Danica already a NASCAR force
A white Chevy Tahoe pulls up in front of Danica Patrick's trailer at 11:45 a.m., 15 minutes before she goes on stage, and Patrick isn't quite sure what to expect. Of course it was crazy on the IndyCar circuit. In the days after her near-win at the Indianapolis 500 five years ago, everybody seemed to have a Danica sighting. She's in the porta-potty by the beer tent! Look, she's jogging in the infield! But this is NASCAR -- bigger cars, bigger flocks -- and Patrick is nervous.
They'll want to know everything about her at this fan meet-and-greet, how her 5-foot-2, 100-pound body adjusts to the pedals and gears; what she had for breakfast, which, by the way, was four egg whites and a bowl of oatmeal with cinnamon. Patrick scurries out of her trailer, into the rain and hops in the backseat of the SUV. Her black ponytail is frizz-proof; her $10 million dollar face is fresh and perfect.
It's a blustery day in Daytona Beach, the kind that adds at least 30 seconds of hyperbole to a weatherman's forecast. But outside an auditorium near the track, a couple of dozen fans are pressed against a gate, drenched and peering into the windows.
"Ohhhh no," Patrick says, "there's people waiting, and they want me to sign."
She's ushered inside, asks five people for a pen and emerges a few minutes later. She signs every autograph. It's the day before Patrick's NASCAR debut, and one thing is clear: The storm is about to get bigger.
Her popularity
Somewhere, the endorsement gods -- forget that, all of NASCAR's execs -- are grinning. Last weekend, Danica Patrick crashed into a wall on Lap 68, giving her a 35th-place finish in the Nationwide Series season opener at Daytona. And an hour later outside the speedway, the lines in front of a trailer with Patrick merchandise were 15 deep. Tough-looking biker dudes waved $100 bills, pointing to black-and-green Danica T-shirts on a wall. Kids and dads patiently waited 20 minutes to secure one little hat with a No. 7 on it. It should be noted that just next door, a trailer with Jimmie Johnson merchandise had roughly one-third of Patrick's foot traffic. Johnson is the four-time reigning Sprint Cup champion.
It's a fascinating phenomenon, Danica Nation, and it's mushrooming at the perfect time for NASCAR, when money is tight and endorsements are hard to come by. Patrick's appeal hits just about every demographic, from casual female fans to hard-core gearheads. Two weekends ago, when she finished sixth in an ARCA race, the telecast drew 87 percent more viewers than the year before.
If she does well in NASCAR, some of the sport's followers say her popularity could soar to the stratosphere of the Derek Jeters and Peyton Mannings of the marketing world -- rare air for a female athlete.
"If she's successful and earns the respect of that whole community, the sky's the limit," says Eric Wright, vice president of research and development at Joyce Julius & Associates Inc., a firm that analyzes the scope of sponsorships across all forms of media. "She's already a marketing phenom right now with very limited success. I think she might rewrite how we look at that sort of thing if she has success on the track.
"I don't know if we've had a female athlete competing in such a male-dominated area like that who has all the marketing things you'd want in a person. She's well-spoken. She's articulate. She's savvy."
Despite all that polish, even Patrick was taken aback by the hysteria last week at Daytona. So were the other drivers. Regan Smith tweeted that "maybe espn could cover danica on espn 2 and the other 50 plus cars on espn classic or somthing." A handful of random onlookers hung near the garage, trying to peek in, occasionally whispering "Is she in there?" When Patrick got caught up in a 12-car wreck that most NASCAR gurus agreed she couldn't have avoided, a gaggle swarmed the wreckage in the garage -- half media, half worried fans.
A short while later, when Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s mangled car was towed into the garage, it generated nary a gawker.
"I just wanted her to finish. I didn't care where she placed," said Danica fan Sherry Messler after the Patrick post-wreck ruckus finally cleared.
"I think she appeals to everybody. I mean, I saw a 60-year-old man wearing her stuff, and then you see a 4-year-old kid wearing her gear. I think everybody likes her because she's not a girl driver. She's just a driver."
...Proving herself under pressure
The sport of racing, St. James says, is tough and fickle. There's little loyalty and constant scrutiny. Deals come together and fizzle, contracts are made and broken. Patrick won't be able to prove herself with one Top 5 finish. "She's going to have to earn it again and again," St. James says. "You're evaluated every race. It's the way the sport is."
The thing is, she isn't expected to be an instant NASCAR success. The leap from open-wheel is big enough that only a handful of drivers, including Juan Pablo Montoya, have fully mastered it. But her NASCAR brethren have, for the most part, accepted her, even if it's meant taking a backseat in the headlines.
Joyce Julius & Associates crunched the numbers on Patrick's ARCA race and found that her name was mentioned 25 more times than the winning driver.
It leads to more eyes on Patrick, and, inevitably, more pressure.
"There are so many popular, talented and well-followed drivers in the series," Patrick says, "that it is amazing to have such attention. But I also feel pretty lucky for that, too.
"I guess I would hope that [some day] people would look back and say, 'Wow, she was a talented driver, a great driver.' And beyond that, I hope that there will be things they remember me for that aren't about racing that I do after I'm done or while I'm still here racing. I don't know what those things are yet. I hope that there's something beyond just racing." ...