Are IndyCar’s two biggest stars wankers?
In qualifying at Barber Motorsports Park for Sunday's IRL race, Duno was more than three seconds slower than the next slowest car in the field of 26. And believe it or not, that was better than her qualifying effort at St. Petersburg, where she was five seconds slower than the rest of the field. (St. Petersburg was where she spun out during the pace laps.)
A Venezuelan, Duno is sponsored by CITGO, which is owned by the Venezuelan government. After racing for Dreyer and Reinbold last year, Duno is now with Dale Coyne Racing, which also fields a car for Alex Lloyd that is sponsored by the Boy Scouts of America.
In no uncertain terms, Duno is a moving chicane, and holds up traffic at some point every race because she's so far off the pace. And if it wasn't for CITGO, she'd probably need press credentials to be on pit row during qualifying. Simply put, her lack of speed is dangerous.
We've debated the merits of starting and parking before, but at least those guys can string together a few laps at a competitive pace. Heck, they have to be competitive just to make the field, whereas in the IRL Duno is guaranteed a starting spot. And very rarely do start and parkers get in the way of the leaders at any point.
What do you think is worse? Would you rather have a full field of Cup cars that ran the whole distance even if a few of them were far off the pace like Duno? Or would you rather keep it the way it is, where the underfunded cars pull off the track after 50 laps?
The IRL needs to do something about Duno before she causes another incident. She got in the way of Graham Rahal at the Indianapolis 500, sending Rahal into the wall, and unless she picks up the pace very soon, she could get — literally — run over at the series' first oval race at Kansas on May 1. Being in the way under 100 mph in the corner on a road or a street course is bad enough. In the way at over 200 mph on an oval is a completely different animal. Yahoo Sports
04/11/10 A reader writes, Dear AutoRacing1.com, I have remained silent on this topic long enough. Looking at the IndyCar results to-date, including qualifying this weekend, Danica Patrick is nothing more than an overhyped wanker of a driver who is a complete backmarker on road courses where talent in required. She does OK on ovals where no talent is required and she has a weight advantage. Anyone can hold the throttle to the floor for 500 miles and let the car do all the work. Even in stock cars – she did OK at Daytona where it is 100% throttle, but when it came to tracks where she had to really drive the car she again was a backmarker.
Sure she is sexy and cute, but darn it this is a sport, not a playboy magazine shoot. Is IndyCar racing a circus or a sport? Send her to NASCAR where she belongs. Mordichai Rosen, Los Angeles
Dear Mordichai, She has the best results of any woman driver so far, and she certainly is better than Milka Duno, though keep your eye on some of the new women coming up, they will give Danica a run for the money. Mark C
Scott M's response: I would like to see Danica really drive the car. Up until St. Pete, Simona deSilvestro had her number and then Danica seemed to find something when she was running for position with Simona, and ended up running quite well. Danica needs to win more, and that will require taking her driving up a notch, especially when turning right. She has the team to do it. It's up to her to validate the hype.