So maybe this is it, for Danica Patrick. Her primary sponsor bailed on her this summer, either breaching a contract (Stewart-Haas Racing's version) or not (the sponsor's version). SHR hasn't been able scare up another for her. And so she's out of a ride in another couple months.
What that says is her star has faded as a monster seller of product. What it also says is even monster sellers of product find racing at NASCAR's level a hard dollar these days, given the way NASCAR's own star has faded.
Racing costs money. And if sponsors are required to pony up the kind of money it costs to do it right, they want a return on the investment. They're not getting it with NASCAR anymore, at least the way they used to.
That's why the last primary sponsor for Danica Patrick, one-time monster seller of product, was Nature's Bakery, a purveyor of fig-based baked goods. It's why you'll find furniture stores and local law offices and even the Delaware Office of Traffic Safety among the sponsors these days. The title sponsor for the entire series, in fact, is an energy drink.
Which is a far cry from the days when it was wireless telecommunications giants and the like.
And so Patrick is the victim of market forces that extend far beyond her, and, like so many others, she's on the outside looking in. At 35, she does not seem especially dismayed by that. She's having her worst year, points-wise, since moving to NASCAR in 2008. And she's hinted that, if the only opportunity out there is some back-marker cheesebox, she'd rather move on to other pursuits.
"I just want to do what feels right and what will give me the best chance -- if I'm racing, will give me the best chance to perform and get in the winner's circle, which is what I want to accomplish in NASCAR," she told ESPN the other day. "Or if I don't feel like that's something that will be possible, then I'm OK with that, too."
And if that happens?
You can say this about her in all fairness: She never got the hang of driving stock cars at the highest level.
You can also say this: And that makes her no better or worse than the likes of Sam Hornish Jr. or Dario Franchitti, a couple of other IndyCar refugees who never got the hang of driving stock cars, either.
That some would point out the former without also acknowledging the latter is purely sexist, of course, but it's also recognition that Patrick's drawing power as a marketing gold mine has provided her opportunities drivers with her resume don't often get. Her gender has been a double-edged sword in that regard; if it was sexism that held her to a different standard than similar male drivers (and subjected her to at times unfair criticism as a result), it was also sexism that motivated sponsors to throw money at her.
She was, after all, not just a woman in a male-dominated sport. She was an attractive woman in a male-dominated sport.
The hell of it was, all of that sometimes obscured the fact she was a damn good race driver, not to mention a pioneer who built on the work of other pioneers. She remains the only woman in history to win an IndyCar race, and the only woman in history to win a NASCAR Cup pole (for the Daytona 500, no less). Her record at the Indianapolis 500 -- six top ten finishes and five top ten starts in seven races -- is unmatched not just by any other woman in the race's history, but by many male drivers as well.
She's the first woman ever to lead both the Daytona 500 and the Coca-Cola 600. The first woman to lead a Cup Series race under green. Her seven top tens and 64 laps led in Cup races are the most for any woman in history.
Maybe you can't appreciate all that unless you were there at its birth moment, the 2005 Indianapolis 500. When Patrick, a rookie that year, went to the front late -- and was still in front with 10 laps to go -- a roar went up to the sky unlike any those of us who'd been around Indy for decades had ever heard. And there was this oh-my-God buzz in the pressbox that's rarely been matched, either.
Part of it was the realization we were watching history break out right in front to us. And part of it, of course, was Holy crap, how am I going to write THIS?
In any event, Danica Mania was born that day, for better or worse. That it clearly outran its expiration date does nothing to diminish its impact.
Or hers.
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