Handling Adversity at Indy 500 Qualifying

This weekend's Indy 500 qualifying showed a contrast in how drivers handle adversity. I would like to look at three drivers and how they handled the stress, misfortune, and in one case the heartbreak that Saturday's qualifying and Sunday's bump day handed them.

During Saturday's qualifying, Danica Patrick qualified with a scarily ill handling race car that was capable of only the 23rd starting position. Obviously frustrated at her first lack of success at Indy and probably compounded by her team's lack of performance throughout this season, this is what she said when interviewed over the track's PA system: "I don't know. I'm very, very disappointed. I've never been bad here before. I've never been outside the top 10 on a finish or qualifying, so... it's not my fault. This car is not good." She continued to recount a previous qualifying attempt in which she qualified well with an oversteering car as proof that she has the skills to do well. The crowd booed this and well they should have. She got out of the car, and whether she meant to or not, publicly placed the blame for her ill handling car squarely on the shoulders of her team. Motor Sport is a TEAM sport; she shoulders just as much blame for the car's lack of performance as the rest of the team does. Sure, they didn't provide her with a car that was fast enough but you can also argue that she didn't provide the feedback needed by the team to make her car fast enough. I hope that, in retrospect, she regrets what she said. I also hope that she doesn't believe what she said, that it was just the frustration of a disappointing season and month of May bubbling to the surface.

Paul Tracy, one of my open wheel heroes, experienced the worst case scenario: not making the big race. He and KV Racing pulled a time that eventually would have made the race expecting that another car would bump them out. Tracy's car did not handle well in the afternoon heat and he ended up aborting the try because the speed wasn't fast enough to get in. Time ran out on Tracy and the KV squad and he didn't get a chance to go out again. Sadly, PT is missing the 2010 Indianapolis 500. Paul's response afterwards: "Turns out we would still have been in. But it's a team decision. And we worked as a team all week, and we made decisions as a team. And you win and lose as a team." This is how the situation should be handled. PT realizes that it is a TEAM sport. You win and lose as a team, something that Danica Patrick apparently forgot.

Tony Kanaan almost experienced the same fate as Paul Tracy and during the weekend proved why he is a champion. Kanaan destroyed a car on Saturday, missing not only the Fast 9, but the top 24 as well, forcing him to qualify on Sunday's Bump Day. On Sunday, he crashed again, this time sustaining damage to the car. The Andretti Autosport team labored throughout the afternoon, using parts from three of the other Andretti Autosport cars to rebuild Kanaan's car. Kanaan didn't place blame in public. He maintained his composure throughout then went out and put the car in the field with a 224.072 MPH four lap average with only 30 minutes left in qualifying. This is the first time Kanaan has qualified outside of the first two rows for the Indianapolis 500, yet he handled himself like the champion he is and carried himself like the team leader that he is. Here is what Kanaan posted on Twitter after his trying weekend: "Today I am a happy person,not because I qualifed, because I realize how many friends and fans I have.Thanks to all of you for the support." This is why TK is another of my open wheel heroes.

Mac McCormick III

Danica Mania for the Second Week in a Row

Before anyone thinks I've got something against Danica Patrick, let me assure you that I don't. I really wish her well in both NASCAR and the IRL. Once again, this week, my problem is with the media. Just as they did at Daytona, they completely over covered Danica Patrick to the detriment of everyone else at the track. Never before have I seen a backmarker, and let's be honest - that is what she was at California, get so much TV time.

To be honest, I feel sorry for Danica and the microscope she's been under. It's really unfair to have such attention and expectations placed upon you when NASCAR's rules don't allow for a lot of testing. She has not had the chance to test in these cars and learn about them before coming to the race tracks. It really puts her behind the eight ball because most of the other rookies come from a stock car background rather than the open wheel background she comes from.

Mac McCormick III

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

Danica Patrick's 2009 IndyCar Season

I was waiting for the IRL season to end before posting this in the interest of not placing a hex on the rest of her season.

The 2009 IRL season saw great improvement from Danica Patrick over her previous season. Granted, she did not win a race this season but her performance over the whole of the season was vastly improved over her past performances. She finished the season in fifth place in the championship behind only the two Ganassi and two Penske drivers, essentially putting her first in class. This was quite an accomplishment given that Andretti Green Racing (or whatever they are calling themselves now) had far from a stellar or even average season.

Danica Patrick was consistently the best performer on a subpar performing AGR and consistently the best performing non-Ganassi or Penske driver. It would have been expected that Tony Kanaan would have been that driver but instead it was Patrick. What led to her taking that position? In my opinion two things: an improved attitude and better teamwork.

1. In past seasons, Patrick's attitude and temper were stumbling blocks. She lost her temper quickly and it prevented her from performing at her best. She did not handle adversity well and it showed. This season, she seemed to be an almost different person. It would have been hard to blame her for losing her temper with her team's overall performance but she handled with grace in public (I have no idea what she said behind closed doors). She had several incidents in the pits and on the track that she handled more professionally and coolly than she did in previous seasons. I have no doubt that the way she handled the negatives this year led to her improved performance.
2. It was obvious this year that Patrick was better able to work with her team and engineer to keep the car's setup not only stable throughout the races but to improve it throughout the races. She started out races with good handling and was able to maintain and improve the handling throughout the course of the race. She kept her frustrations in check and took what the race offered rather than overdoing things and ruining the day's performance.

Personally, I would love to see what the improved Danica Patrick could do in a Ganassi or Penske car.

Anyway, congratulations to Danica Patrick on an improved season in 2009 and good luck towards continued improvement in 2010.

Mac McCormick III

F1 News - 18 February 2009

A couple of F1 news items caught my eye this morning as I was checking the Autosport website:

1. The USF1 program is interested in testing Danica Patrick. I can only see this as a publicity and marketing move. Danica Patrick would not be a good choice as a team driver for an F1 team, especially a new or lower rung team. She has proven an inability to communicate with her engineer to improve the handling of her IRL car during a race so it would follow that she would be unable to communicate with engineers to develop a new race car. That would be disaster for a new team. Danica would bring a lot of publicity and a lot of sponsorship to USF1, but she likely wouldn't be able to bring anything to the table in regards to car development.
2. Dietrich Mateschitz says that team owners should own F1. I think that he should look back at the history of the CART series here in the US and realize that team ownership of a series is doomed to failure. You need one strong person to run the series. The teams will be concerned about what is best for them and fight politically amongst themselves. That one strong individual would be better able to do what is best for the whole. As much as I dislike many of NASCAR's decisions, it seems that their model for running the series has worked better than others. Although you can use Tony George and the IRL as an argument against it, CART is the series that eventually failed.

Mac McCormick III
kf4lmt@comcast.net