Danica Patrick and close-quarters combat

In a nutshell, and to make this brief:

Danica was criticized for being flash and flesh, appearance over substance, and someone who was bandied around as something/someone glorious because she was a woman challenging in what "is traditionally" (I'd go so far as to say is, period) a man's sport. Seriously, it is; take one look at the upper-body strength demanded of a Formula One racing driver, to name merely one series, and one can see that it is more difficult for females than males to succeed; anyone wanting to gainsay can take a course in human biology. In any case, she was accused of being Anna Kournikova for the sport.

UNTIL...she won that race at Motegi. No longer can she be knocked for not winning, as she was before. Except...

The new accusation is how she won.

Danica won at Motegi, as mentioned earlier in these writings, due to the strategy of her crew chief, Kyle Moyer (former crew chief of Marco Andretti, going back to his highly successful...read: winning at Sonoma in the same way...2006 days). She could stretch the fuel longer, and it was only because of that that she was able to defeat the Dixons and Kanaans and Wheldons of the bunch. In a real racing battle, head to head (Close Quarters Combat, as I militantly term it)...she can't win, is the new knock. All car capabilities being equal, in other words, she is not good enough to win...that is what is being said.

Now, the reality:

They are, and are not, correct, at the same time. Danica did win. Strategy, as has been said by very many, very often of late, is just as good a method of winning as utter domination of the field from start of the race to finish. In the end, working by whatever means allowed for the best possible finish is the name of the game; succeed...and you've succeeded.

What the critics are pointing out, to whatever degree of calmness, bitterness, or any other emotion in question, is that in aggressive situations, Danica has historically not performed as aggressively, or as well, as the male drivers around her. And in this, they are right: literally. In the concluding laps of the Texas Motor Speedway Indycar race, 2007, Sam Hornish, Jr. led, teammate Tony Kanaan was second, and Danica was third. Danica had actually caught up with the two other leaders...but then she stayed behind Kanaan, trying to "push him by," for the "team finish." On this point, it might be conceded that Kanaan just had a better car, and even that, in turn, wasn't enough to beat Hornish...one of the best battle-to-the-flag finishers in early 21st century motor racing...that day. Granted.

But at Michigan last year, after the massive Dario-flip crash that also succeeded in taking out half the field, she easily had a stronger car than her two higher-running teammates, Kanaan or Marco Andretti. She caught them, after losing half a second gap, three separate times: huge runs on them, ready and waiting to overtake into the lead...and each time, she pulled up on the outside, and let the momentum bleed off, to stay in single-file. Not putting it in the dangerous spot, not stepping out with the better car.

On this point, it might be conceded...might...that they all had team orders to wait for the last laps (inside five to go) to really fight it out. That Danica's tire went down before then, relegating her to finishing one lap back, makes the matter mostly academic. But in the end, the stinging accusation could, meanwhile, stand: she had had the best car left that day, with a certainty: running laps 2+ mph faster than the leaders, and closing up on them, is the proverbial "It." All the cards were on the table to take the lead, if not the win, long before the tire went down.

And she did not. Her first win was by strategy, not by "battle." And in this, I both criticize, and do not criticize, Danica: if this is the way that is best-suited for her to win, she and the Motorola Andretti-Green team should do everything within their power to create situations like it in the future. Her winning by fuel strategy DOES NOT, under any circumstances, detract from her victory; what would is everyone (she and her team included) not caring about the dynamics of the sport enough to realize how they need to think, if the process of winning is to be repeated.

Do not get me wrong: I don't dislike the fact that Danica has won a race: what I dislike is a lot of people throwing bargeloads of sexual (and often liberalized) politics into the Dreadful, Wonderful Sport that doesn't need any of that shit to be fascinating; people (like a certain asshole "journalist" who writes for a Kansas City newspaper) claiming that if Danica doesn't win, "[he's] not being entertained, and will abandon the sport that is so desperate for his viewership"; massively less focus on many very deserving, very talented (usually male) drivers, due to the fact that a female one of them is pretty universally regarded as attractive and a good cover spread. Those kinds of things, I truly hate. And if someone out there says that basically means I hate modern society and the way things just are, they'd be dead on.

All the more why I love The Talk of Gasoline Alley, and everything else right with the universe. Hurrah for the men of the cast-iron chariots.