Queen of Hype

I not only do not object to women driving in NASCAR, I am strongly in favor of it and wish the several women who are doing it well. My problem with Danica Patrick is that she is making so much of her celebrity status as a woman driver and doing such a poor job of driving, given that she has been given some of the best equipment in the Nationwide series and some of the most expert help in the business.

Yesterday she crashed in the first turn of the first lap at Watkins Glen, and to say that it was not a stellar piece of driving would be a world class understatement. You can watch the replay of it in this film clip and then tell me if you agree with her assessment that there was anything “last second” about the development of the problem

"I was just following the car (in front of me) down into the corner,” she says, “and right at the last second (Truex) came up on the track right in front of me.” Indeed, and while the car you were following went by him on the outside, you tried to drive through him.

If you drive on the freeway at 65mph, you know that “just following the car in front of you” is an invitation to disaster, but Danica apparently has not learned that yet.

"I suppose in retrospect I should have either slowed down or gone a bit wider.” She continues, “But it's so hard to know in those moments if they're going to come back out on the track and be fine, but he just stopped."

Seriously? Her spotter screaming repeatedly in her ear for her to slow down might actually make "retrospect" not the operative word here, and should have provided her with a clue to, um, slow down at the moment rather than blithely driving full tilt into the back end of the stopped car, not hitting her brakes until she was within a couple of feet of colliding with him. His instruction "don't go low" was a pretty good clue to "go a bit wider" which only now occurs to her "in retrospect." Simply awesome.

The announcer says that she “had nowhere to go,” but that’s not entirely true, and to the extent that it is true it is because she put herself where she had no escape while other cars managed to avoid not only Truex, but her car after she wrecked.

I wish she would get her scrawny ass out of that car and let Johanna Long drive it, and then we would have a successful woman driver in NASCAR.