http://sportsillustrated.cnn.c ... /04/27/Patrick/index.html

It's a very very interesting article and I think sarah fisher spoke some wise words. Danica should stay at Indy. She won't do well with NASCAR's monster cars. Nor would I think she'll do well in circuit heavy F1.

She's lucky with Indy and she'll be wise to utilize that luck until the Indy teams start to want more results when the hype an publicity dries out. Interesting that fisher's warning can also apply to any other driver looking to hop discipline into oval stockcars

Shame about fisher though....as I consider her to be a very competent driver.

... in the background Paul Tracy and Sebastien Bourdais were already fighting for her seat...

i was going to post a video of her i saw some months on the TSN website, but it seems they've removed it now.

at any rate, i think she's a total ditz, and should go back to school instead of racing or modelling or whatever it is that she does for a living.

Quote from random forum quote i found :

Well, she is dumb enough to be an F1 driver that is for sure. I saw Mika Hakkinen (ret.) in an interview recently, that man has the conversational abilities of a sandwich.

hahaha

Danica will be at Ganassi next season. At Indy at first, but in 2 years she'll be in NASCAR. The woman can't drive worth anything anyway, so I won't mind her leaving. Leaves room for improvement in de Indy field, probably SeaBass Bourdaisy in her seat after next season. Bobby D. filling her seat at AGR next season, now that there's no more commitment to the idiot grandson, as he's no longer owner/CEO of the series.

Quote from TFalke55 :

... in the background Paul Tracy and Sebastien Bourdais were already fighting for her seat...

Paul Tracy is shit and hes an idiot.

I can't belive that USF1 think Danica Patrick is the best american driver for F1.

Let her make her way into NASCAR, no big team will sign her, and she'll be gone within 2 years.

Sounds like a win win to me.

Quote from Mustafur :

I can't belive that USF1 think Danica Patrick is the best american driver for F1.

unlikely isn't it but you have to start wondering, marco seems to have gone off the boil and the michael andretti / scott speed experiences haven't exactly helped the image of US drivers in F1 ( plus bourdais after his successes in US racing ). when you look at the indy series standings you see that danica and marco are currently the 2 highest ranked US drivers with rahal the only other US driver in the top 10.

you'd think there should be someone out there but where ?

Quote from tinvek :

unlikely isn't it but you have to start wondering, marco seems to have gone off the boil and the michael andretti / scott speed experiences haven't exactly helped the image of US drivers in F1 ( plus bourdais after his successes in US racing ). when you look at the indy series standings you see that danica and marco are currently the 2 highest ranked US drivers with rahal the only other US driver in the top 10.

you'd think there should be someone out there but where ?

IMO this guy: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Rahal

This guy screams Talent and hes only 20!

could be but as i said he's got marco and danica ahead of him in the standings plus a lot of european, australian and south american drivers. on the plus side his dad at least knows what F1 is like though that experience with jaguar may make him wary of his son going into F1. must admit i liked his dad in the past, same with marco's grandfather and both of themwould have a high profile with the US press because of their families.

basically we seem to have 3 drivers, all who hit the requirement of being promotable to the US either because of their gender or their heritage. the fastest one (currently) is gernerally percieved as being as high as she's going to get and weak on road courses, the middle one is developing steadily after making a dramatic start but his attitude can be volatile at times and the youngest one is beginning to make a name for himself

perhaps they should get them all to test, along with scott speed and discard anyone who's not faster than speed ?

I don't think Danica is that bad, but typical IRL style, the whole fight scenes and any differences drivers have is made into this massive charade by the broadcasters just like in NASCAR and the fans love it (as Americans do like to see fighting on a racetrack). I think she should definately do an F1 test, it would be good for F1 too, we had one woman but she ran in a non-championship race iirc and I think Danica would have the pace to beat a few guys at the back at least. IRL cars are wider but it shouldn't take that long to adapt, she has raced in europe before in Formula Ford so she knows what etiquette to use, she will probobly like F1 better than IRL I think because it's a more professional sport, interms of the lack of fights and crazy accidents..

to be fair she has apparently being doing a lot of work to improve her road work and her overall performance. that sort of attitude will go a lot further with people in F1 than michael andretti's attitude did in 93 when he wouldn't believe he needed to do more and insisted on living in the US and "commuted" to test sessions and races. obviously with USF1 there won't be the distance problem but for any F1 driver to be really succesfull they need to dedicate themselves to the team almost on a daily basis so hopefully marco will learn from his father's mistake if he gets the chance.

just a thought, if she gets an F1 drive can you imagine the italian marshalls reactions if she has a crash and they have to help her out of the car. it could take days by the time they have all had the chance to hold her

Quote from tinvek :

to be fair she has apparently being doing a lot of work to improve her road work and her overall performance. that sort of attitude will go a lot further with people in F1 than michael andretti's attitude did in 93 when he wouldn't believe he needed to do more and insisted on living in the US and "commuted" to test sessions and races. obviously with USF1 there won't be the distance problem but for any F1 driver to be really succesfull they need to dedicate themselves to the team almost on a daily basis so hopefully marco will learn from his father's mistake if he gets the chance.

....

I wonder when you Europeans will ever realize that CART (ChampCar) and IRL are not the same. Yes, American open wheel racing has a history of sending champions to F1 only to find out that they are rejects in the eyes of international motorsports. (For various of reasons that may or may not include a lack of talent).

However, most, if not all of these failures were from CART/ChampCar. IRL is as different from CART/ChampCar as F1 is to A1GP.

Take a quick look at the driver line ups/failures that were in F1:

Alex Zanardi = CART
Michael Andretti (lol) = CART
Sebastian Bourdais = ChampCar

Now...the success that F1/euro rejects had in American Open Wheel were also all CART/ChampCar. But the story isn't the same with Indy.

Robert Doornbos (he isn't a bad driver) = struggling in Indy but impressed in ChampCar
EJ Viso = struggling in Indy

The only people I'm aware of that did well in both series were Buddy Lazier and Gil de Ferran...non F1 people.

Now, I dont want to get into the argument of which open wheel series is better...(because frankly that's a very useless argument). But the difference is absolutely stunning imho and people always confuses the two. In fact, I can't think of any IRL driver given a chance or a ride in F1. Ryan Briscoe got a test but no Indy driver has even been invited in the F1 field. Hmmm...

IMHO, and a n00b one, I guess that Danica is not the kind of driver that win races. And Formula One do not need this kind of drivers, for god sake. Jaime Alguersuari was enough to my eyes!

But we have to agree, she is a good seller. Because when you Peak, you win.

I dont think she'll have much succes in NASCAR if she makes the switch. I dont know why everybody thinks she is so great.Of course,a very driver for being a female,but to me she is like a Marcos ambrose,not good,but not bad either. The simple fact of the matter is she just shouldnt even think about getting in to NASCAR,because she would go right back where she came from.

Quote from Zay :

I dont think she'll have much succes in NASCAR if she makes the switch. I dont know why everybody thinks she is so great.

Well...if open wheel drivers such as Christian Fittipaldi, Jacques Villeneuve, Scott Speed and Patrick Carpentier completely flopped, IDK why she thinks she can best those group of people (ok...she's better than Scott Speed...but still).

Fisher's been there and done that and her failure in NASCAR should be a warning sign to Patrick.

Quote from Zay :

Of course,a very driver for being a female,but to me she is like a Marcos ambrose,not good,but not bad either. The simple fact of the matter is she just shouldnt even think about getting in to NASCAR,because she would go right back where she came from.

Marcos Ambrose is wonderful imho. In almost every single one of this races, he ran respectible...which is much more than I can say for someone like Scott Speed. Of course, Logano has outshined him a little bit...but Logano grew up in a stock car environment. Ambrose is from touring cars which is very different.

I give the man kudos for a successful season in MWR.

Quote from lizardfolk :

....

I wonder when you Europeans will ever realize that CART (ChampCar) and IRL are not the same

i do actually know the difference, along with the fact that both marco and danica were from indycar rather than champ car. also the last us driver to win the indycar series was sam hornish jnr in the 2006 series that had only 3 road courses out of 14 rounds in it that year and in those 3 he finished no higher than 8th and behind danica in all 3 of them.

Quote from tinvek :

i do actually know the difference, along with the fact that both marco and danica were from indycar rather than champ car. also the last us driver to win the indycar series was sam hornish jnr in the 2006 series that had only 3 road courses out of 14 rounds in it that year and in those 3 he finished no higher than 8th and behind danica in all 3 of them.

That's probably why F1 is so tentative in recruiting Indy people because Indy focuses a lot on ovals instead of circuits.

However, this has changed drastically since the merger so we'll see

Quote from Zay :

I dont know why everybody thinks she is so great.

Like you said on the part that I've deleted, she is a woman. And hot. That is the main reasons that the fools thinks she is so great.

i really do hope they can find a competative US driver as it would be good for F1 my biggest worry is that they'll put a US driver thats out of their depth in the USF1 car purely because they think it'll please the US fans and they'll be alongside an existing or ex F1 driver who is known for being dependable rather than fast and the US driver willl struggle to match his team mate. that would do nothing to raise the profile of F1 in the US and in fact would probably harm it.

similary i hope USF1 have enough sense (im sure they will looking at the people involved ) to downplay expectations at the start. better to stress the need to develope steadily and improve results year by year than doing a BAR and claim you're going to win your first race

Quote from tinvek :

better to stress the need to develope steadily and improve results year by year than doing a BAR and claim you're going to win your first race

Of course, there's Johnathan Summerton in A1GP...but idk how "prestigious" anyone would consider A1GP as F1 rejects such as Narain Karthikeyan, Alex Yoong and Vitantonio Luizzi have done very well in that series...

Again, US drivers are more focused on tin tops (GT and stock cars) than open wheel atm. Look at the drastic decline in Americans in IRL recently.

But let's look at the Americans who said no to USF1 right now:

Danica Patrick says no (and good for her imho, although she wouldn't exactly do better in NASCAR...)

Scott Speed says no (struggling in NASCAR barely holding on to his current team)

AJ Allmendinger says no (impressive in ChampCar, but just landed a stable ride in NASCAR...no reason to give that up tbh)

In the rest of the Indy field you have both Marco Andretti and Graham Rahal. Both are a bit too underdeveloped for F1 imho. They still have a lot to learn and polish before they get into Grand Prix racing

Finally, on the outside...you have A1GP's Johnathon Summerton, and NASCAR's Jeff Gordon and Kyle Busch. Summerton wasn't impressive in the A1GP field...a field that saw the likes of Alex Yoong, and Narain Karthikeyan see success. Then you have NASCAR...Kyle Busch is NOT A GOOD DRIVER imho. Way way too haphazard. Jeff Gordon has proven that he can keep an F1 car on track which is a lot more than I can say for a few other previous F1 hopefuls (Sakon Yamamoto, Yuji Ide). But Gordon's old and may not be motivated to get anywhere in F1.

So...when it comes to "americans" there's not exactly much to choose from...unless you want to now start drawing from the endurance/GT field...

But Jean Denis Deletraz won the 24h of Le Mans three times...

Quote from lizardfolk :

Kyle Busch is NOT A GOOD DRIVER imho.

You are out of your mind. He might have a loud mouth, but he can drive a car.

Rahal, 5th in Champ car world series in 2007 (he was only 18).

hes not as good in the ovals but who cares, hes good on the road courses and hes really young, he has huge potential.