Raise your hand and scream if you've had it with Danicamania.

Raise both hands and scream like a little girl, if you must.

“

I would be very prepared to start small and grow and really learn the cars. So if it were to happen, I would be open to all suggestions.

”

-- DANICA PATRICK

For someone who has won exactly one race in her five-year IndyCar career, Danica Patrick sure knows how to keep herself in the news -- even when she's not really making news. Not to be mean or anything, but she's sort of like the Paris Hilton of racing: famous for being famous.

Patrick announced Monday that she had agreed to a multi-year contract to continue driving full-time in the IndyCar Series for Andretti Autosport. On Tuesday, Patrick participated in a media conference call along with team owner Michael Andretti, who confirmed that he has signed the world's most notable female driver for the next two years, with "a mutual option" for a third.

That doesn't mean Patrick is done flirting with NASCAR. On the contrary, she said she still hopes to get something done -- presumably with JR Motorsports, if previous reports are to be believed -- where she could run some ARCA and eventually Nationwide Series races by next season.

"I think we still have time," Patrick said Tuesday. "Even if things go until the last minute, there is still a little bit of time left."

Praise the Lord! There is still time left to waste more of NASCAR's precious -- and incredibly brief -- offseason remaining on The Danica Watch.

Um, no thanks. Call me when you've signed with someone. Officially. Otherwise, have a Merry Christmas and get back to me in 2010.

Who's to blame?

In some ways, you can't blame Patrick for all this annoying Danicamania. After all, this is America -- and all she has done the past several years to embed herself into the country's consciousness is relentlessly market herself at every opportunity.

And she is indeed coming off, for her, a successful IndyCar season. She didn't win a race, but she did finish third in the Indianapolis 500 and fifth in the series points standings.

She desperately wants to be taken seriously as a race-car driver, and should be, to a degree. But she can't push the sex symbol image full throttle at the same time and not expect some backlash from those who see her as wanting it both ways as she cashes enormous checks from both sides.

The bottom line is that she has not yet mastered the IndyCar Series. In 81 career races in five seasons, she has one win, three poles, 16 top-fives and 46 top-10s. Keep in mind that a top-10 finish in a Cup race is a whole lot more difficult to accomplish than it is in IndyCar, where the fields are smaller and the teams who actually are competitive week in and week out are few by comparison.

She desperately wants to be taken seriously as a race-car driver, and should be, to a degree. But she can't push the sex symbol image full throttle at the same time and not expect some backlash from those who see her as wanting it both ways as she cashes enormous checks from both sides.

While this resume is better than some who have dabbled in NASCAR, it's a lot thinner than others who have attempted to go all-in on the NASCAR side after considerable open-wheel success and struggled mightily.

Let's take reigning IndyCar champion Dario Franchitti and three-time former IndyCar champ Sam Hornish Jr. as examples. The immensely likeable Franchitti gave NASCAR a shot two years ago -- and in fairness to him, it wasn't much of one. Car owner Chip Ganassi ran out of funding for his car just 10 races into the season.

In 13 seasons of competing in two open-wheel series, Franchitti has made 198 starts and has 23 wins, 23 poles, 81 top-fives and 119 top-10 finishes. Guess how that translated to NASCAR? His top Cup finish was 22nd; he finished 32nd or worse in each of his other nine starts.

Oh, and as a side note: Franchitti has in his career led nearly 3,000 laps on the open-wheel side. He led exactly one in NASCAR two years ago. Based on that, what can be expected of Patrick -- who has in five IndyCar seasons led a grand total of 110 laps?

Hornish is still hanging on by a thread in NASCAR, but after 19 wins and three championships in 116 starts in eight seasons in the IndyCar Series, he has yet to come close to winning a Cup race while finishing 35th and 28th in points in his two full seasons. In 72 Cup races, he has managed just two top-five finishes and seven top-10s.

The facts

Those are the hard facts. Yes, some other open-wheelers have successfully made the transition. But they've usually done it after doing a whole lot more on the open-wheel side than Ms. Patrick.

Patrick made it clear Tuesday that competing full-time and giving the Andretti Autosport team the very best that she can will be top priority next season. She said "ideally" she would like to run some stock-car races only before or after the shorter IndyCar season is concluded.

"As I've said, I've made no mystery [of the fact] that I'm curious about NASCAR and that I would like to do it," Patrick said. "If I would have the chance to run in both series and challenge myself, I would like to do that."

Her approach in this regard is commendable. She spent a good bit of the summer talking with folks in NASCAR about what it might take to learn how to drive the heavier stock cars -- and insisted Tuesday that she will be willing to learn on the slow curve, if that appears necessary.

"In all of the talks over the summer, in meeting with people, there was a lot of emphasis on learning," Patrick said. "So I would be very prepared to start small and grow and really learn the cars. So if it were to happen, I would be open to all suggestions.

"We've been working on this and talking to people since the summer. We are serious about it. Whether or not things come together, we don't know. There is no contract and no deal right now -- but as I've said, if I could do both, I would love to do both."

She also explained why so much flirtation with NASCAR, even as she was finalizing the latest deal with Andretti Autosport.

"It's come up in the past to run NASCAR, and my heart really wasn't there. I didn't want to at all. I wasn't really curious -- and trust me, there were financial reasons why it would have been a much better idea," Patrick said. "So you can take that right out of the equation. I've always said the most important thing for me and my career is that I go with my gut and I go with what I want, and I don't worry about the rest.

"So now my curiosity is there, and I'd like to just try it. I'd like to see how I get on with the cars, and I think the racing looks fun. I enjoy IndyCar racing through and through -- but I mostly enjoy the oval racing. I think when you have wheel-to-wheel racing all day, it's challenging -- and don't get me wrong, it's very stressful -- but it's a lot of fun at the same time. And they have a lot of that [in NASCAR]. So I think the racing looks fun."

There is little doubt that she'll have fun, fun, fun until sponsor GoDaddy takes the car away, no matter what series she is running. There also is no doubt that NASCAR would welcome her as a marketing force sooner rather than later, and therefore give her a longer leash than other competitors of a different makeup who may or may not have as much or more driving talent.

But if she or anyone else expects her to come in and take NASCAR immediately by storm when and if she does dip her painted toes into stock-car waters, they'd better think again.

Her best bet is to spend these next two or three years firming up her open-wheel resume. Then all this fuss about Danicamania and NASCAR might finally start to make some sense.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.

Joe Menzer is the author of "The Great American Gamble: How the 1979 Daytona 500 Gave Birth to a NASCAR Nation." Click here to purchase.

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