DanicaMania Invades NASCAR

The Danica 500 week, sorry - I mean Daytona 500 week is over. No offense to Danica Patrick, but SpeedTV, ESPN, and other media outlets made it seem like it was the Danica 500 instead of the Daytona 500. She isn't to blame. The media is and they went overboard.

First, entirely too much attention was paid to Danica. The coverage seemed, at times, to be All Danica, All the Time. No doubt she was a major story line for the week, but you would have thought she was the only story of the week. What about the stories of Mike Bliss, Max Papis, and Joe Nemechek making the Daytona 500 with small under-budget teams? What about what seems to be the best restrictor plate package in Cup in quite awhile? What about teams who are working hard to make a full season in Nationwide or Cup but don't have the sponsorship; some media attention to their efforts could help them find that sponsorship.

Second, there were some absolutely ludicrous statements made during the course of the last week's NASCAR coverage. One analyst referred to Danica Patrick as the most important driver to come along in decades (not a direct quote, but a paraphrase). Huh? Seriously? Just to go back one decade, are we going to say she is more important than Dale Earnhardt Jr, Jimmy Johnson, or Tony Stewart? Another analyst stated that coming to NASCAR would make Danica Patrick a better driver in Indy Cars and inferred that the reason Dario Franchitti won last year's IRL title is that he spent a year in NASCAR (He also won an IRL championship BEFORE he came to NASCAR!). When she heard talk like this, I can't imagine how embarrassing it must have been for her.

In closing, I would like to say that I think Danica Patrick did a great job this past weekend. She raced well and finished well in ARCA and got an education in the Nationwide race. Her performance bodes well for her IRL season in that she seemed to handle adversity even better than she did last year; her temper control seems to be getting better. I don't understate her importance in NASCAR either; she probably has the best chance of any female to win a NASCAR race given the team she is racing for.

Mac McCormick III