Danica Patrick

Whatever happened to Danica Mania?

After she qualified tenth at Indy, Danica Patrick rated one paragraph in one of the paragons of motor racing coverage, USA Today. This would be the same paper that had Barbaro on the front page, the same horse that was also the headliner in the sports section’s regular media column. Meanwhile, Preakness winner Bernardini was the major story on the “racing” page, i.e. both horse and motor types.

This is the life when one lives in what Sports Illustrated has dubbed the “celebrity industrial complex.” You get replaced by a horse that wins the Kentucky Derby and then breaks a leg at the start of the Preakness. This happens if you haven’t threatened to win anything lately, which in Patrick’s case means winning the pole at Chicago last September and leading the first lap.

The general fan enthusiasm, led by the adolescent girls publishers are wooing with various books on Danica, wanes when there’s no improvement in scores, i.e. better than fourth at Indy last year. Then there’s the group that never took a shine to a woman doing well at Indy, the group that points out that Danica hasn’t won anything yet.(As usual, the stance by this writer is that Patrick will win, likely on a schedule similar to other up-and-coming drivers.)

There’s an old attitude in racing that “if a woman can do it, it must not be very difficult, or even worth doing.” It was the fear of getting tarnished with this brush stroke that established so many barriers for Janet Guthrie among a segment of the racing population. When Danica improved on Janet’s barrier breaking by taking the lead at Indy in the late stages, the same less than rational response set in among some diehard racing fans.

So for Patrick, it’s time to settle in for the long haul. The Mania won’t return until she wins a race, if then. The approval from a majority of racing fans won’t happen until she wins a race. And finally, for some a victory will only prove the Indy Racing League is for sissies. The flip side of this latter perception that the current IRL cars must be easy to drive at 228 mph per lap at Indy, even if two-time race winner Helio Castroneves of the vaunted Penske Racing team says he turns purple from holding his breath in qualifying.

There’s no rule that says the “celebrity industrial complex” and racing fans have to be rational. So what do you do if you’re in charge at the IRL, which by now must recognize there needs to be another way forward with the waxing of Patrick’s coattails into a slippery slope.

Something needs to be done. In another sampling on another segment in the media spectrum, while traveling across the Midwest en route to Indy there was not a single mention of the impending Indy 500 qualifying (admittedly postponed a week by rain) on the radio. Check that. The ABC News network, the same broadcast company that has the rights to broadcast the Indy 500, mentioned the impending qualifying at the tail end of its report on the Preakness and the NBA playoffs, plus Major League baseball. All this in America’s breadbasket and the regional home of the Indy 500.

All the airwaves were awash, however, in the latest American sports fad of horse racing. This follows on the coattails of the gambling craze that has swept America before the Sept. 11 attacks and has accelerated since then. The saga of Barbaro, and his now famous surgeon Dr. Dean Richardson, will do little to decrease the interest in the sport of kings. (One irony here: Tony Hulman bought the Indianapolis Motor Speedway after the track had gone to seed during World War II and revived it in part to give Indiana something to brag about versus the Kentucky Derby.)
Parimutual wagering, needless to say, is not ever going to be possible for motor racing in general and the IRL specifically. So the latter, which continues to look wimpy on many fronts versus NASCAR, needs to press forward with something other than a former rock band front man’s idea of a promotion theme. (The same one used by the YMCA — which apparently had it first.)

In place of the rather inocuous “I am Indy” campaign, the IRL’s owner and founder, Tony George, has to count his losses since founding the new series ten years ago — which now includes losing Danica Mania. Then, George needs to broker a deal with rival Champ Car that creates a merger — a topic already covered in this space previously and countless other locations across the electronic and print universe.

I hestitate to say “unification” since this would be a business deal more than anything else, hence a merger. Along these lines, George has to accept that the owners of Champ Car, bought out of bankruptcy two years ago, will come out ahead on the business deal. They have fewer losses than George due to a shorter term of investment and will gain as much as George going forward in any equitably drawn deal. In the long run, this is better than falling further behind NASCAR and possibly, ye gads, a sport where the participants actually use horsepower. There’s one message that will work going forward, which justifies the cost of a merger: “We are Indy.”

I do not hesitate to point out such a merger would bring Champ Car driver Katherine Legge to the Indy 500…