Fast Women: Patrick Makes History

Danica 622

"I was raised to be the fastest driver, not the fastest woman."—Danica Patrick

NASCAR rookie (and the only woman to have won a race in the open-wheel IndyCar series) Danica Patrick has won the pole for next week’s Daytona 500 with a speed of 196.434 mph. This is her first full season racing in NASCAR, although she did ten races with Tony Stewart’s Stewart-Haas team last year to get her used to the powerful fendered cars. Predictably, the Internet heated up with the usual geniuses, reminding everyone who would listen that it’s all about the car. 2012 NASCAR champ Brad Keselowski, in answer to a tweet suggesting that anyone could have driven Danica’s #10 Chevy to the pole, wrote back, "That’s a stretch." Patrick, 30, is circumspect about her new place in history, though. “It goes a long way when Tony Stewart believes in you,” she said in a CNN interview. “It’s very much about the crew and the engine. Those elements have to be in place to go out there and have a chance at the pole. All I can do as a driver is to be smooth, let the car take its head, let it go where it wants to go but with as little distance as possible.”

Role Model

Be that as it may, four-time NASCAR champion Jeff Gordon, who won the outside position on the front row ("I was the fastest guy," he joked) asked Patrick to pose for a photo with his five-year-old daughter, Ella, who reportedly requested the audience. When asked if she understood what her achievement would mean to little girls everywhere, she smiled and said, "I love to break gender barriers. It’s the coolest thing to think that parents and their kids are having that conversation at home. That their parents are saying, ‘You can do anything you want to do. Gender doesn’t matter. It’s your passion that matters.’" All three Stewart-Haas teammates made it into the protected top six grid positions for next Sunday’s 500—Ryan Newman qualified his Chevy fourth and owner Stewart will be starting from fifth spot. Little and big girls everywhere—and more than a few enamored males—will be glued to the tube next weekend to see if Patrick can finish the grueling 500-mile race in front of the boys.
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