Following Wednesday’s practice session at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Danica Patrick made her opinion very clear when asked to compare driving a NASCAR stock car vs. an Indy car.
“All the IndyCar fans out there might find this warm and fuzzy, but everyone would always ask me if I had a hard time driving those big old stock cars and if they were really physical, and I’m like (she snickers), ‘No, they are way easier than an Indy car to drive.’”
Patrick also said driving an Indy car is more of a finite exercise, where attention must be paid to everything more closely than in a stock car, all the way down to the safety belts.
“Maybe this isn’t a popular thing to say but you didn’t have to run the belts all that tight in a stock car,” she said. “You didn’t have to worry about your helmet or the padding that much (in NASCAR). It was all just like fine.
“But in an Indy car, it’s all critical.”
I miss that relevancy of being in the game and being someone like before the race, where they’re like, ‘Who do you think is going to win today?’ My name did not pop in NASCAR, you know?
Patrick’s comments echo those of NASCAR driver Kurt Busch following his first practice sessions while preparing for the 2014 Indianapolis 500.
“With a Cup car, we have to lift – not necessarily get on the brakes, but at least know they’re there – and settle the car down before you turn in,” Busch said. “This, you’re driving down the middle of the straightaway, then you swerve wide to gain that nice arc into the corner – and there’s no deceleration rate.”
It’s clear Patrick still holds a strong affinity to IndyCar racing. It’s where she first made a name for herself. It’s also where she won a race, while her best career finish in a NASCAR Cup race was sixth.
And it will be in an Indy car that Patrick will compete in the last race of any type in her career, the 102nd running of the Indianapolis 500 on May 27.
“I remember watching the Indy 500 the first year I wasn’t in it and I missed it,” Patrick said. “I miss that relevancy of being in the game and being someone like before the race, where they’re like, ‘Who do you think is going to win today?’ My name did not pop in NASCAR, you know?
“I missed being relevant. So I’m going to try and achieve that here this month. It’s going to be hard because everybody is really good.”
As she prepares for the opening of practice for the 500 on May 15, Patrick isn’t just thinking about winning the race, she’s also soaking in all the atmosphere and legacy of Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
“It always feels like home here at Indy,” she said. “The track feels so familiar, everything like from the walk to pit lane. I’m just waiting for the alley cats to show up, basically.”
Check out the following tweet to hear more of what Patrick had to say.
After two days of practice, Patrick is consistently up to 220 mph in laps around the 2.5-mile IMS oval. It doesn’t look like she’s lost much from her previous IndyCar tenure.
When her comments about NASCAR and IndyCar first hit social media, battle lines between fans of each genre of motorsport were quickly drawn.
One tweet in particular, however, helped make more precise what Patrick said, leading the Illinois native to respond in kind by saying simply, “thank you.
It was not the first time it has been done, but a rider winning in his Motocross debut is rare as the results show Jett Lawrence swept the motos at Fox Raceway in Pala, California and took the early points lead.Dylan Ferrandis may not be quite 100 percent yet, but he was good enough to finish on the podium at Fox Raceway – Align Media
Lawrence became the 16th rider to win in his Motocross debut and was the 10th rider to do so in the season opener, At 19, he wasn’t the youngest to perform the feat; Rick Johnson was 17 in 1982 when he won the lidlifter at Hangtown, the site of next week’s race, but Lawrence’s inaugural win bodes well. The last time a rider performed this feat, Dylan Ferrandis went on to win the 2021 Motocross championship as a rookie in 2021.
Ferrandis did not sweep the motos that season while Lawrence’s performance on Saturday was perfect. He paced both practice sessions, earned the holeshot in each race and finished first in both motos after leading every lap to score maximum points. Lawrence started the weekend needing 85 points to climb into 20th in the combined SuperMotocross standings for the 450 class. Earning 50 with his perfect Motocross results at Fox Raceway, he is nearly 60 percent of the way to his goal.
Chase Sexton was second across the board. He qualified in the second position and finished 2-2 in his motos. In the first race, he was a relatively distant runner-up behind Lawrence, crossing the finish line a little more than 10 seconds ahead. He got a great start in Moto 2 and pushed Lawrence for the entire race, never getting further back than three seconds. He tried to pressure Lawrence into making a mistake, but both riders hardly put a wheel wrong and they finished within a second of one another.
Returning from a concussion suffered in the Houston Supercross race earlier this season and exacerbated at Daytona, Ferrandis finished third in both motos to take third overall. His most important task at hand this week was to avoid trouble and start the Motocross season healthy at Fox Raceway so he can begin to accumulate strong results and move up in SuperMotocross points.
Ferrandis entered this round 25th in the standings and left Pala in 19th. With that position, he has an automatic invitation to the feature starting grid in the SuperMotocross World Championship as long as he does not fall back.
Aaron Plessinger and Cooper Webb both ended the race with 34 points, but Plessinger had the tiebreaker with a better finish in the second race. Notably, both riders sustained injury sometime during the season, but Plessinger had an advantage by coming back a week sooner in Salt Lak City for the Supercross finale. He finished second in that race.
Webb was cleared late in the week by doctors after being on concussion protocol from a vicious strike to his helmet in a Nashville Supercross heat race late in the season. He made a beeline to the track to run the Motocross opener. After missing last year’s outdoor season, he wanted to make certain that did not happen again. He still has a solid opportunity to catch Sexton for the No. 1 overall seed in the SuperMotocross standings., but he will need to make up 78 points.
For the first time in history, Pro Motocross results from Fox Raceway show brothers as winners on the same day.
Battling a rib injury suffered practicing earlier in the week, Hunter Lawrence got a poor start to Moto 1 and had to overcome his 10th-place standing at the end of Lap 1. He methodically worked his way toward the front but might have settled for a position off the podium if not for heavy traffic in the closing laps. Lawrence was able to get through the field quicker than Justin Cooper and Jo Shimoda to finish third.
Hunter Lawrence overcame sore ribs to score the overall 250 win at Fox Raceway – Align Media
Lawrence’s second moto was much stronger. He earned the holeshot and led all 15 laps of the race to win by a more than eight seconds.
Haiden Deegan didn’t feel any pressure heading into this round. No one expected much in his third Motocross National and he would have been happy with anything in the top five. At least that’s what he said in the post-race news conference. Deegan said similar things after finishing fourth in his first Supercross race this season. In a stacked field of 40 riders at Fox Raceway, “Danger Boy” finished sixth in Moto 1 and second in Moto 2 for the second-place finish overall.
In only his third Pro Motocross National, Haiden Deegan finished second overall. – Align Media
RJ Hampshire had an eventful weekend. He dominated Moto 1 and won by a healthy margin, making a statement about how he will race now that Jett Lawrence is no longer in the field. He was a victim of mayhem in Turn 2 of Moto 2, which forced him to the ground. Another crash on an uphill portion of the track later that same lap put him in 39th. Hampshire salvaged as many points as he could and finished 11th in the second race to stand on the final box of the podium.
Tom Vialle came within a lap of scoring his first career podium. He had the position based on a tiebreaker over Justin Cooper and Maximus Vohland until Hampshire passed two riders on the final lap and earned one point more than that threesome. Instead, Vialle settled for his first podium in an individual moto with a 7-3 in the two races. More accustomed to this style of racing, Vialle will be a factor in the coming rounds.
Cooper finished with a 5-4 in the two motos to sweep the top five and take fourth-place overall. Cooper started five rounds in the 450 class in Supercross this season and none on a 250, so he is starting with zero points in the SuperMotocross seeding, but with runs like this it won’t take long to make up the 89 he needs to climb to 20th.
One of the best performances of the weekend was put in by Vohland. He finished second in Moto 1 and had to withstand pressure from Lawrence in the closing lap. A poor start of 16th in the second race forced him to play catchup and he could only climb to ninth at the checkers.
