Danica Patrick plans to take a more aggressive approach in her first full season of Nationwide Series competition. She’s more comfortable in the cars. She knows most of the tracks. This is her time to learn just how hard she must push the car to run it on the brink she will need to compete against the top drivers in the Nationwide Series as well as those in Sprint Cup.
Patrick, who spent the last two seasons continuing her full-time IndyCar schedule while also running a part-time Nationwide slate, will turn her entire focus on NASCAR starting this season.
“I’m going into this season with a little bit more of a ‘I’m going to do it attitude,’” Patrick said Saturday after unveiling a special paint scheme for the St. Patrick’s Day Nationwide race at Bristol. “I’ve got a lot to learn, and I know that.
“I’m going to make lots of mistakes I’m sure and there are going to be a lot of things I’m going to learn to do better. But I’m mentally wrapping my head around not just learning but being successful and running well and getting to victory lane and thinking about that so my thoughts translate to the real world and really happen.”
Having set a standard for a female driver in a NASCAR national series with her fourth-place finish at Las Vegas last March, Patrick will run a full Nationwide slate for JR Motorsports while competing in 10 Cup races for Stewart-Haas Racing with an eye on full-time Cup competition in 2013 with SHR. She will leave behind her IndyCar career that included a historic victory and several solid runs in the Indianapolis 500.
“There’s still going to be moments for sure where I’m going to be patient and I’m probably am not going to go all the way, but I’m getting more comfortable around the drivers,” Patrick said. “I didn’t want to come in and start pushing my way around because that’s not my style.
“Now I’ve been here for a little while, I feel more comfortable with the style of racing, when you can push and when you can’t push. Ultimately, just having a bigger comfort zone with the car is going to give me the ability to push harder and put the car on the track wherever I want and do more with it.”
After an average finish of 28th in her first partial Nationwide season and 17th in her second, Patrick appears more confident. Her first Cup race will be the Daytona 500 and she won’t back in Cup until Darlington in May.
One of the intriguing questions is if she would attempt a non-companion double the week following Darlington, where the Nationwide race is at Iowa on the day after the Sprint All-Star Race. By running in the Daytona 500, she’ll be eligible for the Sprint Showdown and the fan vote to get into the all-star race.
“That’s not even entered my mind – I don’t think I’m an all-star in Cup yet,” said Patrick who didn’t seem all that familiar with the fan vote process. “I suppose brighter minds will think about that one. I go where the schedule tells me right now.
“I don’t own my own private jet so I think I’ll probably be in Iowa [only] at this point.”Tony Eury Jr., her Nationwide crew chief and co-owner at JRM, isn’t sure that running the all-star race would be a good idea.
“When she does go do that race, she’s going to want to be competitive,” he said. “She’d be in the car one time [after Daytona] before that race. So I think she’d need more experience in a Cup car before we go throwing her in an all-star race like that.
“I would tell her to concentrate on Nationwide [that weekend].”Eury Jr. described this as a learning year for Patrick, and his goal is to have her in the top 10 in points after 10 races, and that should put her in position to vie for the title. He also believes that as she said, she will be more aggressive.
“Being more aggressive is just a sign of being more comfortable,” Eury Jr. said. “She’s [gone] to a lot of these tracks. Before, she wasn’t running for points. She was more, ‘Hey, I’m coming here running 13 races [a season], I’m going to make sure I don’t create enemies, I don’t get in anybody’s way and I want to be competitive.’
“This year, she’s here for the reason to win the championship so she’s not going to be that person that kind of lays over.”Patrick has known for a year that she would run NASCAR full time in 2012. Her IndyCar owner, Michael Andretti, said last week that Patrick had to let him know in January 2011 whether she would return to the team in 2012.
“It was just part of my contract – it was just the date I had to tell them what my decision was,” Patrick said. “That’s just a contractual thing. There are lots of contractual things that go on behind the scenes with drivers and teams.
“At the end of the day, we had a lot of good times and a lot of success. We won together and I’ll never forget that. But that was just a contractual obligation I had to do. I was pretty sure the NASCAR thing was going to work one way or another.”