Win, Lose, Drew by Drew Litton for February 21, 2013

I hope she wins so the guys on ESPN will shut up about NASCAR and stick to baseball, football, hockey, and basketball.

I wish her the best.

I’d take this a lot more seriously if her main endorsement deal wasn’t the could-we-be-any-more-exploitative-of-women boys at GoDaddy.com.

Isn’t this the same Danica Patrick that once got into a cat fight with another female driver? []World’s Dumbest tried to feature the footage, but NASCAR refused to let it out for fear that it would damage the reputation of the sport and the involved parties.

Stephen Colbert noted that NASCAR was invented by a guy who wanted to see what it would look like if a box of detergent was travelling at 200 mph.

NASCAR was derived from all the moonshine runners who used to smuggle it back in the day. After the end of Prohibition and WWII (et al), that left a pool of surprisingly trained and experienced drivers in the South. Motor sports in general had gone international at this point (auto races were actually popular in Europe in the 1920s), and so it wasn’t long before we had a proper racing league going. []As far as the advertisements go, virtually no insurance company in the United States will insure a NASCAR vehicle, due to both the high risk of a crash and the high risk of the vehicle being totaled in said crash. As such, teams sell advertising space on their vehicles in order to get a pool of money going so that they can make repairs and otherwise pay the bills.

There’s more racing in one or two laps on a road course like Infineon, than in 500 miles of roundy-round. Also back in the dirt track days, there was a lot more racing than on super speedways like Daytona. BTW, Danica, like most Formula One drivers, got started in go karts on tracks turning both ways. She’s very talented, and has good equipment this year, so she should do well. BTW also, look how many drivers in NASCAR, for years, have never won a race.

It was about five guys in the lead pack and when the last run came, she was blocked in, as were several others who might have won. She did a good job, and 8th place in your first run at the Daytona 500 is pretty good. Again, it’s the idiocy of Americans’ “only first counts” that ignores the accomplishments of those getting in the top 10. And again, the real racing was only about 8 laps on the “roundy-round”.

^it’s only once a season. it was called sears point, then infineon, and now it’s sonoma raceway. I race my spec miata there regularly.a top 10 finish is championship material. Danica did amazing for a human driver. many season champions are happy to consistantly finish in the top 10, and in fact many championships have been won without a single first place finish.my favorite driver has always been ‘the king’ richard petty. everytime the commentators talk about various records, they almost always have to put in the qualifier “except for richard petty”. I hope they retire his number some day.and before anyone says the rules are different now than then, most of his records would still hold up in spite of different rules. 7 daytona 500 wins is the one that counts today.and to paraphrase one of many petty’s quotables, “i have no doubt there are 45 good drivers out there, but only 2 or 3 of ’em know how to race”

Danny: Dan Gurney, Sir Stirling Moss, and Phil Hill, kind of a “Brit sandwich” in my all time favorite drivers, and I’ve met them all. Ah, to bring back Riverside, Watkins Glenn, Road America and a couple more road circuits to the series. Yes, I too raced at Sears Point a long time ago. My son will be driving a motorcycle formula two sidecar there in May.

^ i think you must be a bit older than me. I’ve met many of the “new drivers”, and i had the pleasure of providing computer support/pit crew for lyn st. james a couple of years ago at the 25 hours at thunderhill race.Richard Petty was a wonderous driver, when i met him, i got to spend about 10 minutes chatting with him at his museum in level cross north carolina. he made me feel like i was the ONLY person in the world. His charm was overwhelming. After I left, i went back to my car, closed the door and cried like a little kid for about 10 minutes. It still brings tears to my eyes when i think about it.

^^btrw, i was in the very last group to drive bridgehampton before they turned it into luxury housing. Drove it in an open wheeled skip barber formula dodge.you see this sh?t everywhere. People move in around race tracks and airports and then complain about the noise – DUH!but i guess the republicans can say the same thing about people who move in next to toxic waste dumps.