Even in anger and defeat, Danica is the story

More than just a pretty face, star showed us her steely determination


Admit it. You were disappointed when that
security guard interrupted Danica Patrick’s determined march to Ryan
Briscoe’s pit. You wanted her to get there, wanted to see her light
into the guy who knocked her out of a race she had no chance of
winning, wanted to see racing’s hottest young star go postal.

It
would have been not only great theater, but another historic first for
the first woman to become a genuine star, a woman who’s helped to haul
Indy car racing out of the doldrums and back into public consciousness.
Men and women drivers have been yelling at each other forever, but
they’ve never duked it out on pit road at the Indianapolis Motor
Speedway.
“It’s
probably best I didn’t get down there anyway,” Patrick said after she’d
cooled down a bit. “As you guys know, I’m a little emotional.”

She’s a little popular, too. As she stalked
down pit road, her sights set on the man who put her out of the race,
the paying customers in the huge grandstand on the main straight stood
and cheered for her. They, too, wanted her to set Briscoe straight.
Seeing her really ticked only added to her popularity. This woman
doesn’t want to be the cute chick. She wants to win.

Briscoe
had his own opinion of what happened in the accident, but I’m not sure
anybody watching cares what it is. He’s the bad guy in this argument,
and even if he’s right about it not being his fault, he’s wrong.
That’s
how far Patrick has come in the three years since she became the first
woman to lead the nation’s most famous auto race. And it shows just how
ready America was to embrace a woman driver as a concept whose time had
finally come
It’s
more than 30 years since Janet Guthrie aggravated the good old boys who
viewed auto racing as another place where women need not apply for any
job other than looking cute in the team’s tower — and maybe, if she
showed a lot of aptitude, holding a stopwatch and a clipboard.
Other
women have tried to take on the boys, but until Patrick came along none
of them had the two essential ingredients needed to truly become a star
— youth and an elite team complete with gobs of sponsorship money.
Because
she was young and had a good team, Patrick didn’t have to fight as much
as other women had to be taken seriously. Finishing fourth at her first
Indy 500 helped establish her chops. And now that she won her first
race earlier this year in Japan, nobody can call her racing’s answer to
Anna Kournikova, the sex symbol who never won anything.
She’s
not the best driver out there. Helio Castroneves has won two Indy 500s
and has to be maybe the best on the circuit. Plus, he won and “Dancing
with the Stars.” But she has to be the best known, and the only person
is close is Castroneves, who’s better known to the public at large for
his dancing.
Patrick is known as the tiny bundle of
determination with a lead foot and the mental make-up that would tell
her to march down pit road to give the guy who hit her in the merge
lane a lesson in road rage. As
has been noted, she never contended, and the conversations ABC between
her and her mechanics were priceless. She kept telling them about the
problems with her car, which simply would not go fast enough for her to
put it in contention. And even as others were fighting for the lead,
she was the star of the show. Indy Car racing nearly killed itself when it
split into two circuits, with the old CART teams going one way and the
Indy Cars another. There was enough audience for one tour, but not for
two. When they got back together this year, the sport had the unity it
needed to try to get back some of the audience it has lost to NASCAR.

What
it needed were the stars to make people care. Castroneves did his part
by dancing his way into America’s living rooms. And Patrick has done it
everywhere else — from Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit issue to endless
commercial endorsements.
When
you look at what she’s done, you have to wonder why the racing circuits
aren’t out there turning over every rock and looking behind every bush
to find a woman who could compete with the men. She’s already the
biggest star on the circuit, and if she starts winning with any
regularity, she’ll do for racing what Tiger Woods did for golf.
And then, Ryan Briscoe, watch out.