Local Press'es Take on Danica at LBGP

[Scotty G.]

1. The decline of the Indycars is a symptom of the last 15 years of stupidity.

2. You cannot tell me that Dario or Helio are poor drivers or incapable. I suspect given time, they could race anything....

1. No, this is a symptom that has plagued this sport for FAR longer then that. Indy Car thumbed their nose at Jeff Gordon long before "the split". They started losing many of the best American talent LONG before "the split". They started catering their sport to F1 dropouts long before "the split".

"The Split" was hurtful but it was also a convenient excuse for the failings of this sport. And until we have a sport that young Americans and young Canadians aspire to race in again, then we are going nowhere.

2. Dario looked out-of-his-league in his NASCAR adventure. Others from the Indy Car world also looked overwhelmed and undertalented for the top rung of American motorsport.

Not saying Dario and Helio aren't good drivers. They are and have proven that. But they have also done it, in a time when Indy Cars talent level has been mediocre (at best) and done it when very few teams could compete with the teams they drove for.

Its not like Dario and Helio are battling it out with Mario, AJ, JR, Mears, the Unser's, Mosley, Johncock, Sneva and Donahue every weekend.

[Mark in Oshawa]

1. No, this is a symptom that has plagued this sport for FAR longer then that. Indy Car thumbed their nose at Jeff Gordon long before "the split". They started losing many of the best American talent LONG before "the split". They started catering their sport to F1 dropouts long before "the split".

"The Split" was hurtful but it was also a convenient excuse for the failings of this sport. And until we have a sport that young Americans and young Canadians aspire to race in again, then we are going nowhere.

Jeff Gordon wasn't snubbed...he didn't even really try. He took the path of least resistance. Tony Stewart came along a few years later with much the same pedigree, and even more championships and went straight into the IRL without any issue. No one banned him..no one tried to stop him, there was no conspiracy. You keep beating this drum about poor Jeff was hurt so bad by the mean old car owners. Those BAD people who conspire to keep Americans out of racing cars. Who the heck was going to give an CART car racing half the season on road courses to a guy who had been racing on dirt in midgets and sprints at the age of 18? Great talent...no doubt, but come on Scott. Read Jeff's book. He tells everyone what happened. He was looking into Atlantics or Indy Lights through his step dad, but no offers were on the table. He goes to Buck Baker's racing school at that time just to see what stock cars are like and he fell in love with them. Dropped the whole idea of going to CART. If he REALLY wanted to go OW bad enough, he would have found a way. The best always come to the top.

Contrast this with Paul Tracy, who came along at much the same time. His DAD bought his ride at Dale Coyne. BOUGHT IT. He wanted to race in CART and race at Indy. Jeff? Obviously as I described was quite willing to change his course. Poor Jeff...all those millions he made. He was so hurt he had to go to NASCAR and win 4 championships. I am going to break out tissues soon....

You keep saying this crap but no one on this board believes you on this one. Read Jeff's book. I did..and I am not even a 24 fan....

2. Dario looked out-of-his-league in his NASCAR adventure. Others from the Indy Car world also looked overwhelmed and undertalented for the top rung of American motorsport.

Not saying Dario and Helio aren't good drivers. They are and have proven that. But they have also done it, in a time when Indy Cars talent level has been mediocre (at best) and done it when very few teams could compete with the teams they drove for.

Its not like Dario and Helio are battling it out with Mario, AJ, JR, Mears, the Unser's, Mosley, Johncock, Sneva and Donahue every weekend.

Dario started how many races? 10? Did he test? ummm no...testing ban came along about that time. Dario had 18 plus years of driving OW race cars/karts. Nothing he had driven in a serious manner would prepare him to drive a stock car at this level. The team he was with was not one of the best ones.....so to say he is a "Failure" also ignores him having a broken leg in April of that season at Dega. C'mon Scott, you are awful fast and loose with the facts when you don't like them aren't you? Lets face a truth. NASCAR is not BETTER than the IRL but it is DIFFERENT. REALLY DIFFERENT. To succeed, unless you are a prodigy by jumping into the top level you will need a year to two. It is this year that Speed and Allmendinger have finally shown their true potential. Neither even THOUGHT about stock cars until they got there. OW drivers have a muscle memory to relearn, and have to relearn what their body tells them. To put down IRL drivers for failing at NASCAR is to presuppose they are gods. It is like someone who hits 100 runs in a Cricket match being asked to hit in the Major Leagues of baseball and be hitting .270 by the end of April. Both are great hitters, the baseball player and the cricket hitter, and both swing bats..but they are different and the pitchs coming at them are different. Short of having 4 wheels, almost nothing translates. The one car relies on downforce, is glued to the track, has the engine in the back and large contact patches. Stock cars have the smallest tires for any race car that weight imaginable, have too much power, all up front, and almost no aero now....Other than they are both cars, there is no real transferable skill set other than the reality that they go fast.

AS for saying Dario and Helio are not racing AJ, Mario and the rest...yes...because in this era, THEY are the AJ's Mario's and the rest. Maybe not to that level, I do agree, but racing is a lot more specialized now. Driving a Roadster at Indy and driving a stock car in the 60's still involved skinny tires, lots of power oversteer and not much in the world of chassis tuning. Now? Well once you sort out all the engineers, tire compound choices and aero or lack of aero....you have two completely race cars with the engines at opposite ends. Dario, Helio, Power, Dixon, TK, the Ryan's are all competitive with each other. What is more, they have more or less the same cars. I defy anyone to tell me where Mario or AJ would have won as often as they did if they had no advantages on any track from week to week in terms of machinery or preparation. This is a game of thousands of inches now. Get your nostalgia hat off...

[beachbum]

Mark, you make excellent points. Dario himself had some interesting observations that even apply to the original topic of this thread - Danica. Dario admitted he always liked a car set up with excellent rear traction and a little push. When he was at AGR, Danica often used a setup similar to Dario. But he quickly found that stock cars had to be run looser - much looser - to get any speed out of them. Tighten them up and they were easier to drive, but slower and not competitive. He admitted it took him a while to adapt to that. He also said it made him faster when he came back to the IRL and he could run different setups than previously.

One of the fascinations of watching NASCAR today is just how loose they run the cars. It isn't uncommon to see them laying down black streaks as they exit turns or watch them hanging the back out, even on superspeedways. That probably explains why short trackers and dirt racers adapt fairly easily as that feel isn't uncomfortable to them, while open wheel cars are rarely run that loose. Montoya said the same thing, and he even liked a relatively loose race car before trying stock cars.

"Back in the day" when all race cars had skinny tires and little aero, even pavement champ cars would slide around. A driver could jump from one type of car to another and there wasn't a huge difference. In some ways, an old front engine champ car wasn't much different than a stock car. One had fenders, and one didn't. But the weight distributions were similar, the tires were similar, and the aero was similar (none).

That is the biggest challenge Danica will face when she moves to stock cars. She just can't drive a loose car. Pop's at JR already admitted they had to really tighten the car up for her just to get her at all comfortable, making the car slow, very slow. When they loosened the car up for qualifying, she almost crashed it and could barely hang on. She has never shown any ability to change and adapt, so the likelihood that she will ever show any speed in a stock car at most tracks is pretty low because she can't drive the cars as they need to be run. Even as far back as her FF days, her teams noted she couldn't drive a loose car. There is a reason teams set a car up with a lot of understeer for a novice. It is easier to drive and the driver isn't as likely to get into trouble. But it isn't fast. There are a lot of drivers who can look good in a car like that. The real mark of a driver is one who can still get the most out of an evil handling car or a really loose car. Danica isn't one of the latter, and never will be.

It seems that the fast setups for IRL cars are much looser today than a few years ago (except at Indy). That may be one explanation why Danica's performance and results are what they are. The setups she can run are stable (and safe) enough to run midpack, but just aren't fast enough to get to the front. A safe setup is less likely to get the driver into trouble, so they are usually around at the end of the race, gaining points. But at Indy, stability and a "safe" setup are fine so she looks "good" there. It may also explain why she runs well at tracks were understeer isn't a big penalty (like ovals) and is usually slow at road courses.

[markabilly]

Actually, we don't know where Scott Speed wanted to be. We do know where Red Bull wanted him to be.

true...I am not sure speed knew where he wanted to be...I agree with your other comments as well.

and i agree with Mark's comments about Jeff Gordon. I remember a Speed show where Gordon drove an older Williams and JPM drove Gordon's stocker.

Given the older tires and car, his times where not that good for the currrent year F1 at Indy...back of the pack, but when compared to the times of the year before, a more accurate measurement given the older tires and car, he was competitive, and not bad for a guy doing a few hours of a tv side show, rather than serious car setup and practice. JPM seemed to have a rougher time adopting to the stocker..

[harvick#1]

Gordon wanted to try F1, not IRL, and that was back in 02 when he drove the Williams, so 8 years has past, Gordon wanted to drive a F1 car and he got too, I believe Gordon couldve done very well in F1 if he decided to go, but he stayed in Nascar

[NickFalzone]

Back on the topic of Danica, I think her Twitter feed says everything I need to know about her true interests and goals. Vast majority of the "tweets" are PR-style requests for people to check out some commercial or ad she's done, or requests for fans to vote for her on some web contest or another. All the others drivers I've seen on Twitter use it as a place to express their thoughts on current races (both IRL and elsewhere), new car concepts, personal stuff about friends/family, etc. But Danica rarely talks about racing, almost always a promo for some ad she's done, or once in awhile talking about her supposed "hobbies" of knitting and cooking.

[SoCalPVguy]

Wow !!! I never thought that when I posted that little local Daily Breeze article it would generate 130 responses !

[TURN3]

Wow !!! I never thought that when I posted that little local Daily Breeze article it would generate 130 responses !

Any thread with an open opportunity to slam the crap out of her is a wonderful thing!

[NickFalzone]

Any thread with an open opportunity to slam the crap out of her is a wonderful thing!

I would love to slam the crap out of her. The problem is watching her struggle around in 16th place for 2 1/2 hours and have the announcers tell us she's doing well (always in spite of some fictitious obstacle or another).

[Mark in Oshawa]

Wow !!! I never thought that when I posted that little local Daily Breeze article it would generate 130 responses !

About 30 of em are Turn3's doing....lol

Hey...whether it is here, or on the NASCAR board, people are not on the fence about Danica. DF and maybe one or two others think she is alright, and the rest of us cant stand her and love pointing out her shortcomings.

What gets me tho is the reality of this image starting to fray. The Tweet's, the move to NASCAR, the media overkill are all starting to fray the image, and this could be her last year as a media darling. She is in danger of being a media punching bag...