Danica and Ford deal almost happened in 2002?

Quote :

A veteran NASCAR driver who has actually seen Danica Patrick behind the wheel of a stock car expects the IndyCar driver to be competitive in her part-time foray into the Nationwide Series next season with JR Motorsports even though she faces plenty of hurdles.

Nationwide driver Jason Keller was racing for the now-defunct ppc team in 2002 when he was asked to help out with a test at Greenville-Pickens Speedway, a half-mile oval in Greenville, S.C., for a driver he had never heard of at the time.

“[Team co-owner] Greg [Pollex] called me up the week before and said, ‘Hey, I’ve got this female that Ford wants to test,’” Keller recalled Wednesday. “‘We’ve got it scheduled for Monday and Tuesday at Greenville-Pickens. I thought it’d be great if you could go on down there and check it out and [see] if she needs any help.’”

Keller agreed, even though he had a family vacation planned for what was an off week in what was then known as the Busch Series. Keller postponed his vacation by a day to head to Greenville-Pickens to help with the test of the driver, who turned out to be Patrick, and he remembers being impressed.

“She rode around the track in a street car with me,” Keller said. “She asked a lot of questions. I’ll often say I like for new people, rookies, whatever, to ask the right kind of questions. You can kind of get a feel for if they’re just going, ‘Oh, this is this guy. He doesn’t know anything.’ But she was really asking questions: ‘What do I need to expect with letting off? Braking? Where do I need to expect to get back on the throttle?’

“That all comes with feel as you get in the car, but she was running laps in her head before she got out there at speed. She did a really good job.”

Keller said it was a warm day, and the track was “really slick,” but Patrick handled herself well.

“She had a lot of throttle control,” said Keller, who has been competing in the Busch/Nationwide Series since 1991 and has 10 series wins. “I remember us commenting about that. I would go down in the corner and watch her. As the tires would start spinning, she had a lot of throttle control. You could tell she had been in a race car a lot before and had a lot of racing experience.”

Keller left for his vacation on the second planned day of the test.

“If I’d have known she had been this famous, I might have stayed around and tried to get my picture taken with her or something,” he said.

Patrick took the test seriously, even getting a seat built by Randy LaJoie’s The Joie of Seating just for the test. Keller said there was no way he could fit in the seat, which was placed in one of Keller’s race cars.

Keller came away impressed with Patrick.

“I’ve done numerous tests at Greenville-Pickens with drivers I would rather not name that didn’t have near the throttle control or near the car control she had,” he said.

Some of those, Keller added, are current stock-car drivers.

“I think she’ll be OK,” Keller said. “Now, I think it would be having lollipop dreams here if we thought she was going to go out and win that first race at a short track or something like that. It just doesn’t happen. I don’t care how good of equipment you’re in. … She’ll be competitive. I think she will. I think she’ll be fine.”

~Scene Daily


Well... Ford drops the ball on another big name, talented driver ... Kyle Busch, Danica Patrick, Joey Logano...

SHE WILL FIND IT'S NOT EASY AS TESTING THESE CARS. IT'S A WHOLE DIFFERENT GAME WHEN YOUR RACING.ASK MONTOYA.

That is certainly the case, and I don't expect her to light the world on fire with the races she does. However, I am expecting better than some people. I think she will end up in the top-20 if she can keep the car in one piece throughout the races.

By the end of the year, I think it would be considered a success if she can get at least a couple of top-10 finishes and maybe 1 top-5.

TeamBlueOval wrote:

I think she will end up in the top-20 if she can keep the car in one piece throughout the races.

Of course. Seeing as you can usually get a decent finish in a good car with speed, and a good number of entries will probably S&P. I expect a few top-20 finishes out of Danica, but that's about it.

Agree with you, RacingDude.