In her second year of competition, Danica Patrick finished 28th in points, a sub-par performance compared to most standards in the industry.
“I think sub-par is a matter of opinion,” she stated. “I think in my second year in the Cup Series that I wanted to work on and we wanted to work on as a group, and I feel like there was drastic improvement there. The overall championship position didn’t show for that, but there was a lot of improvement in areas that we wanted to so I consider that a success.”
Certainly she’s right that finishing 28th in points doesn’t show for much, even more considering that she finished 27th the year before. But, she does make a valid point.
Her first year of Sprint Cup competition brought her a single top-10 finish, whereas last year she produced three top-10 finishes. She proved that she could race on the short tracks with a good run at Martinsville. She has always been strong on the plate tracks, but then again, so is everyone. She also showed the intermediate tracks are getting better with a sixth place finish at Atlanta Motor Speedway.
She also had a higher average finish and average starting position, showing that she is slowly improving.
Even with that said, though, the season is sub-par by all standards.
Stewart-Haas Racing is one of the top teams in NASCAR right now, as evident by Kevin Harvick winning the championship. Both Harvick and Kurt Busch made the chase, and each won a race – and yet Patrick did neither of those. Tony Stewart didn’t do either of those either, but he had other stuff going on and came closer to pulling off a win then she did as the season wound down.
If you’re going to be in one of the best seats in NASCAR, you need to produce the results to back it up and right now, she’s not producing those results. There are many other drivers that could very well fill the seat in the No. 10 car that could do that and typically if a driver doesn’t produce, a driver gets the boot.
With Patrick, though, things have been a little different, we’ll say. Female standards, beautiful woman and Go Daddy willing to pay no matter what lead to cash flow for SHR and reasons to keep her in the seat. It’s the sexy appeal and cash flow that some say has gotten her up through the ranks, as evident by only one top-five in the XFINITY Series in 61 starts, and her lackluster Verizon IndyCar Series career.
Soon enough, though, that won’t be enough. Either the sponsor will get smart and move to a driver that can produce them results, or the team will give the seat to a more deserving driver that can get them wins. This year is a contract season for Danica Patrick and it makes the importance of producing results that much more important. It’ll be interesting to see whether she’ll remain in the seat beyond 2015 as Gene Haas stated during media week that he wants to re-sign her, but there may be a surprise if the improvement isn’t shown.
Oh, and the excuse measure isn’t going to take it. Beginning the year with a new crew chief – Daniel Knost, Patrick noted during the media tour that they will need time to kindle a relationship.
“Obviously with a new crew chief and group, we need to get to know each other – sooner than later – so I’ll be putting a lot of hard work into getting our communication going as quickly as possible,” she commented. “Then after that, it’s about picking up where I left off with Tony Gibson and his guys that taught me so much and really helped me get much further towards the front and qualifying much better and running much better. I’m sure they’ll be a little bit of a learning curve, but we can overcome that sooner than later.”
Using the excuse that you haven’t gotten it sorted with your crew chief is something that your boss won’t want to hear when he has people, whether sponsors or other in the organization, demanding results to happen. In other words, that relationship better start firing on all cylinders early this year.
Give her credit, though, as she feels hopeful. She says that having Knost opens up a new perspective on her team and brings forth new ways of possibly getting things done. But what if that new perspective is not enough? Then what happens?
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