Danica Patrick

The tough and expedited schooling Danica Patrick has undergone in NASCAR may easily give her the advantage she needs for the Indy 500.
NASCAR may be the new pinnacle of motorsports, with drivers coming over from Formula One, open-wheel and other series.
For Patrick, there is one goal she wants to achieve before plotting her future racing course, and that is to win the Indianapolis 500.
The sporadic appearances the GoDaddy.com driver makes in the NASCAR Nationwide Series have shown steady improvement. Her last appearance was at Bristol Motor Speedway on March 19, and her next race will be June 4 at Chicagoland Speedway.
Patrick has been forced to learn how to control a heavy stock car in close packs of cars. She needed to learn a new lingo regarding car set up, which has more variables than an Indy style car.
With IndyCar racing, there is a lot of computer control involved with the cars and downforce is more critical to good performance especially on oval tracks.
It is somewhat easier for a driver to handle the high horsepower open-wheel cars with ground effects that tend to glue themselves to the track. The heavy, bulky stock cars that are slower and more subject to changes are tougher to deal with.
During NASCAR Media Day at Daytona International Speedway this past February, Patrick commented on the stock cars. She said, "The cars are very finicky."
Driving stock cars in the second tier of NASCAR has humbled Patrick, but by the same token, she has learned quickly and gained confidence in herself which should transfer to the IndyCar series.
Aggressiveness in close quarters is mandatory in NASCAR. Though there is no fender banging or pushing with the open-wheel cars, the tendency to be more daring with her Andretti Autosports car has got to be greater than it was prior to driving stock cars.

Obviously, with the difference in the two types of cars, the way they handle on the various tracks can hardly be compared. The one good thing about the two series is that they run on many of the same tracks which should benefit Patrick.
NASCAR builds toughness in a driver. It takes fortitude to drive through smoke and crashing cars with the hope you can guide the car out the other side unscathed.
Patrick's learning curve is yielding faster results than has been the case with some other drivers who have attempted to move from open-wheel to fendered cars.
A race with 43 cars instills a sense of urgency in the drivers to get to the front quickly and the importance of track position is more critical in NASCAR. These two factors should relate to how fast she can take her open-wheel car to the front.
The qualities of a good race car driver include endurance, understanding the line to drive, what makes a car handle for the long run, feedback and being able to adapt to the changes the car makes.
Those qualities and more are important in all motorsports, but building endurance in the NASCAR series may benefit Patrick in her IndyCar racing.
Patrick has been running the first few races of the Izod IndyCar Series without interruption of NASCAR prior to going into the busy month of May at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, which culminates at the end of the month with the Indy 500.
This may be Patrick's last chance to realize her dream of winning the Indianapolis 500 if she does make the move to NASCAR full-time in 2012.
There is little doubt the experience she has gained racing in the NASCAR Nationwide Series can only be advantageous to her with the open-wheel series.
The best of luck to Danica in the Indy 500.