Interesting Danica article.

irish44j wrote: How many times does my wife talk about freakin' David Beckham, who is the Danica Patrick of soccer?

To be fair to David Beckham, he has been on teams that have won 6 Premier league titles, 2 FA Cups, a Champions League, 2 MLS Cups and 1 La Liga title. He was the first Englishmen to play in 100 Champions League matches, first Englishmen score in three World Cups, third in assists in the all-time list in the Premier League and second in the assists list in Champions League. Plus he was the European player of the year in the '98-'99 season. That is a pretty impressive career.

Streetwiseguy wrote:

wbjones wrote:

Will wrote:

wbjones wrote:

Will wrote: I doubt that DEI's pockets were ever any deeper than Hendrick's. I don't know why Jr. doesn't win the way he used to, but money sure isn't it.

it's not like he was a winning machine in the past .. he's only got 19 wins in his Cup career

"Only" 19 wins. Look, Jr's name is never going to come up in the discussion of all-time best stock car driver. But saying "only" 19 wins? A lot of GRMers seem have a funny attitude about this topic. Look at how many great drivers have never won a single cup race--Boris Said, Scott Pruett, Ron Fellows, Dario Franchitti, etc. Serious question: exactly how many wins do you have to have before you don't suck anymore? 19 wins at that level of competition is a hell of a lot. Do you need 20? 30? 50?

well …. to name a few … these are some of the ones that have more than 19 Speedy Thompson Jack Smith Jim Paschal Rex White Herb Thomas these are just some of the less well known drivers that have more victories he's 40th on the list of wins ….

I'm not a junior fan at all, but the two differences between him and the guys on that list are these: 1: They didn't race in the Jimmy Johnson era. When you get one guy that can dominate like that, there's only a few races left to share amongst all the other drivers. 2: They almost all raced in the era of 60 or 70 races a year. Danica deserves her ride for the same reason Michael Waltrip raced in cup for as long as he did- advertisers see something they like.

but they did have to race in the Richard Petty era … who, with 200 victories is WAY WAY ahead of Jimmy Johnson

Success? Depends on how you rate success. If bringing the highest amount of sponsor money into the sport, then yes Danica is as successful as Pastor Maldonado or Esteban Gutierrez. 30 million dollars, the highest amount of single sponsor money spent in NASCAR.

But with one of, if not the, highest budgets in NASCAR, racing for 30th with the unheralded and underfunded Front Row Motorsports' David Gilliland and David Ragan, BK's Travis Kvapil and David Reutimann, and Tommy Baldwin's former start N Park operation... that isn't getting much ontrack performance for the money.

But we must not forget that NASCAR is not a sport, its a business. As a business, wins are no longer important, money is.

wbjones wrote:

Streetwiseguy wrote:

wbjones wrote:

Will wrote:

wbjones wrote:

Will wrote: I doubt that DEI's pockets were ever any deeper than Hendrick's. I don't know why Jr. doesn't win the way he used to, but money sure isn't it.

it's not like he was a winning machine in the past .. he's only got 19 wins in his Cup career

"Only" 19 wins. Look, Jr's name is never going to come up in the discussion of all-time best stock car driver. But saying "only" 19 wins? A lot of GRMers seem have a funny attitude about this topic. Look at how many great drivers have never won a single cup race--Boris Said, Scott Pruett, Ron Fellows, Dario Franchitti, etc. Serious question: exactly how many wins do you have to have before you don't suck anymore? 19 wins at that level of competition is a hell of a lot. Do you need 20? 30? 50?

well …. to name a few … these are some of the ones that have more than 19 Speedy Thompson Jack Smith Jim Paschal Rex White Herb Thomas these are just some of the less well known drivers that have more victories he's 40th on the list of wins ….

I'm not a junior fan at all, but the two differences between him and the guys on that list are these: 1: They didn't race in the Jimmy Johnson era. When you get one guy that can dominate like that, there's only a few races left to share amongst all the other drivers. 2: They almost all raced in the era of 60 or 70 races a year. Danica deserves her ride for the same reason Michael Waltrip raced in cup for as long as he did- advertisers see something they like.

but they did have to race in the Richard Petty era … who, with 200 victories is WAY WAY ahead of Jimmy Johnson

Not on a percentage basis. Petty raced at least twice as often every year, and raced for way, way longer than Jimmys 12 years.

At some point, you are what you're record says you are: Indycar: 115 starts, 1 win, 7 podiums, 12 DNF NASCAR Nationwide: 60 starts, 1 top 5, 7 top 10s, 13 DNF Nascar Cup: 46 starts, 1 top 10, 7 DNF

We have a fairly large sample size of what Danica is as a racecar driver: She was semi-competitive in Indycar and is just good enough to not be totally embarrassed in Nascar. She has a ton of talent (I don't think anyone here would be able to be even semi-competitve in indycar or nascar) but not enough to really compete with the big boys. She's still around because she brings sponsorship. I don't see how she's any different than any of the other back of the pack guys in F1, Indycar, NASCAR, or sportcars who have a ride because they bring their own sponsor. She is far from the worst of the ride buyers (also far from the best).

PS: I don't get the Jr. hate in here. Sure, he hasn't won much recently but he finished 5th overall in the Sprint Cup series this year. Only four people in all of NASCAR were better than him last year.

93EXCivic wrote:

irish44j wrote: How many times does my wife talk about freakin' David Beckham, who is the Danica Patrick of soccer?

To be fair to David Beckham, he has been on teams that have won 6 Premier league titles, 2 FA Cups, a Champions League, 2 MLS Cups and 1 La Liga title. He was the first Englishmen to play in 100 Champions League matches, first Englishmen score in three World Cups, third in assists in the all-time list in the Premier League and second in the assists list in Champions League. Plus he was the European player of the year in the '98-'99 season. That is a pretty impressive career.

And I can tell you that my wife, though claiming to be a big soccer fan, didn't watch a damn single one of those things, nor follow them. Maybe she saw him play for his MLS team once or twice, IDK.....