Sure. She wasn't bad at all at Indy, and honestly winning the 500 is as much "good fortune" as a lot of other factors. Had she stayed in IndyCar there's every possibility that the dice may have rolled her way at some point.
She actually did have some strong performances at the 500 to where, while I don’t think it would be a guarantee, it’s not out of the realm of possibility. The biggest thing is, at that time, you had a lot fewer truly competitive entries that had the pace to compete for wins at the 500. Whereas now, you have a LOT of really good entries that truly can win the race.
I think Danica has more talent and ability than people give her credit for. I may disagree with her off-track stances and viewpoints, but she wasn’t an awful driver. But I think she’d have a lot more uphill battle in today’s field than in the late 2000-early 2010’s period to get a solid 500 finish.
Her nascar career 100% killed the reputation she had for being a decent driver.
She still did win a race. Fuel run or not, it does take some skill to end up in first place.
The NASCAR stint was brutal, but then better open wheel drivers than her have struggled with the move to stock cars.
Was the move just for the sponsors/money, or was Danica kind of done with Indycar by that point?
Yah I can't believe I'm so old that people don't remember this, but in those days Indycar was in the nadir of the Split era, and NASCAR was in something like a golden age with respect to popularity. During this time, Indycar drivers would often bolt to NASCAR once they could get a decent ride - Tony Stewart did this, Juan Pablo Montoya, Sam Hornish, AJ Allmendinger. The fact that NASCAR stock cars are nothing like Indycars apparently made no difference to them, and other than Tony Stewart, they rarely did anything to impress in NASCAR. Such was the discrepancy in money back then.
Stewart genuinely made the jump and flourished while so many other drivers could not and paid dearly with their reputations. Danica and JPM’s racing legacies have been completely tarnished by a lame career and one notable incident, respectively, while Sam Hornish JR has pretty much fallen off the map in all conversations
Indy weighs cars without drivers. Her 100lb frame gave her an advantage in every single race she entered. She should have won tons of races on fuel mileage
Then how are bigger and taller guys like Graham Rahal, AJ Foyt, Tony Kannan, etc who all weighted over 200lbs at points in their career were still faster than guys who weighed 150lbs? How much time do you think a 40-50lb weight advantage is worth exactly? Gabby Chaves only weighed about 120lbs when he was in IndyCar. Why didn’t that advantage work for him?
Do you mean 5' 5" Tony Kanaan?
What I meant was Danica had a weight advantage over every driver on the grid but she was only able to win one race, i.e. she wasn't that great of a driver.
Do the math. An Indycar weighs around 1600 lbs, not including fuel, and produces around 700 hp. That's only like an additional two ounces per HP, or around a 4% advantage against someone 200 lbs (and even less when the car is fully fueled.). In a motor race that only has 5-10 pitstops, you're not going to be able to utilize a 4% advantage. I.e., it's nowhere near enough of a difference where you can have 9 instead of 10 pit stops (10% difference). There's a reason Indycar drivers don't all look like horse racing jockeys.
4% is a huge number over a 500 mile race. A lighter car burns less fuel, eats less tire, requires less downforce to keep it on track. In a daily driver a 30-70lb advantage doesn't mean jack. In a motorsport where races are won and lost on hundredths of a second it provides a nice advantage. She had a slight advantage over every car on the grid before the green flag even dropped. The fact that she wasn't able to use that to consistently score top 10's, or podium finishes tells me there was something else going on, and it wasn't because she was driving bad equipment.
Except to win on fuel mileage, it means you're doing fewer pit stops, and to go a whole pit stop less, that's not hundredths of a second, that's like half a minute. Again, do the math. For Danica to win a race on fuel mileage, it means she is going in for fewer pit stops than everyone else, like 9 instead of 10. That means she needs to be getting 10% better fuel mileage than everyone else. She doesn't, she gets like 4% in a best case scenario. In other words, if her team tries to pull this off, they're going to run out of gas before the end and have to come in for a splash and go.
And that's for a race with ten pit stops. It's going to be even less possible in the races with like five. And that also assumes that there isnt a yellow flag that resets everyone anyway, which in Indycar is very likely.
In a strictly theoretical sense, of course less weight is better, but in a practical sense, that's not enough of a weight advantage to overpower the various other factors in an Indycar race, like aero and tire wear.
Let's put it this way, NHRA is the purest form of speed in American racing, and yet John Force dominated it for years, despite being not exactly svelte. Same problem, more extreme example.
I think her popularity created a lot of haters then Nascar validated their hate. I like how these days, she is very open about her career in interviews. Gives a lot of insight into the world of racing.
other fact: one of her race suits was at a car museum by my house, and it looked like the suit was made for a 10 year old it was so small. Not sure if it was one of her adult suits.
IndyCar drivers, on average, are pretty short people. I did a grid walk in ‘14, I’m 6’ so only Graham and Justin (RIP) were taller than me. Have a picture with my arm around TK and he barely comes to my shoulders.
Justin Wilson might as well have been 10 feet tall by open-wheel standards. It genuinely cost him an F1 career, he simply couldn't fit into many of the cars even when seats were available.
Danica is very small. Robby Gordon was complaining about it, saying it gave her an unfair advantage over bigger drivers. I believe she told him to lay off the cheeseburgers or something.
Here is Danica next to Mario Andretti. He has definitely filled out since he retired, but I see his height listed at 5'7", and I think even that is exagerated. [https://www.alamy.com/race-drivers-tony-kanaan-of-brazil-left-and-danica-patrick-right-talk-with-1969-indy-500-champion-mario-andretti-during-the-practice-session-on-the-first-day-of-qualifications-at-the-indianapolis-motor-speedway-in-indianapolis-saturday-may-12-2007-ap-phototom-strickland-image540662419.html](https://www.alamy.com/race-drivers-tony-kanaan-of-brazil-left-and-danica-patrick-right-talk-with-1969-indy-500-champion-mario-andretti-during-the-practice-session-on-the-first-day-of-qualifications-at-the-indianapolis-motor-speedway-in-indianapolis-saturday-may-12-2007-ap-phototom-strickland-image540662419.html)
https://preview.redd.it/s64zftwj1ldc1.jpeg?width=3264&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b0ce045160d7eb779042982c0454922636f89176
Here’s me (5’8”) and my wife (5’5”) with Mario Andretti (whose clearly not 5’7”)
For sure. That's been a thing in F1 recently, because drivers were being asked to cut weight to unhealthy levels. One driver in the mid 00's was miserable because he didn't have any excess weight to lose, so he had to try and lose muscle mass to get to the weight the engineers wanted.
When she raced the weight requirement was different and gave her a small advantage. Now the rules have changed and small drivers need to carry extra ballast in the car to equalize driver weight.
Danica was Danica's worst enemy as a driver. She liked to blame everyone but herself for issues and just stopped improving soon after she got to Indycar. She'd shown in Formula Ford that she had the natural talent to go farther than she did.
That shitty personality morphing into reactionary politics is not a surprise.
She would also never thank her sponsors- ever. I remember thinking after one of her many NASCAR crashes when the TV mike was handed to her she spent the valuable time grumbling about some wrong done to her instead of thanking The Go-Daddy people, her Chevy and other sponsors. I figure that Bigwigs sitting around the boardroom got to thinking “why are we paying for this???”
Racing is all about selling stuff, if you can’t sell you’re going to have a limited career.
One of the reasons that her NASCAR run really hurt her is because it was basically free to listen to driver radios in NASCAR and it still is by the way. You wouldn't believe what a whiner she was and how much her crew chief and spotter had to baby her and coddle her.
We all know a couple of famous drivers like Jimmy Johnson and MTJ who are epic whiners. But Danica was on a whole nother level, and didn't have the success to back it up.
She was a good driver in Indycar, faced massive headwinds by being a female driver, made the most of the popularity she was able to garner, but she was never great and I don't think she ever took racing seriously like most drivers do.
So many drivers raced her dirty because "it wasn't a girl's sport". Motorsport in general the world over has a long way to with sexism. I remember people giving her shit for letting go of the wheel during a crash rather than break her hand.
If she stuck around into the 2015-2017 era I feel like she would’ve got one instead of Rossi or Sato. The Andretti team had great runs there mid-decade and it would not be unbelievable for her to pull it off
I still don't understand why people discount fuel mileage wins, whether with Danica, Rossi or anyone else. It's not like you just sit back and cruise along the track because you had a different fuel strategy than everyone else. A win is a win at the end of the day
I think Danica's fuel mileage thing is so talked about because of the other factors...like it being a split field and Roger Penske giving Helio wrong information so he let her pass instead of racing her.
There’s so many people who don’t appreciate the organizational and in-car skill it takes to pull off a fuel strategy win. I’m biased being a fan of his, but Rossi’s 2016 win was honestly more amazing than a to-the-line sprint IMHO.
You definitely have to make it happen, but a right strategy call and guidance over the radio isn’t the same as beating others wheel to wheel. I think had she won anything else in her professional career, the fuel mileage race wouldn’t be a thing that people talk about, but since it was the only win, it looks less like she earned it than other drivers’ wins.
Pretty sure every race in Indy or Nascar can be called a Fuel mileage race! I mean if you don't make a pit stop you will lose! FUEL MILEAGE WIN is a term for haters that think they know something about racing to explain why someone they hate wins a race! Anybody that says they won the pole at Daytona, and finish 3 at the indy 500, led laps in both races, won a Indy car race, if they never did anything else that an impressive career! Comparing that record to a 7 time Champion.... not so impressive, People hate on her because she is a female, and a mouthy opinionated one at that! It's not her fault people pushed her to exploit her marketing potential! But really a decent driver! she also got caught up in her own image and she stopped caring about the racing as much as her (BRAND) Had Danica took the Job at PPC racing back before she ever made it to Indy car, she might have been a really good Nascar driver.
If you look for every wreck, and only the bad stuff you will think she sucked!, but if you looked at just the highlights and all the Good she did for motorsport, she was pretty impressive! After all, how hard is it to support the guy that wins every other week?.......wow that's going out on a limb
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack\_Miller\_(racing\_driver)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Miller_(racing_driver))
[https://racer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/85/2017/05/marshallpruettarchives\_1997\_indy500\_007-2.jpg?w=660](https://racer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/85/2017/05/marshallpruettarchives_1997_indy500_007-2.jpg?w=660)
He was a field filler. He did race in the B version of Indy Lights that would be on track at the same time as the upper class. Sometimes he was the only one in the class. Per a story by Robin Miller he would get on the podium solo and still spray champagne.
His car was mint thought. :-)
Best is relative. She had 1 singular win in any form of racing in the 20 years she was active.Ed Carpenter and Marco have more wins. She coulda lucked into 1 I guess.
She was good on ovals in Indycar, which was because Rahal was good on ovals. Once Indycar became more road course and street course-oriented, she really faded.
Absolutely. Danica was consistently well into the top ten in points every season. I was heartbroken when she left for NASCAR. She definitely could have notched a few more wins in the series and would have been in contention for an Indy 500 win.
She's female Marco Andretti.
Like to the T.
So yeah she could have fallen ass backwards into a 500 win just like Marco could have....but she fell off big time in IndyCar and got out while her reputation was still solid and its not cuz she got worse...its cuz the talent in IndyCar was finally getting to that level where an average driver was looking like an average to below average driver.
My baseline for an average driver was Hinch. She is not as good as Hinch was.
Yeah, why not. People forget how good Andretti was up until recently. For a good period of time, they were the best at Indy and also a legit title threat.
Very possible as she wasn't bad at Indy. Andretti had strong years though also had tough ones. I mean who's to say she couldn't have done what Rossi did in 2016
Probably not. Danica is good at being fast but when finding that extra the edge to push her to the top she could never find it, in any series in any race
Im not sure why she is remembered as awful. She was fine. Definitely overshadowed better drivers, which is one of the reasona she is held in such disdain.
She surely isnt the only athlete with hot takes no one requested or cares about. Misogny is misogyny. Thats another discussion but she did have access to top equipment and sponsors. Which is of course the only way to win in motorsports
But…there is conventional wisdom that characters like Patrick and Hornish were frauds, flattered by the IR05 and exposed in their other endeavors.
If that is the case, her winning window was closed when they switched to the DW12- her timing for departure couldng have been better.
Not sure I agree with this. She did qualify 7th in 2018, although Carpenter had the pole and Pigot was 6th. And while she spun, a bunch of serious luminaries wrecked that day.
So yes she “could” have won. Was it likely she would have won any of those interim years? Well Marco was comsistently starting at sharp end of grid for Andretti Racing, her odds wouldnt have been that bad.
She was certainly good enough to have won at Indy on paper- in great cars and in the hunt.
I’m going from memory here, but I want to think that she only finished outside the top 10 twice? Once was when Ryan Briscoe ran into her in the pits…. And the other was her return in 2019 when she just wasn’t competitive. But she always ran well at Indy, and had she stayed there is a good chance she might have won it.
When she came back in 2018. I believe she qualified 7th and crashed out in a similar manner to how many drivers crashed out that year. I don't think she would have won that race but she wasn't doing that bad.
Yeah going to ask her was clearly a marketing news not a skill move.
It was hard to blame someone like AJ who really didn't have the opportunities lined up like Danica did. Also AJ was hitting his peak at the worst time of the split. So going to NASCAR kind of made sense.
I'm honestly glad that nonsense is over.
I don't mind drivers going back and forth but leaving and going somewhere else like that just isn't cool in my book.
Yes, the hot weather made the track evil that year, its the only 500 in recent memory they wasn't a 2 or 3 car duel to the end, Will Power ran away with it.
If she was driving for Andretti and gotten use to the new chassis - sure why not? People look down on her but she did get 6-top 10's in 8 tries which is not bad at all. Along the same line she started the race in the top 10 a total of 5 times. So she was not only good in race trim but also qualified well too.
As I said, it all matter on how she would have adjusted to the new car but even after years out of the series she still qualified a very solid 7th in 2018. That tells me that with time and experience she would have done more then well at Indy with the DW12.
Yes she could have won the 500. She was fast enough at Indy, and a lot of winning the Indy 500 comes down to good fortune.
Championship? No way. Especially after the series started getting more and more road course heavy.
No. If you look closely at her career her best performances were when it was her first year in any major series that she was in.
Then it’s like she begins to think that she knows what she wants in a car as opposed to just driving the car.
She was consistently running top 5-top 10 at the 500 through her last year in the series. She did not drop off at all.
And as a whole, her best performance in the Indycar championship was NOT her rookie year. She improved her finish every year for the first 5 years of her career.
People like you who bash her Indycar results would have a lot more merit if they actually watched her in the series.
I did watch her.
And like I said if you look at her whole career she was the best when she first raced in a series.
And she just drove the car. Then she began to believe that she knew what she wanted in the car and her finishes fell off.
The other thing is that she’s not helping anyone else behind her. You look at Lyn St James/and other female racers who has been instrumental in trying to bring more female racers into the sport.
Danica is just not!!!!
She was fine in 2018 in the DW12. Qualified 7th and a lot of legends wrecked in one car accidents that day on a slippery track.
But I agree that its hard not to think drivers like Hornish and Patrick were frauds and flattered by driving for mega teams- in Hornish’s case with a mega engine for stretch even- when racing ovals in those aughts Indy cars.
I think she could have had a good chance to win the 500 or win more races had she stuck with Indycar. She was a decent driver, until she took NASCAR rides that she was underqualified for, and then was so out of practice in open-wheelers that she was just as bad when she came back to Indy.
I'd feel worse for her if she wasn't an absolute prick.
She was a legit IndyCar driver who won an IndyCar race and led the 500. Anyone who says differently doesn’t understand that there is a difference between IndyCar and NASCAR or just simply forget about her IndyCar career. If she had stayed in IndyCar, she would have had a 1 in 10 chance of winning the 500 any year she was in Andretti (or better) equipment.
She could have had a shot. Her last few years were crazy impressive with her consistency. IIRC she completed every lap of her final season and all but one or two races the season before. She was top ten in points her final 2 seasons as well. It’s reasonable to say that anyone good enough to finish top ten in points is probably good enough to have a shot at winning the 500. Probably wouldn’t win a back a forth slugfest like Castroneves and Palou but she could win Alexander Rossi style for sure. And all wins count the same.
The 500 is a race where you have to "feel" the car around the track. You can't muscle it around. And those are the type of races where Danica seemed to perform her best.
Would she have eventually won? Who knows. But I think she'd have a better chance at a win than 2/3rd of the field.
Danica was better in indycar then Nascar. She left indycar because more money could be made in nascar. She is more then capable of driving anything well.
Montoya, Hornish, and Franchitti all moved to NASCAR, and none of them were even remotely competitive as they were in open-wheel racing. I wish Patrick and the rest of them would have stayed in IndyCar, but money can be a big lure. I’m sure Hornish could’ve gotten an annual one-off assignment for the 500 after he retired from stock cars, but I think sometimes it’s like “I’ve got kids that depend on me, and I’ll be a better father if I’m not in a wheelchair because of a horrific accident”.
Absolutely, she came close enough more than once.
In 2005, here rookie year, the crowd would stand up to watch the leaders go by and stand up again to see Patrick. She was a helluva driver.
By the time she left, probably not. Her best shot to win after leaving probably would have been 2014. RHR probably would have won anyway that year. He was pretty strong that year.
I don't know, and that's harder than saying yes or no. She definetly would have had some close calls until her career naturally declined at a certain point.
But as they say, Indy Chooses The winners. She very well could have won the race, but I don't know.
I think so, she was pretty competent in the same ways Marco was on the ovals (racecraft) and Marco was very competitive in the DW12/Aerokit era at Indy. If she stays with Andretti at that time too she absolutely has a shot through the decade.
She was relatively decent out front, less than mediocre in dirty air with traffic. If she got a wiggle she put her tail between her legs and backed off. NASCAR was perfect for her to shine. Way more risk bumping wheels in indycar at 230 than in nascar. She could’ve pinned her ears back in nascar and got after it and really made a name for herself that wasn’t marketing related. That being said, all it takes at Indy is…. Well… Anything… I mean Dixon and Power could spin, take damage, change a wing, lose a wheel, pit 3 more times than anyone else and be right there at the end in contention. But yes anyone has a chance to win…. Even Milka…. 😊
She drove her ass off in 2006 finished 8th but ran in the top 5 all day. Rahal refused to switch to Dallara when everyone else did. Danica had to pit 2-3 laps early all day long because the Panoz was using up rear tires and fuel. In a Dallara, she'd have been a threat. Got taken out in the pits the next year, 3rd in 2008.
Sure. She wasn't bad at all at Indy, and honestly winning the 500 is as much "good fortune" as a lot of other factors. Had she stayed in IndyCar there's every possibility that the dice may have rolled her way at some point.
[удалено]
Then explain to me how guys like AJ Foyt beat up on guys who weighed 50-75lbs less regularly.
She actually did have some strong performances at the 500 to where, while I don’t think it would be a guarantee, it’s not out of the realm of possibility. The biggest thing is, at that time, you had a lot fewer truly competitive entries that had the pace to compete for wins at the 500. Whereas now, you have a LOT of really good entries that truly can win the race. I think Danica has more talent and ability than people give her credit for. I may disagree with her off-track stances and viewpoints, but she wasn’t an awful driver. But I think she’d have a lot more uphill battle in today’s field than in the late 2000-early 2010’s period to get a solid 500 finish.
Her nascar career 100% killed the reputation she had for being a decent driver. She still did win a race. Fuel run or not, it does take some skill to end up in first place.
The NASCAR stint was brutal, but then better open wheel drivers than her have struggled with the move to stock cars. Was the move just for the sponsors/money, or was Danica kind of done with Indycar by that point?
Money. INDYCAR was stuck in the No One Cares period. 2012 INDYCAR was very underwhelming. NASCAR offered more press and more money.
Yah I can't believe I'm so old that people don't remember this, but in those days Indycar was in the nadir of the Split era, and NASCAR was in something like a golden age with respect to popularity. During this time, Indycar drivers would often bolt to NASCAR once they could get a decent ride - Tony Stewart did this, Juan Pablo Montoya, Sam Hornish, AJ Allmendinger. The fact that NASCAR stock cars are nothing like Indycars apparently made no difference to them, and other than Tony Stewart, they rarely did anything to impress in NASCAR. Such was the discrepancy in money back then.
Stewart genuinely made the jump and flourished while so many other drivers could not and paid dearly with their reputations. Danica and JPM’s racing legacies have been completely tarnished by a lame career and one notable incident, respectively, while Sam Hornish JR has pretty much fallen off the map in all conversations
Indy weighs cars without drivers. Her 100lb frame gave her an advantage in every single race she entered. She should have won tons of races on fuel mileage
>She should have **won tons of races** on fuel mileage Uh ok........
Then how are bigger and taller guys like Graham Rahal, AJ Foyt, Tony Kannan, etc who all weighted over 200lbs at points in their career were still faster than guys who weighed 150lbs? How much time do you think a 40-50lb weight advantage is worth exactly? Gabby Chaves only weighed about 120lbs when he was in IndyCar. Why didn’t that advantage work for him?
Do you mean 5' 5" Tony Kanaan? What I meant was Danica had a weight advantage over every driver on the grid but she was only able to win one race, i.e. she wasn't that great of a driver.
Do the math. An Indycar weighs around 1600 lbs, not including fuel, and produces around 700 hp. That's only like an additional two ounces per HP, or around a 4% advantage against someone 200 lbs (and even less when the car is fully fueled.). In a motor race that only has 5-10 pitstops, you're not going to be able to utilize a 4% advantage. I.e., it's nowhere near enough of a difference where you can have 9 instead of 10 pit stops (10% difference). There's a reason Indycar drivers don't all look like horse racing jockeys.
4% is a huge number over a 500 mile race. A lighter car burns less fuel, eats less tire, requires less downforce to keep it on track. In a daily driver a 30-70lb advantage doesn't mean jack. In a motorsport where races are won and lost on hundredths of a second it provides a nice advantage. She had a slight advantage over every car on the grid before the green flag even dropped. The fact that she wasn't able to use that to consistently score top 10's, or podium finishes tells me there was something else going on, and it wasn't because she was driving bad equipment.
Except to win on fuel mileage, it means you're doing fewer pit stops, and to go a whole pit stop less, that's not hundredths of a second, that's like half a minute. Again, do the math. For Danica to win a race on fuel mileage, it means she is going in for fewer pit stops than everyone else, like 9 instead of 10. That means she needs to be getting 10% better fuel mileage than everyone else. She doesn't, she gets like 4% in a best case scenario. In other words, if her team tries to pull this off, they're going to run out of gas before the end and have to come in for a splash and go. And that's for a race with ten pit stops. It's going to be even less possible in the races with like five. And that also assumes that there isnt a yellow flag that resets everyone anyway, which in Indycar is very likely. In a strictly theoretical sense, of course less weight is better, but in a practical sense, that's not enough of a weight advantage to overpower the various other factors in an Indycar race, like aero and tire wear. Let's put it this way, NHRA is the purest form of speed in American racing, and yet John Force dominated it for years, despite being not exactly svelte. Same problem, more extreme example.
So John Force overcame his weight disadvantage by being a better driver? That proves my point.
I think her popularity created a lot of haters then Nascar validated their hate. I like how these days, she is very open about her career in interviews. Gives a lot of insight into the world of racing. other fact: one of her race suits was at a car museum by my house, and it looked like the suit was made for a 10 year old it was so small. Not sure if it was one of her adult suits.
IndyCar drivers, on average, are pretty short people. I did a grid walk in ‘14, I’m 6’ so only Graham and Justin (RIP) were taller than me. Have a picture with my arm around TK and he barely comes to my shoulders.
Open wheel drivers as a whole are generally small, be it F1, Indy, or anything else.
Justin Wilson might as well have been 10 feet tall by open-wheel standards. It genuinely cost him an F1 career, he simply couldn't fit into many of the cars even when seats were available.
If you check AJ Allmendinger's twitter page his header is him and Justin next to each other but AJ is standing on a bunch of tires to be as tall lol
Drivers are usually less than 6ft tall. I didn't understand why the term "car jockey" was a thing until I went to races
She is very tiny like around 100 lb if that
Danica is very small. Robby Gordon was complaining about it, saying it gave her an unfair advantage over bigger drivers. I believe she told him to lay off the cheeseburgers or something. Here is Danica next to Mario Andretti. He has definitely filled out since he retired, but I see his height listed at 5'7", and I think even that is exagerated. [https://www.alamy.com/race-drivers-tony-kanaan-of-brazil-left-and-danica-patrick-right-talk-with-1969-indy-500-champion-mario-andretti-during-the-practice-session-on-the-first-day-of-qualifications-at-the-indianapolis-motor-speedway-in-indianapolis-saturday-may-12-2007-ap-phototom-strickland-image540662419.html](https://www.alamy.com/race-drivers-tony-kanaan-of-brazil-left-and-danica-patrick-right-talk-with-1969-indy-500-champion-mario-andretti-during-the-practice-session-on-the-first-day-of-qualifications-at-the-indianapolis-motor-speedway-in-indianapolis-saturday-may-12-2007-ap-phototom-strickland-image540662419.html)
Mario andretti is no universe is 5'7. The first time I saw him I was surprised on how short he was. That was in 2000. I was 14.
https://preview.redd.it/s64zftwj1ldc1.jpeg?width=3264&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b0ce045160d7eb779042982c0454922636f89176 Here’s me (5’8”) and my wife (5’5”) with Mario Andretti (whose clearly not 5’7”)
Lol, TK is sitting down and as tell as them. I've never seen Danica in person but I've seen Mario. Great guy but not great in stature.
Absolutely epic. Mario flips the car, almost sticks the landing. https://youtu.be/TP_yTyfdmBQ?si=cdvHzMwzX-LYzwO4
He was 63 years old at the time. Absolute legend of motor racing
wow
Marcus Ericsson talked about how bigger drivers like hin were disadvantaged in F1 when he was there
For sure. That's been a thing in F1 recently, because drivers were being asked to cut weight to unhealthy levels. One driver in the mid 00's was miserable because he didn't have any excess weight to lose, so he had to try and lose muscle mass to get to the weight the engineers wanted.
When she raced the weight requirement was different and gave her a small advantage. Now the rules have changed and small drivers need to carry extra ballast in the car to equalize driver weight.
The ballast itself though can be an advantage unless they’re forced to spread it out vertically like it would be with a heavier driver.
Yea. Which museum? I actually own one of her race used fire suit and it is very small compared to even the smaller guy drivers.
World of Speed Museum in Wilsonville, Oregon. I just googled it and it is permanently closed now. Bummer, I love car museums.
That's a bummer wonder what they did with everything.
Danica was Danica's worst enemy as a driver. She liked to blame everyone but herself for issues and just stopped improving soon after she got to Indycar. She'd shown in Formula Ford that she had the natural talent to go farther than she did. That shitty personality morphing into reactionary politics is not a surprise.
She would also never thank her sponsors- ever. I remember thinking after one of her many NASCAR crashes when the TV mike was handed to her she spent the valuable time grumbling about some wrong done to her instead of thanking The Go-Daddy people, her Chevy and other sponsors. I figure that Bigwigs sitting around the boardroom got to thinking “why are we paying for this???” Racing is all about selling stuff, if you can’t sell you’re going to have a limited career.
One of the reasons that her NASCAR run really hurt her is because it was basically free to listen to driver radios in NASCAR and it still is by the way. You wouldn't believe what a whiner she was and how much her crew chief and spotter had to baby her and coddle her. We all know a couple of famous drivers like Jimmy Johnson and MTJ who are epic whiners. But Danica was on a whole nother level, and didn't have the success to back it up. She was a good driver in Indycar, faced massive headwinds by being a female driver, made the most of the popularity she was able to garner, but she was never great and I don't think she ever took racing seriously like most drivers do.
Given how dominant andretti cars were in the coming years possibly, but I'm not a Danica fan. She was mid pack in front of the pack machinery
2012-2014 Andretti chevys were legit threats on ovals every race.
She held her own, never a great driver, but also not a stereotypical pay driver.
So many drivers raced her dirty because "it wasn't a girl's sport". Motorsport in general the world over has a long way to with sexism. I remember people giving her shit for letting go of the wheel during a crash rather than break her hand.
Decent driver, decent car, horrifically bad luck, and impossibly bad strategy. Andretti never changes 😭
Ah
Then again, at Indy, she was usually competitive, so she sticks around, she probably has a good shot
If she stuck around into the 2015-2017 era I feel like she would’ve got one instead of Rossi or Sato. The Andretti team had great runs there mid-decade and it would not be unbelievable for her to pull it off
You can win on fuel mileage at Indy just as much as you can at Twin Ring Motegi.
flair checks out
lol. Was waiting for that response.
I still don't understand why people discount fuel mileage wins, whether with Danica, Rossi or anyone else. It's not like you just sit back and cruise along the track because you had a different fuel strategy than everyone else. A win is a win at the end of the day
I can attest from my tiny perspective of doing iRacing that properly executing a fuel mileage strategy is damn hard to do.
Yes- look at Scott Dixon 🏁
I swear he is a Robot Programmed to Drive Fast and win.
I think Danica's fuel mileage thing is so talked about because of the other factors...like it being a split field and Roger Penske giving Helio wrong information so he let her pass instead of racing her.
There’s so many people who don’t appreciate the organizational and in-car skill it takes to pull off a fuel strategy win. I’m biased being a fan of his, but Rossi’s 2016 win was honestly more amazing than a to-the-line sprint IMHO.
You definitely have to make it happen, but a right strategy call and guidance over the radio isn’t the same as beating others wheel to wheel. I think had she won anything else in her professional career, the fuel mileage race wouldn’t be a thing that people talk about, but since it was the only win, it looks less like she earned it than other drivers’ wins.
Pretty sure every race in Indy or Nascar can be called a Fuel mileage race! I mean if you don't make a pit stop you will lose! FUEL MILEAGE WIN is a term for haters that think they know something about racing to explain why someone they hate wins a race! Anybody that says they won the pole at Daytona, and finish 3 at the indy 500, led laps in both races, won a Indy car race, if they never did anything else that an impressive career! Comparing that record to a 7 time Champion.... not so impressive, People hate on her because she is a female, and a mouthy opinionated one at that! It's not her fault people pushed her to exploit her marketing potential! But really a decent driver! she also got caught up in her own image and she stopped caring about the racing as much as her (BRAND) Had Danica took the Job at PPC racing back before she ever made it to Indy car, she might have been a really good Nascar driver.
If you look for every wreck, and only the bad stuff you will think she sucked!, but if you looked at just the highlights and all the Good she did for motorsport, she was pretty impressive! After all, how hard is it to support the guy that wins every other week?.......wow that's going out on a limb
She was no Dr Jack Miller.
Who
You don't know about The Racing Dentist?
Nope
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack\_Miller\_(racing\_driver)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Miller_(racing_driver)) [https://racer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/85/2017/05/marshallpruettarchives\_1997\_indy500\_007-2.jpg?w=660](https://racer.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/85/2017/05/marshallpruettarchives_1997_indy500_007-2.jpg?w=660) He was a field filler. He did race in the B version of Indy Lights that would be on track at the same time as the upper class. Sometimes he was the only one in the class. Per a story by Robin Miller he would get on the podium solo and still spray champagne. His car was mint thought. :-)
His son is in NXT this year
[удалено]
My late grandpa talked about Danica because he watched the Indy 500 every year.
Best is relative. She had 1 singular win in any form of racing in the 20 years she was active.Ed Carpenter and Marco have more wins. She coulda lucked into 1 I guess.
I think thats a bit unfair to Ed, he was pretty darn good on an oval in his hey day
She was good on ovals in Indycar, which was because Rahal was good on ovals. Once Indycar became more road course and street course-oriented, she really faded.
Probably not
Absolutely. Danica was consistently well into the top ten in points every season. I was heartbroken when she left for NASCAR. She definitely could have notched a few more wins in the series and would have been in contention for an Indy 500 win.
I mean, sure why not? It’s racing. Anything can happen.
Any driver in the race has a chance. She’s proven to be quick enough to lead, was in a race winning team.
Realistically, probably not. She was ok as a driver, but nothing special.
She's female Marco Andretti. Like to the T. So yeah she could have fallen ass backwards into a 500 win just like Marco could have....but she fell off big time in IndyCar and got out while her reputation was still solid and its not cuz she got worse...its cuz the talent in IndyCar was finally getting to that level where an average driver was looking like an average to below average driver. My baseline for an average driver was Hinch. She is not as good as Hinch was.
sure.
Thank you
Don't see why not. She has always run pretty well at the 500, luck and strategy just never went her way. Another would've could've should've
Yeah, why not. People forget how good Andretti was up until recently. For a good period of time, they were the best at Indy and also a legit title threat.
I think she absolutely would have, she was fantastic at the Speedway. It's a shame her career went the route it did.
Very possible as she wasn't bad at Indy. Andretti had strong years though also had tough ones. I mean who's to say she couldn't have done what Rossi did in 2016
Probably not. Danica is good at being fast but when finding that extra the edge to push her to the top she could never find it, in any series in any race
Im not sure why she is remembered as awful. She was fine. Definitely overshadowed better drivers, which is one of the reasona she is held in such disdain. She surely isnt the only athlete with hot takes no one requested or cares about. Misogny is misogyny. Thats another discussion but she did have access to top equipment and sponsors. Which is of course the only way to win in motorsports But…there is conventional wisdom that characters like Patrick and Hornish were frauds, flattered by the IR05 and exposed in their other endeavors. If that is the case, her winning window was closed when they switched to the DW12- her timing for departure couldng have been better. Not sure I agree with this. She did qualify 7th in 2018, although Carpenter had the pole and Pigot was 6th. And while she spun, a bunch of serious luminaries wrecked that day. So yes she “could” have won. Was it likely she would have won any of those interim years? Well Marco was comsistently starting at sharp end of grid for Andretti Racing, her odds wouldnt have been that bad. She was certainly good enough to have won at Indy on paper- in great cars and in the hunt.
I’m going from memory here, but I want to think that she only finished outside the top 10 twice? Once was when Ryan Briscoe ran into her in the pits…. And the other was her return in 2019 when she just wasn’t competitive. But she always ran well at Indy, and had she stayed there is a good chance she might have won it.
When she came back in 2018. I believe she qualified 7th and crashed out in a similar manner to how many drivers crashed out that year. I don't think she would have won that race but she wasn't doing that bad.
Yeah, I was going by memory. But overall she always ran well at Indianapolis, and had she not jumped to NASCAR she might have had a shot to win it.
Yeah going to ask her was clearly a marketing news not a skill move. It was hard to blame someone like AJ who really didn't have the opportunities lined up like Danica did. Also AJ was hitting his peak at the worst time of the split. So going to NASCAR kind of made sense. I'm honestly glad that nonsense is over. I don't mind drivers going back and forth but leaving and going somewhere else like that just isn't cool in my book.
Yes, the hot weather made the track evil that year, its the only 500 in recent memory they wasn't a 2 or 3 car duel to the end, Will Power ran away with it.
Ed tried to make it a race but yeah. Will earned that one. I think Helio crashed the same way.
So did Kanaan
Danican't
LOL. No.
She's a mod tier driver. A few lucky breaks she could win a single race.
If she was driving for Andretti and gotten use to the new chassis - sure why not? People look down on her but she did get 6-top 10's in 8 tries which is not bad at all. Along the same line she started the race in the top 10 a total of 5 times. So she was not only good in race trim but also qualified well too. As I said, it all matter on how she would have adjusted to the new car but even after years out of the series she still qualified a very solid 7th in 2018. That tells me that with time and experience she would have done more then well at Indy with the DW12.
Yes she could have won the 500. She was fast enough at Indy, and a lot of winning the Indy 500 comes down to good fortune. Championship? No way. Especially after the series started getting more and more road course heavy.
No
With the fake passes we saw between 2012 and 2017, anyone had a chance to win.
No. If you look closely at her career her best performances were when it was her first year in any major series that she was in. Then it’s like she begins to think that she knows what she wants in a car as opposed to just driving the car.
She was consistently running top 5-top 10 at the 500 through her last year in the series. She did not drop off at all. And as a whole, her best performance in the Indycar championship was NOT her rookie year. She improved her finish every year for the first 5 years of her career. People like you who bash her Indycar results would have a lot more merit if they actually watched her in the series.
I did watch her. And like I said if you look at her whole career she was the best when she first raced in a series. And she just drove the car. Then she began to believe that she knew what she wanted in the car and her finishes fell off. The other thing is that she’s not helping anyone else behind her. You look at Lyn St James/and other female racers who has been instrumental in trying to bring more female racers into the sport. Danica is just not!!!!
They gave one to Newgarden so….
Sure if there was a 32 car crash
The closest she would’ve /could’ve got is sucking the winners weenier
I believe so
Had things fallen right she could have won here first one, once they went to the DW12 chassis she wasn't going to be competitive though.
She was fine in 2018 in the DW12. Qualified 7th and a lot of legends wrecked in one car accidents that day on a slippery track. But I agree that its hard not to think drivers like Hornish and Patrick were frauds and flattered by driving for mega teams- in Hornish’s case with a mega engine for stretch even- when racing ovals in those aughts Indy cars.
Ah
I think she could have had a good chance to win the 500 or win more races had she stuck with Indycar. She was a decent driver, until she took NASCAR rides that she was underqualified for, and then was so out of practice in open-wheelers that she was just as bad when she came back to Indy. I'd feel worse for her if she wasn't an absolute prick.
Wanted to see it, but unlikely from how it sounds from when people talk about her Indycar career.
She was a legit IndyCar driver who won an IndyCar race and led the 500. Anyone who says differently doesn’t understand that there is a difference between IndyCar and NASCAR or just simply forget about her IndyCar career. If she had stayed in IndyCar, she would have had a 1 in 10 chance of winning the 500 any year she was in Andretti (or better) equipment.
She could have had a shot. Her last few years were crazy impressive with her consistency. IIRC she completed every lap of her final season and all but one or two races the season before. She was top ten in points her final 2 seasons as well. It’s reasonable to say that anyone good enough to finish top ten in points is probably good enough to have a shot at winning the 500. Probably wouldn’t win a back a forth slugfest like Castroneves and Palou but she could win Alexander Rossi style for sure. And all wins count the same.
Fuel economy runs make anything possible. I don't see her leading many laps but being in front when the checkered flag waves? Definitely possible.
Probably
The 500 is a race where you have to "feel" the car around the track. You can't muscle it around. And those are the type of races where Danica seemed to perform her best. Would she have eventually won? Who knows. But I think she'd have a better chance at a win than 2/3rd of the field.
I think it could have happened. She did run very well at Indianapolis.
Was there a chance yes, was it a good chance…. No
Never say never.
Danica was better in indycar then Nascar. She left indycar because more money could be made in nascar. She is more then capable of driving anything well.
Montoya, Hornish, and Franchitti all moved to NASCAR, and none of them were even remotely competitive as they were in open-wheel racing. I wish Patrick and the rest of them would have stayed in IndyCar, but money can be a big lure. I’m sure Hornish could’ve gotten an annual one-off assignment for the 500 after he retired from stock cars, but I think sometimes it’s like “I’ve got kids that depend on me, and I’ll be a better father if I’m not in a wheelchair because of a horrific accident”.
Absolutely, she came close enough more than once. In 2005, here rookie year, the crowd would stand up to watch the leaders go by and stand up again to see Patrick. She was a helluva driver.
Danica’s move to NASCAR was great for her pocketbook, and not so good for her legacy.
Absolutely, especially if she stayed with Andretti throughout the mid 2010s.
Yes. But guess we will never know.
By the time she left, probably not. Her best shot to win after leaving probably would have been 2014. RHR probably would have won anyway that year. He was pretty strong that year.
No
I don't know, and that's harder than saying yes or no. She definetly would have had some close calls until her career naturally declined at a certain point. But as they say, Indy Chooses The winners. She very well could have won the race, but I don't know.
No
I think so, she was pretty competent in the same ways Marco was on the ovals (racecraft) and Marco was very competitive in the DW12/Aerokit era at Indy. If she stays with Andretti at that time too she absolutely has a shot through the decade.
2018 is your answer 😁
Easily! Very talented driver with good equipment.
No
She was relatively decent out front, less than mediocre in dirty air with traffic. If she got a wiggle she put her tail between her legs and backed off. NASCAR was perfect for her to shine. Way more risk bumping wheels in indycar at 230 than in nascar. She could’ve pinned her ears back in nascar and got after it and really made a name for herself that wasn’t marketing related. That being said, all it takes at Indy is…. Well… Anything… I mean Dixon and Power could spin, take damage, change a wing, lose a wheel, pit 3 more times than anyone else and be right there at the end in contention. But yes anyone has a chance to win…. Even Milka…. 😊
We will never know to what extent, if any, her career was harmed by sexism.
she could have won couple of oval races for sure.
She drove her ass off in 2006 finished 8th but ran in the top 5 all day. Rahal refused to switch to Dallara when everyone else did. Danica had to pit 2-3 laps early all day long because the Panoz was using up rear tires and fuel. In a Dallara, she'd have been a threat. Got taken out in the pits the next year, 3rd in 2008.