of racing. You see it everywhere here in the States, my 87 year old mother has an Enhart mouse pad. They market, market, market, and then for overkill they put the fans first. Ralf may be looking at JPM move with more than interest as his season is not going that well, and don't think that NASCAR would miss the opportunity to market F1 stars mixed in with Good Old Boys on the high banks. What ever you think of the type of racing that the do you have to admit that they put on a great show that the average guy can afford to watch, and they don't miss an opportunity to make the fans feel involved. The cutting edge of racing it is not, but racing is also about making heroes, and right now no one is making them better or faster than NASCAR. If other forms of racing dont get back to basics and servicing their fan base, the large slow sedans they used to laugh at will leave them in the dust. Expect more defections...
I agree with astjr, NASCAR is at the moment the best organised series WORLDWIDE. I don't know if it's because it's first a national series that doesn't have pretence of being the 'pinacle of motorsports', or because it's simple to understand and follow. It isn't elitist or sophisticated like some FIA championships I could care to name, but it looks well managed and delivers the goods to the drivers, the teams and the paying public. In terms of success, there is nothing to compare to it. It probably benefited from the split in single-seater series in the US (Tony George v. CART), but picked up the ball and ran away with it. That doesn't surprised me: as a Brit who visit the States from time to time, what I admire most is the quality of the organisation in general around motor racing or motorcycle racing. From NHRA to AMA, from IRL to NASCAR, the show always looks terrific to me compared to what we do in the old continent. US race organisers look after their customers, in Europe, they take them for granted.
The "Chicagoland" NASCAR race was just run, and in the weeks leading up to it I was struck by the same sentiment of your post. School was in session as far as how to successfully promote an event, albeit one that's already popular. Besides the race, they had the ancillary events with driver appearances. Radio stations gave away VIP tickets to these events, along with all the other air time it got. They had events in the downtown area of Joliet, where the track is, like a parade and a celebrity softball game that featured names from NASCAR. Where F1 pushes away, NASCAR invites you in. Now, the IRL would kill for a fraction of what NASCAR pulls, but when they try a new marketing approach every year, it just rings hollow. It reeks of desperation, of trying too hard. Same goes for CART.
Her? It looks like two of Danica could fit in her suit! No, she is not a marketing dream, not even close in looks to Danica.
Did not hurt Jeff Gordon either. No to mention NASCAR is the fastest growing sport in the United States. And most of that growth is from WOMEN. If Danica could hold her own in NASCAR, she would be HUGE. She would be more famous and make more money than she probably ever will in open wheel racing.
Obiously you don't follow ALMS. Danica's looks come from lots of make-up - i.e. glamour shots - go to a mall sometime and you'll learn how to change one's appearance. Even the ugliest person can become a beauty queen. yzee - absolutely correct about the LMP2 car. You must have been at Mid-Ohio recently? Carol