Danica Patrick’s first three NASCAR Nationwide races weren’t exactly memorable, other than the publicity they garnered.

She placed 35th after wrecking at Daytona; she was not competitive and finished 31st, three laps down, at Fontana, Calif.; and she was 36th after wrecking Sunday at Las Vegas.

Patrick now will step away from NASCAR for a while, returning to her primary ride in the Indy Racing League.

She’ll be back in a stock car for the June 26 Nationwide race at New Hampshire.A few thoughts:

1. I think Patrick is a capable race driver. I realize she’s only won one IndyCar race, on fuel mileage — although that shouldn’t lessen the impact of her victory; fuel mileage wins have happened many times in NASCAR, and I don’t recall anybody telling those drivers they didn’t earn the victory — but she’s done enough on the track so that an objective observer must admit she has skills.
2. I actually think she might be more suited for stock cars than for open-wheelers, if she were to go to stock cars full time and learn her trade. At Daytona, she was a strong sixth in the ARCA race and was moving up in the Nationwide race before getting caught up in a wreck. (Daytona is much more of a test of a driver’s ability than the other big track, Talladega. Once, at Talladega, Darrell Waltrip told a group of media members the track is so easy to drive he could train any of them to drive around it at speed in a few hours’ time — with no one else on the track, of course.)
3. The problem is, Patrick never is going to learn how to drive stock cars well without making a full-time commitment to them. She’ll never learn the cars (and what it takes to make them competitive), the language or the tracks otherwise. I think not knowing those factors really hurt her at Fontana and Las Vegas. I’ve never been one to say one type of racing is better than the others. I’ve always liked all kinds of racing, viewing them as apples, oranges and strawberries — different, but equally tasty. I miss the way it was in the 1960s and ’70s when NASCAR and Indy drivers could go back and forth between series and be competitive in each, but those days are gone. To do justice to either type of racing, to do it right, a driver must make a commitment to one or the other. Tony Stewart, Sam Hornish Jr., Juan Pablo Montoya and Scott Speed chose NASCAR, and Patrick will have to as well if she’s serious about racing stock cars.
4. A lot of NASCAR fans have griped on message boards, etc., about the attention and publicity Patrick has received, when she’s not done much on the track. My response: “What did you expect when you’ve got a female driver with a victory on her resume trying stock cars and making her debut on NASCAR’s biggest weekend of the year with NASCAR’s most popular driver (Dale Earnhardt Jr.) as her car owner?” The spotlight on Patrick is totally in line with NASCAR’s six-decade history of being more about “the show” than anything else. Plus I’ll guarantee you, the folks in NASCAR’s offices in Daytona Beach are luxuriating in the attention and publicity Patrick has brought them, especially since business has been slacking off.
5. How does this end? Patrick will follow the money, of course, whether it’s to NASCAR or to stay in Indy cars.