The Official Danica Patrick Fan Site

ESPN Hot Button- Is Danica ready for Cup in 2013?

Love these, pro vs con debate columns

http://espn.go.com/espnw/hot?id=8655713

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Permalink Reply by Daniel on November 21, 2012 at 2:15pm

Oh well, one Newton against her... she's still got 641,300 newton meters/sec next year to own that bitch. ;-P

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Permalink Reply by Alfred Lucky7 on November 23, 2012 at 10:46am

Ready or not the decision is made and Sprint Cup its the next step....My personal opinion?...No,She is not ready yet and i guess another Nationwide year was needed to finish her learning and why not win some races.

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Permalink Reply by vern m on November 23, 2012 at 11:15am

First off Happy thanksgiving to everyone.

Now--Nascar season IS over so these crazy polls asking opinions on something that has already BEEN decided, as she IS going to Cup racing--ready or not--are silly. Danica first of all is a media tool and one of the best for marketing and promoting products and her and her sponsors brands. Yes she wants to do well but facts are given other open wheel drivers, some who failed and other who will be in his 6th yr next yr with one NNs win only shows how tough it is and will be for her to get the results most people want from her. However long as she sells the products she will have sponsors to have fun doing this and maybe just maybe she will surprise some of us and do better then we expect but only time will tell with that?. She has the equivalent of 2yrs in Nascar 70 races overall and one top 5 because of fuel strategy in vegas and only 4 top 10s so not exactly great. Its either the teams not giving her a good car or its just her having the same problems all open wheel drivers have learning these cars. Either way she will be in Cup and I hope she can qualify for races on time and not embarrass herself having to miss races as that will kill her career eventually for sure? I personaly wish she would dump all her advisors and managment who only want a % of what she makes, and just make her own decisions for a change as she knows she isnt ready for next yr but she Is just the puppet in all this for others to get rich OFF her, but she is the one allowing that to happen so nothing we can do as fans but hope for the best.

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Permalink Reply by PhilipJames on November 23, 2012 at 11:40am

I think the timing is perfect for Danica to go to Cup next year. Its a new car. All the teams will be trying to figure it out and so will all the drivers, Danica included. Why would she wait another year while the other drivers figure the new car out and get an even bigger advantage on her.

Besides, have we all not heard how different the two cars are... Nationwide vs Cup... so why the heck would anyone want her to learn to drive the Nationwide car when it drives differently from the Cup?

Boy, there sure are some slow (won't say stupid) ideas out there.

She has the big bucks to go Cup racing... would it still be there a year or two down the road? Can anyone guarantee that... NO... so why wait?

There is a new car so the advantage the other drivers have on her is diminished, giving her a better chance of competing.

The only thing that doing some part time Nationwide next year helps in is the seat time and learning some of the tricky little things that are common to all stock cars. It would not help her ultimately in learning to drive the new Cup car.

Personally, I think she drives the Cup car better than the Nationwide car and I believe she will surprise a lot of people next year and have comparably better finishes in Cup than she did in Nationwide... keeping in mind that in Nationwide there are 5 - 10 drivers who are probably better than her in stock cars and in Cup it is probably about 20. That does not mean she can not beat those drivers, just that due to EXPERIENCE, seat time and ability, they are better. SHE IS A ROOKIE... never forget that. I am interested in seeing how well Ricky does in Cup considering he is a two time Nationwide champion.... did not seem that great in the few Cup races he ran this year. Could Danica actually do better than Ricky next year? Wouldn't that be something.

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Permalink Reply by DanicaPowerX on November 24, 2012 at 9:01am

Here's my opinion -- Is Danica ready for Cup? Well, the answer to that question is going to depend on what we're expecting out of her. If you're expecting her to run competitively on a consistent basis, then I would say no, she isn't ready for Cup yet. The simple fact of the matter is that she's just now beginning to run competitively in the Nationwide Series on a consistent basis, usually running somewhere right outside the Top 10. Let's keep something in mind here, and yes, while I'm aware it's not as simple as I'm about to put it, Joey Logano won a whopping 9 Nationwide Series races this year and didn't even make the Sprint Cup chase. Like I said, it's not really that simple to compare Joey Logano to Danica Patrick, given the fact that people who are as successful as he has been in Nationwide go on to be far more successful than he currently is in the Sprint Cup Series. However, the bottom line is this: the odds are that Danica will less-than-competitively most of the time next season.

On the other hand, if growth and learning is the goal and the results don't matter as much as improvement does, then that we can entertain. So, the options are pretty much: Stay in Nationwide for another full season and run another limited Cup run, run both Nationwide and Cup full season, or run Cup only. Running both full Nationwide and full Cup is not really feasible, not even for sponsor-magnet Danica. Yes, the Busch boys did it but they have their own team. The fact is, the best option would be for her to spend more time running in Cup if that's what she's planning on doing. Is she going to learn more by doing Cup full time or part time? I believe she will learn more doing it full time. Danica is already making great strides in the Cup car and could possibly outperform her results in the Nationwide car over time.

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Permalink Reply by Damon on November 24, 2012 at 9:59am

It's important to note, when doing these comparisons of driver vs driver, look at the where they are. Comparing Danica to Joey right now isn't fair, as he has more starts under his belt in Cup/Nationwide, but if you want to compare their development in the early stages of their Cup careers (first 10 races), she's ahead of his pace in terms of driver rating and average finish, plus her best finish of 17th is slightly off his best finish of 13th.

Based on her last 2 starts with Tony Gibson as her crew chief (20.5 average finish) and seeing how she progressed in races as they went on, like Bristol/Texas/Phoenix and was on the lead lap at Kansas with a shot at a top 20 before letting her frustrations get the better of her dealing with Landon Cassill, I think she could be a top 20-25 performer week in/week out (after all, she did that in 3 of her last 5 starts by finishing 25th or better and it could've been 5 of her last 7 if Bristol/Kansas turned out differently) and before you say, that's all? top 20-25......just look at the current Cup champ and his average finish in his full season at the Cup level.

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Permalink Reply by KEVEN M KRUEGER on November 24, 2012 at 10:31am

first of all (D.P) I watched all of your nw races////only one comment= = = = You will need to be more aggressive all the way around the track.
more more more aggressive best prosperity in the future....
vern m said:

First off Happy thanksgiving to everyone.

Now--Nascar season IS over so these crazy polls asking opinions on something that has already BEEN decided, as she IS going to Cup racing--ready or not--are silly. Danica first of all is a media tool and one of the best for marketing and promoting products and her and her sponsors brands. Yes she wants to do well but facts are given other open wheel drivers, some who failed and other who will be in his 6th yr next yr with one NNs win only shows how tough it is and will be for her to get the results most people want from her. However long as she sells the products she will have sponsors to have fun doing this and maybe just maybe she will surprise some of us and do better then we expect but only time will tell with that?. She has the equivalent of 2yrs in Nascar 70 races overall and one top 5 because of fuel strategy in vegas and only 4 top 10s so not exactly great. Its either the teams not giving her a good car or its just her having the same problems all open wheel drivers have learning these cars. Either way she will be in Cup and I hope she can qualify for races on time and not embarrass herself having to miss races as that will kill her career eventually for sure? I personaly wish she would dump all her advisors and managment who only want a % of what she makes, and just make her own decisions for a change as she knows she isnt ready for next yr but she Is just the puppet in all this for others to get rich OFF her, but she is the one allowing that to happen so nothing we can do as fans but hope for the best.

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Permalink Reply by KEVEN M KRUEGER on November 24, 2012 at 10:40am

yes that would be something more driving time in cup can only improve her racing future,(D.P.)hope you get the BEST OF SUCCESS STARTING 2013.Remember more aggressiveness.
PhilipJames said:

I think the timing is perfect for Danica to go to Cup next year. Its a new car. All the teams will be trying to figure it out and so will all the drivers, Danica included. Why would she wait another year while the other drivers figure the new car out and get an even bigger advantage on her.

Besides, have we all not heard how different the two cars are... Nationwide vs Cup... so why the heck would anyone want her to learn to drive the Nationwide car when it drives differently from the Cup?

Boy, there sure are some slow (won't say stupid) ideas out there.

She has the big bucks to go Cup racing... would it still be there a year or two down the road? Can anyone guarantee that... NO... so why wait?

There is a new car so the advantage the other drivers have on her is diminished, giving her a better chance of competing.

The only thing that doing some part time Nationwide next year helps in is the seat time and learning some of the tricky little things that are common to all stock cars. It would not help her ultimately in learning to drive the new Cup car.

Personally, I think she drives the Cup car better than the Nationwide car and I believe she will surprise a lot of people next year and have comparably better finishes in Cup than she did in Nationwide... keeping in mind that in Nationwide there are 5 - 10 drivers who are probably better than her in stock cars and in Cup it is probably about 20. That does not mean she can not beat those drivers, just that due to EXPERIENCE, seat time and ability, they are better. SHE IS A ROOKIE... never forget that. I am interested in seeing how well Ricky does in Cup considering he is a two time Nationwide champion.... did not seem that great in the few Cup races he ran this year. Could Danica actually do better than Ricky next year? Wouldn't that be something.

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Permalink Reply by David Williams on November 24, 2012 at 3:55pm

The interesting question is, does Danica think she's ready? She came to NASCAR having made a deal to run full-time for one year in Nationwide and to put Nationwide behind her a year later and run full-time in Cup. She announced at the time that in Nationwide she expected to be contending for the championship. And she was serious about that. It seems clear to me that her quick success in Arca led her to believe she would be readier for NASCAR than she actually was.

Danica has, it seems to me, often made such decisions based on an overly confident estimation of her readiness for the next step in her career, and there have been others (Bobby Rahal, Tony Stewart) who for reasons of their own are willing to capitalize on that judgment of herself, faulty though it might be. Though she had not won a race in Formula Ford in England or in Toyota Atlantics after that, she agreed with Bobby Rahal (looking to make history with his name attached to it) to jump over Indy Lights to the IndyCar big leagues, despite evidence that Indy Lights might be a much needed step in the development ladder -- Pippa Mann said the experience of Indy Lights, where she won a race, was invaluable to her learning curve because the cars were so similar to Indy cars. And I haven't noticed other up and coming drivers over the years skipping that step to get to IndyCar. Relevant to this question, it seems to me, is the fact that Danica is now very publicly hedging her bets and saying she wants many more Nationwide races next year, despite having signed a contract that did not include that option.

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Permalink Reply by Scott on November 24, 2012 at 4:25pm

Those are some strange conclusions. 1st, a limited Nationwide schedule is typical for a Cup driver that can find the sponsorship, and was always likely to be part of the plan and that part of the plan was publicly acknowledged months ago. How is that hedging her bets? 2nd, how would she sign a contract to include Nationwide races with a team that the only fields Cup cars? At the time she signed her Cup contract no one anticipated the upheaval that came this year at JRM. At the time that the contract with Stewart-Haas was signed, I would think everyone was pretty confident that she could return to running a partial schedule at JRM just like she had for two previous years. And with the structure that Kelley Earnhardt recently announced, which mirrors that previous structure, Danica may still end up back there for a partial schedule.

David Williams said:

Relevant to this question, it seems to me, is the fact that Danica is now very publicly hedging her bets and saying she wants many more Nationwide races next year, despite having signed a contract that did not include that option.