Danica got there first; end of race, end of story
April 21st, 2008, 4:09 pm · Post a Comment · posted by rhoeft
A very good racing friend of mine, who has won a pair of dirt track stock car driving championships, has this, um, mindset I guess you could say, about his success.
He’s the type who, no matter how well he drives and wins a race, you can bet he’ll have something to say afterward about ” … if it hadn’t been for this … or if it hadn’t been for that … I don’t think I would have won the race.”
This all started way back when, when after winning a race, he’d point out that his biggest rival, his arch nemesis so to speak, either wasn’t there that night, or wasn’t having a good night, and that led to my friend’s success.
And it really irked me when he’d talk like that, and it still irks me when he talks like that, and it forces me to point out, and not in a friendly manner, that it doesn’t matter who was there or wasn’t there, or what happened to Joe Blow, or whatever, that my friend was the one who took the checkered flag, no matter what the circumstances might have been.
The same thing goes for my own brief stint on the dirt tracks and the years I spent in desert racing. It didn’t matter one bit who was or wasn’t there, who screwed up, or whatever; we all faced the same circumstances and challenges; and that being said, a win is a win. And in the record books, there won’t be an asterisk that says Joe Blow wasn’t in the lineup that day, or Joe Blow ran out of gas, or anything else.
Which brings me to the historical IndyCar event of this past weekend, Danica Patrick’s victory in the Indy Japan 300 in her 50th career start. The win was the first by a female driver, and almost immediately the skeptics started howling and pointing out that it was a “fuel milage” race.
In other words, the skeptics’ point of view is that if Danica had been racing heads-up with the rest of the field Sunday, and nobody was having to worry about saving fuel and backing off the throttle, which sometimes happens in racing at all levels, she wouldn’t have won.
Which brings me back to my point of view: She was the first one to cross the finish line, the first one to get the checkered flag. That’s all there is to it. She won the race, fair and square. With all respect to Danica, she was the last man standing.
So let’s get past the second-guessing, and the skepticism, and perhaps focus on what Michael Andretti, her team’s co-owner said afterward: “Frankly, I think this is the first of many.”
That’s going to be the telling point, how many wins Danica can rack up. If she can perform up to the potential everyone in her camp believes she has, that will make everyone a believer, and legitimize her career … and put an exclamation point on that historic win in Japan.
