Was Danica Vindicated by 17-position Improvement?

Given the booing from qualifying weekend, and the insistence on many fronts that the Indy 500 was a festival of overtaking on the track, then perhaps we need to give Danica Patrick an extended shout out for a huge comeback.

Danica went from being booed when she said "It's not my fault. This car is not good.” after qualifying P23 to to finishing the Indy 500 in P6. So after climbing 17 places in the greatest race in the world we should applaud Danica's extreme skill as a driver, right? Please post your congratulations to Danica below.

One person who won't be giving Danica a big shout out is Danica herself, who told ABC's Jamie Little after the race: "I kept telling the guys on the radio if I got as many guys on the track as you got me in the pits we'd be looking good. It was a little tough to pass. But between the pit stops and the strategy, this is why we were in the top five." (Actually, due some late scoring adjustments based on the last-lap crash, Danica officially finished P6.)

“I’m very happy with the result," Danica said in post-race comments released by the league, "and the reasons we got it were that our pit stops rocked and we had a perfect strategy. We did struggle a little in the early goings. We almost went a lap down. But we were able to get the GoDaddy.com car into the position it should have been in. I focused on making sure I lifted and got a tow from other cars to save fuel as the laps were winding down. I’m really glad that yellow came out at the end because we were cutting it real close on fuel. That’s the roll of the dice, and the team did a perfect job.”

Here's the real reason to give Danica props: honesty.

The team decision to pit out of sequence under yellow at lap 10, combined with a timely yellow later, helped Danica, Sarah Fisher, Graham Rahal, Mario Moraes, Mario Romanacini, Takuma Sato and Alex Lloyd rocket up the the order. Those teams rolled the dice on lap 10 an it came up yahtzee. Plus, according to the official lap chart, Danica later gained at least six spots in the pits during yellow flag stops and was saved from running dry by the last yellow. All of which she publicly acknowledges.

Nothing at all wrong with any of that. That's racing. I suspect Danica's post-race shout outs were aimed a bit at making up for hurling her team under the bus with the "not my fault" comment, but it takes character to stand up in front of TV and give all the props to someone other than yourself. 

It's also interesting to me that back in 2005, when Danica finished fourth and "nearly won" the Indy 500, I thought her finishing position was greatly aided by a late yellow that helped her not run out of fuel. I was critical of her back then for not saying as much, so it's only fair that I deliver the props this time for acknowledging good fortune of a timely yellow.

So was Danica vindicated by her 23rd to 6th drive? No. But her TEAM was vindicated, and Danica appears to agree with both those conclusions.

Comments

[Tom M.]

From where I sit at the 500...she was lustily booed during driver introductions.

But...if you noticed during the post race interview....she actually said..."I apologize". Maybe she gets it now. I just can't believe it took everyone else 5 years to figure out what me and my daughter knew early on.

And...I will say for her to finish where she did was good for her. I give her props on that....but Im not nor will I ever jump on the Danica bandwagon!

[Erik Deckers]

Danica was actually backtracking and apologizing the day after she tried qualifying, especially on the local media. This was just the first time she had everyone's attention to do it.

[pressdog]

Fair enough, Tom. You can respect someone and give him or her credit for something without being a fan or climbing aboard the bandwagon, which is kind of my situation with Danica. I try to be fair to everyone, regardless of if I'm a fan or not.

[Travis R]

I'm not a Danica fan, but I was impressed with her run. Whether it was her driving or the pit stops, that team did a great job to recover from the drama and relatively poor performance earlier in the month. I'm sure most people will want to hang on her "it's not my fault" comment (Stand J was a festival of boos during driver introductions, too), but you gotta give that team credit for a good run.

Matter of fact, Andretti Autosport had some really good charges, with Marco, Tony, and Danica. They didn't qualify all that well, but they did seem to have good cars for race day. If John Andretti and RHR hadn't been caught up in accidents and penalties, they seemed to be having some pretty respectable runs, too.

[pressdog]

I agree, Travis. A good day for Andretti Autosport and they definitely deserve props organization-wide.

[Chad Paff]

Props? No. Just like Alex Lloyd's "run" to the front, it was based mostly on luck and a bunch of others in front of her all day either making bonehead mistakes or running low on fuel late and having to pit (and she would have likely run out had the yellow not come out).

She ran 12th to 25th most of the day. As did Lloyd. Neither had a fast car and neither passed many cars (besides each other) for position. Both realistically had no business sniffing a top 10 finish.

That's how Danica "races". She sits back and hopes to get a good finish by pit strategy and pure racing luck. TK and Marco "raced" their way to the front. She used attrition.

And she can sometimes get a better finish then most because of the equipment she has and the team she has behind her. Plus she has a knack (especially with a bunch of the hacks and boneheads we have in the sport now) for finishing races. Which is probably her best trait.

[pressdog]

I think the point, Chris, is that Danica acknowledged most of what you said (except for calling others bone heads) after the race. Honesty is what I give her props for, as I said in my post, not the P6 finish. This year has been a struggle, but it's hard to argue with her results from last year. P5 in points and P3 at Indy. Hard to fluke it up to P5 and the best non-red car in the overall in the championship.

[Chris]

Perhaps she's finally learned her lesson, and the leopard can change its spots. Time will tell ...

[Titus Pullo]

Does she (and the others) deserve props for illegally passing under a yellow flag?

She ran a pretty decent race..kept out of trouble, didn't do anything foolish, got a little lucky and spread the congratulations around in the post race comments.

[gary p]

She took a pig of a car, kept it out of the wall, kept from tangling with other traffic, worked with the team to improve it little-by-little all race long, hit her marks on every pit stop, and got it to the end. A couple breaks went her way and a couple went against some of her competition. That allowed her to finish better than her pace suggested she should have, but that's all part of Indy. If you can stay on the lead lap, get clean pit stops in the last 200 miles, avoid the usual mayhem in th last 100 miles, and get to the checkered you have shot at a decent finish. It was a very professional drive, IMHO. She may never be a Championship-caliber driver, but she's certainly more than compentent.

[pressdog]

I agree, Gary. And further, I'm not going to give other drivers (Wheldon, other non-big-two drivers) super props for their very similar effort and then diss Danica just because I'm not a fan.

[Ron Thompson]

Danica's ability to bring the car home in one piece has always been her strong point and she did it again. More redemption for the crew than her in my opinion. They passed a lot more cars in the pits than on the track and her staying mistake free had something to do with that.

[Cerberus]

Gary, I agree with you, but we shouldn't need to say that she's more than competent every time she scores a top 5 or top 10. Anybody who has just a bit of racing knowledge should already know that. After all the good results she's had at Indy, or other races in her career, we shouldn't have to remark that for a 6th place finish. It's not this P6 that makes Danica a more than competent driver. She's always been respectable, sometimes even more. She no longer has to prove anything to anybody.

[rj]

"From where I sit at the 500...she was lustily booed during driver introductions."

She got a lot of cheers but there were some boos too at the entrance to turn 3.

At the end of the race when I looked up and saw she was provisionally 5th I said out loud "how the hell did Danica get 5th?"

As far as the "it's not my fault" thing, at the Victory Banquet Monday night, Kanaan was asked about his qualifying crashes by the event MC (sportscaster for one of the Indy TV stations) "was it his fault" and Kanaan replied "I don't want to get into that". Danica came up and she got asked that and playfully flirted with the guy saying "that's in the past".

Speaking of which, see if anyone here can find Hunter-Reay's speech from the Victory Banquet. He had thumb surgery only 2 hours earlier and was still feeling the effects of the drugs in a major way. He commented on it and said everyone where he sat was laughing at him. :) The MC had to remind him to thank Izod. Hunter-Reay, Sato, and Kanaan had good speeches.

Matos and Conway weren't there due to injury.

John Andretti said he hoped Davey (Hamilton) came back next year so he won't be oldest driver. Then Dario in his victory speech said he hoped John and Davey came back next year so he won't be oldest driver.

Scheckter remarked that travelling to Boston him and Hamilton had talked about Scheckter doing sprint cars, so he'd probably lost that opportunity.