Danica with plenty to prove this season
When Danica Patrick joined the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series full time in 2013, she brought plenty of publicity with her.
She since, however, hasn’t brought the results.
And now, with her contracts up at the end of this season with Stewart-Haas Racing and primary sponsor GoDaddy, the pressure is on Patrick to begin producing on the track as much as she does off it.
Patrick, however, deflected a question about her NASCAR future and whether she feels more pressure than ever to deliver.
“I believe you all are making that story,” she told the media. “I feel like every year is a pivotal year. When I first got into IndyCar, I thought I really needed to do a good job so I could stick around, and every year is a pivotal year, and I did enough to feel like, ‘Gosh, good, I feel like I made enough of a splash that it’s good for my sponsors and I ran well. So it can happen in Year One, Year Two, Year Three, Year Four.’
“I care the same every year to do well. The most important thing for me is that my sponsor is happy and that GoDaddy is getting what they need from the relationship and there’s ROI (return on investment) for them, and then on the other side that my team feels my desire and knows how determined I am and sees improvement and wants me to be a part of their team.”
Tony Stewart, one of the Stewart-Haas owners as well as a fellow driver, has been supportive of Patrick since she joined the team.
He hasn’t put any additional pressure, at least publicly, on her to produce better numbers.
“She’s just got to build on what she did last year” Stewart said. “She kept making gains last year. Didn’t show up at the end of the day, but during the course of the races she definitely gained momentum. She had better finishes, and there were a lot of races that she had better days going and didn’t get the results she was looking for, but just kind of keep building on the momentum.
“The hardest thing is getting her to focus on the positives that she had happen last year versus the negatives. She’s so competitive, she’s so driven that she looks at that end result at the end of the day and doesn’t always look at what the result was that got her there. But to me it’s taking the positives out of it and building on that, and if she can keep that in mind, then I think she’ll do well.”
Patrick, who turns 33 on March 25, finished 28th in the points standings last season, and was 27th the year before in her first full Cup season. But she had three top-10 finishes in 2014 compared to just one the year before.
Through the first two races this season, she finished 16th at Atlanta Motor Speedway on Sunday and 21st the week before in the Daytona 500.
Now it’s a matter of building on those finishes.
“From last year, I feel like we were pretty comfortable like top-15 car a lot of the time, and while we didn’t finish there a lot of the time, we had that kind of speed, and a lot of times we were running there or were on pace to get there,” Patrick said. “So hopefully we can run there more consistently.
“Also, it’s going to take a little bit of time to get there with a new crew chief (Daniel Knost). And I say a new crew chief because he’s also a new crew chief. He’s only in his second year. I’m new and he’s new, and it’s a new relationship with each other. I feel like it’s going to take a little bit of time, but I feel like the things that I learned last year and on the racetrack and with my team will hopefully send me in the right direction to making that go as fast as possible.”
Knost took over the final three races last season as the interim crew chief. He had the interim label removed in January.
No matter who is the crew chief, Patrick needs to show improvement on the track.
Then it will be up to Stewart-Haas and GoDaddy if there was enough to renew her deals, though Patrick insisted it was too early to begin discussing such matters.
“It’s really a matter of cart and horse. It’s sponsor and team,” she said. “Both are happy, so it’s a matter of getting GoDaddy in a place where they’re happy and committing to something, and from my understanding the team wants that, too, and it’s just a matter of time.”
Contact Mark Anderson at manderson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2914. Follow him on Twitter: @markanderson65
