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NASCAR - Danica experiment meets reality
By Jay Hart
February 21, 2010
Fontana, CA — Midway through Round 2 of the Danica Patrick Stock Car Experiment, crew chief Tony Eury Jr. radioed to his driver that “it’s all a learning experience.”
Patrick was running around 35th at the time – two laps down to the leaders.
“You ain’t supposed to know it when you got here,” Eury said. “We just want you to know it when you leave.”
“If I can start running with people and keep up with the leaders, I’ll be happy,” she responded.
“We’ll get you there,” Eury said.
But after finishing 31st in Saturday’s Stater Bros. 300 at Auto Club Speedway – three laps behind race winner Kyle Busch – the question isn’t when Patrick will get “there” but if her patience will wear thin before she arrives.
Though Patrick’s wasn’t a stellar performance, it certainly was respectable. After dropping to the back of the field just two laps into Saturday’s race, she settled in and began picking off a handful of cars. By the end of the race, she had cut the lap-time differential between herself and the leader by three quarters – from around four seconds at the start of the race to around one by the time the checkered flag flew.
Despite the apparent improvement from Lap 1 to Lap 150, Patrick was anything but satisfied. After getting out of her car, she stormed to her hauler in the Nationwide garage, clearly agitated with her result.
“She doesn’t like finishing where she is,” Eury Jr. said outside Patrick’s hauler. “She feels like she should be better than she is right now, and I’m just trying to keep her pumped up and tell her it’s all right.
“It’s a tough sport. There’s a lot of competition over here, and there’s a lot of guys who came from the same series she did [who] tried to do it and some of them have been successful, some of them have not. But she’s going to make it; it’s just going to take time. She’s just got to be willing to sacrifice that time.”
After a 15-minute cool-down period, Patrick emerged from her hauler to give her take on the day.
“I’m a competitor and I’m used to running up front,” she said. “So it’s shocking when you’re that far back. But you know what? This is a whole new ball of wax for me, and it’s all different. And I have to disconnect from the results for quite some time, I think, because they’re probably not going to be what I’m used to.”
And so begins the waning portion of Danica-mania.
But as Part 1 of the Experiment comes to a close next week in Las Vegas – following that race she’ll return to her day job racing in the IndyCar Series, taking a four-month sabbatical from NASCAR – it’s becoming clear that the intensity of attention on Patrick will not last, not as long as she’s using what amounts to a Triple-A series as her personal training school.
Keen interest in anyone running at the back of the pack normally is reserved for family, friends and Junior Nation – the latter only because Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn’t supposed to be there, and abnormality combined with popularity always is a story worth following.
Patrick has the popularity thing on her side, but she doesn’t have the abnormality, because running in the 30s is about what’s expected from her in the early going of her stock car experiment.
What would be abnormal is her running in the top 15 and providing a glimmer of hope to those who want to see a female win a NASCAR race for the first time.
Between now and then – assuming then comes – she still will produce spikes in the TV ratings and ticket sales. But as everyone waits for the Danica Patrick Stock Car Experiment to mature into something more than just an experiment, the spikes will start spiking less and the attention will die down.
Patrick may enjoy this part – the softer spotlight. She just might not like why it’s not as bright anymore
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Johnson and team back to business as usual at ACS
By Joe Menzer
February 21, 2010
Fontana, CA. — There isn't much that can cheer up a disappointed Jimmie Johnson as quickly as a trip to Auto Club Speedway.
Heck, the way Johnson has acted this weekend at the 2-mile track, you wouldn't know by watching the four-time defending Cup champion that he's coming off a 35th-place finish in the season-opening Daytona 500. He has been mostly all smiles, and Saturday's Happy Hour did little to darken his mood when Johnson's No. 48 ranked third-fastest on the speed chart.
"I'm buying into it and finding some silver lining in all this," Johnson said.
The fastest car during Saturday's final practice session was the No. 5 of Mark Martin, Johnson's teammate at Hendrick Motorsports who turned his fastest lap in 181.726 mph when he got around the track in a crisp 39.620 seconds. The only other car faster than Johnson, whose fastest of 39 laps was timed at 180.687 mph, was the No. 33 fielded by Richard Childress Racing that is driven by Clint Bowyer and turned his top lap in 39.802 seconds at a speed of 180.895 mph.
The top laps, after Martin, Johnson and Bowyer, were turned by Jamie McMurray, Daytona 500 champion and pole sitter for Sunday's Auto Club 500 (180.628 mph, 39.861); Jeff Gordon (180.153 mph, 39.966); Jeff Burton (179.686 mph, 40.070); Brian Vickers (179.681 mph, 40.071); Juan Montoya (179.627 mph, 40.083); Denny Hamlin (179.556 mph, 40.099) and Scott Speed (179.448 mph, 40.123).
It was easy for Johnson to enjoy his fast practice times. But he said he came into the weekend feeling relatively OK even with his poor finish at Daytona -- perhaps because he has been in this exact position previously.
Last year, in fact, Johnson finished 31st at Daytona and then rallied for a ninth- place finish in the second race of the season at Auto Club Speedway, righting his season. He was 27th in the Daytona 500 in 2008 and second at California; 39th in 2008 and third at California in 2007.
"Maybe it's a good sign. I just hope at the end of the Chase we don't need the points that we lost at Daytona," Johnson said.
Johnson's troubles at Daytona began when he suffered a flat tire after running over the now-famous pothole that developed in the track.
"As far as what took us out of the race, I don't think it had anything to do with it. Something with the left rear hub assembly failed," Johnson said. "And then it got so hot inside of things in there that it started melting things, and it actually broke the axle. I don't think the pothole had anything to do with that.
"It's kind of both a fluke and a concern. We haven't had any issues with our hub assemblies in a long, long time. Same assemblers, same stuff, all of that. We're concerned. We haven't had a rash of these problems, so we're kind of like, 'OK, it was a fluke.' At the same time, we want to figure out why. But there was so much damage to the hubcab area. It got so hot and melted so much that we can't logically go back through it and say this area or that area failed first."
So they trucked on to California and got back to business as usual, at least during qualifying and practice sessions leading up to Sunday's Auto Club 500. He will start seventh in Sunday's race, on the inside of Row 4 next to Sam Hornish Jr.
Johnson's trend of doing poorly in the season opener at Daytona and then well at Auto Club Speedway dates back to 2006 when he won his first championship. That year, he won the 500 and finished second in California.
On one hand, Johnson can't help still thinking at least a little about what might have been lost at Daytona.
"I think we were in position to have a shot at winning," Johnson insisted. "I was running with the No. 1 car [of eventual winner Jamie McMurray] and the No. 42 [of Juan Montoya, who finished 10th] when we had our failure. Those guys both were up front shortly after we went out of the race. So I hate to look at it as an opportunity missed -- and then I also hope we don't need 10 or 15 points, or shoot even 100 points, at the end of the season. I mean, that's a big points loss."
On the other hand, Johnson said he is looking at this race as a chance to get a better idea of where the No. 48 team is after the brief but busy off-season, when they did not rest on their many laurels.
"Truthfully, it boils down to validating the tools and resources we worked with over the off-season," Johnson said. "We keep finding new technology to understand shocks and drive-lines and aero balance and changes to the car -- and it's all done with software that we're designing and creating at the shop. But until we come to the track to validate it, it's tough to know how accurate it is. So that's a really important thing."
In addition to his aforementioned fine finishes in the spring races, he also has made a habit of winning races at ACS -- visiting Victory Lane each of the last three falls. But when someone asked Johnson if he was looking at this as a "flex your muscle" type of weekend, he chuckled and politely disagreed.
"I haven't thought about it in that way," Johnson said. "I come in more with an open mind. Everybody worked hard over the off-season, but we don't know yet where we stack up. In 2008, we thought we did everything right over the off-season and showed up and weren't all that strong out of the gate. So because of that experience, I'm not walking in with a ton of confidence."
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