Between Graham Rahal’s and Patrick’s recent victories, Indy-car racing finally has some storylines to rival NASCAR. If Marco Andretti, Rahal and Patrick remain in the IRL, win races and contend for championships, open wheel can get back on this country’s sports pages with the mainstream media.
Indeed, the word here is relevance. I'll never be a huge Danica fan, but even those of us who feel that way realize that along with Graham and Marco, she could HELP, for a time, bring relevance to the sport. That's no small thing.
I don’t want to hear the anti-Danica faction moaning that she won a fuel mileage race. Ryan Newman did it about eight times a few years back, Jimmie Johnson a couple weeks ago and Tony Kanaan a year ago at Motegi,
True. Again, was it somewhat flukey? Sure, but some wins are. That does NOT make them any less legitimate. This post by Miles Nelson at TF is pretty solid.
Look, I'm going to get sick of DanicaMania 2.0. But to deny the short-term positive it is giving to the sport is to deny reality. And positives have been hard to come by for IndyCar racing. I only hope that the series doesn't just promote Danica.
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