A Spiffy Week for Women of pressdog®

Last week was pretty big for many of the Women of pressdog®, a cadre of females associated with open-wheel racing that I have decided (quite subjectively) demonstrate independence, intelligence and that special schwerve of personality, humor, playfulness and edge. View the roster and read the latest interview with each HERE.

I have a lot of fun with the wopd (for short). It's a natural outgrowth of my fandom for Sarah Fisher, the original Woman of pressdog. Way back in 2001, news stories of Sarah passing Eliseo Salazar to finish P2 at Homestead brought my attention back to IndyCar for the first time in nearly 20 years. As the father of two daughters, I was fascinated by the women-in-a-man's sport nature of Sarah's story, and as I learned more about her she seemed to be the ideal role model for my daughters.

Since then I've been on the lookout for women who fit the wopd description and, once a live interview is done (by phone or in person), said woman is a Woman of pressdog. Just a fun thing. I enjoy following the careers of these women.

ANYWAY, last week was a MONSTER for many wopd. Cue the recap ..

Sarah Fisher -- (@SarahFiser) the original! Landed a full-year engine deal with Honda after a week of angst, chagrin and yelling. A combination of many many factors created an engine shortage and a musical-chairs-like situation where Sarah's team ended up with no engine. Read about her deal announced Friday here. Sarah credited fan support and Bobby Rahal, who released his claim on the engine Sarah then received, for making the deal happen. Said Sarah in a news release:

"We couldn’t have done it without the support of our loyal fans, who mobilized on our behalf through email, social media, texting and phone calls. Their voices were heard."

To be sure, I was one of the loudest yellers with posts here, here and here. Would Sarah have gotten an engine deal without the fan outcry? Not according to her comments above. Some would argue shew as just being kind to fans and it would have happened anyway. Perhaps, but screams from the customers never hurt the cause. And, as customers, fans should always make their wishes known to the product maker. That's just business, and part of American free enterprise.

Leilani Münter -- (@LeilaniMunter) The unapologetic eco warrior, Leilani's fans donated enough money to put her on the track for last Saturday's ARCA race in a striking, blue car sponsored by the COVE documentary. The race also fell on Leilani's birthday. Read her note to fans here. Leilani's passion for the environment, conservation and preservation is incredible so I was thrilled that she got to combine her two loves -- racing and eco activism -- at Daytona.

Her car blew a tire early on in the race, which turned out to be a blessing in disguise since closeups of her car and her in-car camera got her cause MONSTER air. She saved the car, limped into the pits and managed to get back on the lead lap, but ignition problems later in the race caused Leilani to finish P36.

Lindy Thackston -- (@LindyThackston) A pit reporter for Versus covering IndyCar for three years, Lindy was "let go" after last season. She got the word in November, and it became public in February.

That led to much angst among fans, but it also got the attention of new IndyCar big dog sponsor Fuzzy's Vodka. Fuzzy's needed an at-the-track and social media rep (follow @FuzzysVodka and @ECRIndy) and Lindy was perfect. Door closed, window opened. Lindy landed the gig earlier in the week and is geeked. Read her thoughts on the issue HERE.

Danica Patrick -- (@DanicaPatrick) Danica Danica Danica. Just when you think Danica is as big as she can get, she GETS BIGGER. I don't need to recap all the Danica stories -- the links alone would consume miles of space -- but she certainly gave her fans (including me) a thrill Friday by winning the POLE for the NASCAR Nationwide race at noon Eastern today. (Story.) Twitter exploded. Fans crowed, haters looked for a dark lining inside the silver cloud. It's difficult for someone focused on racing -- who is aware of the many other racers and many other aspects of racing -- to understand just how enormous Danica Patrick is.

I've been doing this blog for seven years, and my friends and family are well aware I am into racing. Who do they ask me about all the time? You know who. My wife, who has NEVER watched a Nationwide race EVER, is going to watch at least some of it with me today, because Danica is on the pole. She. Is. Huge.

And, I'm telling you, she's a very level-headed person. No more ego-driven than any other driver, and less so than many. I have interviewed her twice (in May 2010 and February 2012), and talked to at the track very briefly a dozen more times, and I get no whiff of the princessy attitude on which she is impaled by critics. Danica is no Mother Teresa, but she's no Ice Princess Bitch either, and I'm happy to see anyone rise up and smack the haters.

Finally, nobody I know could do as well as she does given the insanely intense microscope Danica lives under. Every word is parsed and analyzed; people pour over video of her like the Warren Commission studying the Zapruder Film. When she crashed Thursday ... DID SHE PUT HER HANDS OVER HER EYES, or merely up by her face. Debate raged. Seriously? She thanked NASCAR for the SAFER barrier at Daytona. WAS THAT A SLAP AT INDYCAR? (Tony George and the University of Nebraska led the development of SAFER). For people who hate the coverage of Danica, they sure do examine everything she does at the molecular level.

Make no mistake, Danica is not complaining about the attention. Far from it. Her take on unfair or over-the-top critics were very intersting HERE. She says hate on if you must because, as Danica says, the more hate the more love, and buzz is buzz.

Maryeve Dufault -- (@MaryeveDufault) A small victory for Maryeve (pronounced Mary-ev) who gained about 500 twitter followers (@MaryeveDufault) Friday. It seems Maryeve be among the legions looking for funding to get back on the track. Ironically, Leilani drove Maryeve's old car at Daytona. Maryeve could have drove the Tony Marks Racing second car if they could have found sponsorship, but no.

Maryeve is a very interesting woman who embraces the fact that people want to pay her to pose in bikinis and un-apologetically uses that awareness and revenue stream to finance racing. (Story here.) For her it's almost like if you were good at accounting, you do accounting to finance your true love: racing. The thing is, she's very non-glamorous at the track. Don't get me wrong, she's an attractive woman, but she does not work it at the track by any means. This is a woman who can turn it up and down when she wants to.

Katherine Legge -- (@KatherineLegge) Finally got to drive the new IndyCar Thursday and Friday in testing. It's been a long road for Katherine from Atlantics, to the Road America catch fence in Champ Car, through DTM, back to the U.S. and now into a car thanks to TrueCar.com. Details of her new team, Dragon Racing, are still a bit unclear, but so far so good.

Overall, a good week for many Women of pressdog, but others like Pippa Mann (@PippaMann) are still looking for a ride, and time is getting short. Here's hoping I can write celebratory news about Pip very soon.

Comments

[redcar]

Knew Daniker would get publicity with Nascar but damn, she's everywhere.

I wish her well though, and can't wait until she develops her southern drawl.

[GeorgeK]

No Danica on pole for NNS race today posting???

1 in the last 30 pole sitters have won this race, I sincerely hope she can become 2 in 31. Someone else broke the mold, so can she.

[pressdog]

I mentioned Danica's pole above, GeorgeK and put up a link ...

[Holly]

Your mention of Sarah passing Eliseo at Homestead back in 2001 (has it been that long? Wow.) brought a smile to my face. Remember that AJ got mad and said to Salazar over the radio "you just got passed by a GIRL!"?

[GeorgeK]

DOH, I saw the same Danica/Terminator movie pic you used in your earlier posting and ASS-umed it was about the same subject matter.

I'll READ next time as opposed to ASS-uming :)

[Jeff H]

I am not at all surprised by the level of publicity Danica is getting at NASCAR, because it really feels like 2005 all over again, albeit with the elevated interest level of NASCAR fans. The vast majority of NASCAR fans have zero knowledge of what goes on in the IndyCar series, so they assume that she was one of the "top guns" in that series for many years, and they consider her a "rookie" now. The difference is that unlike 2005, Danica Patrick enters NASCAR in 2012 as an independently famous celebrity, because of her years of plugging GoDaddy and anything else she could get her name on.

This will burn out, just like it did with IndyCar. Even the ABC broadcasts of Indy in the later years were bored with the Danica angle. She will get routinely lost in the shuffle of 30-40 driver fields and collected in wrecks. For those who are interested because they think she's super attractive (I don't, really), that's great, but after awhile, there becomes a sense of "what do you DO with that?" These are race car drivers covered in firesuits from head to toe, and then encased in a HANS device and roll cage. Her only real opportunity to use her attractiveness and bond with the fans is in the sweaty interviews after she wrecks, and unfortunately, it was the way she came across in front of the camera time after time that made thousands of would-be Indy fans say "Forget this, I'm out."

[Diana claussen]

Thank you for recognizing and promoting the ladies!
-www. AutoGoddess.com