It doesn’t get better than this for the Nationwide Series. A league that has become Cup Lite, a glorified practice session for Cup drivers, now becomes Patrick’s testing ground for the events she enters. It’s all part of a master plan. She will make her stock car debut in the ARCA race at Daytona on Feb. 6, the day before she appears in two GoDaddy.com commercials during the Super Bowl. GoDaddy.com CEO Bob Parsons is investing millions here, including the two-year deal to sponsor the #5 Cup car of Mark Martin. The plan is obvious. Martin drives two more years, then hands over the 5 car to Patrick in 2012. “Just thinking about that makes my eyes twinkle,” Parsons said Tuesday. “But we’ll see how it goes and look at it when we get to that point.” If Patrick flops in Nationwide, that point never may arrive. If she is competitive, NASCAR will have a cash cow for years to come. If not, NASCAR got a giant jolt of electricity from Patrick’s presence, however brief.(ESPN.com)
AND: Danica Patrick is going Nationwide Series racing next year, and there really is only one main reason people go Nationwide Series racing – to get ready to go Sprint Cup racing. But for both the Izod IndyCar Series driver and for JR Motorsports, the team she will drive for, that’s talk for down the road, and the first step is to be successful over the next two seasons with Patrick running a partial Nationwide Series schedule along with a full IndyCar schedule. Her number of Nationwide races was not announced Tuesday when Patrick’s plans were formally announced, but it likely will be a dozen or fewer each year because of the IndyCar schedule, which has 17 races in 2010. Whether 20-30 races over two years would be enough to get her ready for a Cup schedule is questionable as Patrick – a 27-year-old with one career victory and a fifth-place finish in the IndyCar Series last year – embarks on her NASCAR career. JR Motorsports, which opened in 2005, has not competed on the Cup level but has flirted with the possibility for the last few years. If Patrick does well, the sponsorship could come for the organization to make the jump with her.(SceneDaily)(12-8-2009)
