Amid the feeding frenzy, Danica disconnect emerges

DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- At 10:30 Saturday morning, as final practice for the Daytona 500 was just beginning, the people assembled around Danica Patrick's merchandise hauler were too numerous to count. What had to be close to 100 race fans crowded in to buy souvenirs, have their photos taken next to the driver's picture, or just debate whether or not she would make it. The truck was flanked on either side by those of legends past and present -- Jimmie Johnson's, which had about a dozen customers, and Dale Earnhardt's which had about four.

Tony takes the fifth

Tony Stewart won the Nationwide Series race at Daytona for the fifth time in the past six years.

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Danica Patrick gets caught in the aftermath of a multi-car wreck.

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Still think Patrick is a media creation? Tell that to the women walking around the Daytona International Speedway midway wearing jackets adorned with a bright orange No. 7. Tell that to the folks in the infield who have hung a large Danica banner from the roofline of their recreational vehicle. Tell that to the mob that surrounded her race car on the grid before her first Nationwide Series race, or the throng that flocked to her merchandise hauler and made even the group around Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s seem small by comparison.

Even so, it's not difficult to find some thinly-veiled resentment over all the attention Patrick has received this weekend, a spotlight that's shined so brightly some seriously wondered if it was capable of eclipsing the Daytona 500. That's not going to happen, especially after her 35th-place finish in Saturday's Nationwide event at Daytona. But judging by the way many rank-and-file fans have responded to Patrick this week, the popularity -- or maybe curiosity is a better term -- surrounding her appears to be very real, more than justifying the attention paid to her in words and pictures.

And yet, it's all a delicate balance. Patrick has done almost everything right these Speedweeks, from her performance in the ARCA race to her speed in final Nationwide practice, to her charm before the media and her deference to the more experienced drivers on the NASCAR circuit. What rubs people the wrong way isn't Patrick herself, but the feeling some have that this stock-car experience is being used explicitly to expand her brand name, and the impression that television is blindly helping her do just that. Nothing has ruffled more feathers at Daytona than an ESPN promo for Saturday's Nationwide event, which featured an image of only one driver. Hint: It wasn't Tony Stewart, who won Saturday for the fifth time in six years.

"The only thing I will say is that TV has been doing a horrible job because they've been covering her way too much, which isn't a problem. That's fine," defending Nationwide champion Kyle Busch said. "You've got all these people watching TV, and they want to hear about Danica. Well then, take advantage of that and show the less funded-team, the underprivileged people that want to have funding so they can race the rest of the year. Danica is only going to be here for 12 races or whatever it is this year. It would help the rest of those teams that want to try to make a full run at it get the coverage that they need and the exposure that they deserve to try to race the full season. Just my opinion."

For its part, ESPN makes no apologies for centering its coverage around a driver who had never started a NASCAR race before Saturday, although that focus clearly shifted to the series regulars after Patrick slid into the wall trying to avoid an accident in front of her 68 laps into the event.

"First and foremost, it's about racing in Daytona. It's the biggest race for a lot of people," said Rich Feinberg, the network's vice president for motorsports. "You win at Daytona and things change for you. And that's going to be our primary thing. After that, the next biggest story, and quite frankly opportunity for all of us, is Danica. It's our strong belief that there will be people that turn on Saturday's Nationwide telecast that perhaps don't watch a lot of Nationwide races or NASCAR at all, because of the interest in her. We want to serve that curiosity."

If that crowd around the merchandise hauler is any indication, the curiosity is clearly there. Maybe that will change after Saturday, when Patrick faded to the rear of the field early in her Nationwide debut, struggled in the draft, and showed just how steep her NASCAR learning curve might be. But odds are next week's event in Southern California will be another Patrick frenzy, this one fed by West Coast media that wasn't in Daytona. Odds are the attention will spike again when she returns to NASCAR in June after her four-month open-wheel break. Daytona is the big show, to be sure, and her marketing team is milking it for everything it's worth. But Daytona is just a taste.

Still, all-Danica-all-the-time clearly has a rankling effect. You hear plenty of jokes this week about his DIS now stands for Danica International Speedway, or how the television network airing the Nationwide event should be renamed DSPN, or how the city should just change its name to Danica Beach. When Kurt Busch appeared in the media center on Friday, one writer asked if the interview session would be transcribed. "If Danica were here, it would be transcribed," Busch quipped. And via Twitter, there was this snarky broadside from Scott Speed: "According to the 'media' not only is Danica the most amazing racing driver since Dale [Earnhardt] Sr. but she is also related to Jesus."

So yes, maybe there's a little resentment. There are those who see the attention Patrick is receiving, and wonder when a sixth-place finish in an ARCA race was enough to make someone a folk hero. There are those who point to the fact that she's competing in just 13 Nationwide events, and is going to disappear for four months after Las Vegas, as evidence that this is little more than a marketing venture. There are NASCAR veterans who have been affiliated with race-winning and championship organizations, and see the paparazzi-like circus that surrounds Patrick's Nationwide team, and wonder what the fuss is all about.

What to make of all this? Well, it seems clear that on the subject of Patrick, there's an obvious disconnect between many in the garage who don't think she's done anything to deserve the attention, and many in the grandstand who are immediately embracing this fresh, new, interesting personality. SPEED's ratings for last weekend's ARCA race were up 59 percent over the year before, an increase solely driven by Patrick. No one would be surprised of the final numbers for ESPN's Nationwide telecast showed a similarly large jump.

And right now, as NASCAR struggles to resuscitate its television ratings and put people in the seats, that's exactly what the sport needs. Sure, she may have ulterior motives. But on many levels, this is a tremendous opportunity for NASCAR, which has a chance to not only siphon off Patrick's tremendous fan base, but showcase a minority driver in a really good car who earned her ride not through a developmental program, but on merit. Leave it to Johnson, the image-savvy four-time champion, to grasp the big picture.

"I'm glad she's here and the fans she's bringing in," he said. "The thing that is going to be tough for her, she doesn't even get out of the car to get a bottle of Gatorade without a camera on her. So at some point, that stuff is going to be aggravating. As long as she's used to it and ready for it, she's going to do a good job with it. There's going to be bumps in the road for us her. ... I think I went through 15 cars in my rookie Cup season, and I had two years of ASA, two years of Nationwide, and then to Cup. So it's going to happen. I'm excited people are tuning in. We need our sport to be on TV and in the public's eye more than anything else."

Eventually, though, performance will have to follow. Saturday's Nationwide debut was a very different animal from the ARCA race, something that became evident in the early stages, when Patrick dropped very quickly dropped to the rear of the field and for one brief period fell a lap down. She had regrouped and was trying to crack the top 20 when Jason Leffler and Josh Wise tangled, sparking a 12-car accident that collected Patrick. "I was just starting to get it, too," she lamented over the radio.

"I can tell you, I'll be a lot more confident and prepared for next year," Patrick told television reporters in the garage area after her vehicle was deemed too damaged to continue. "This is some difficult racing, it really is. The cars are really on the edge here."

And with that, the Daytona edition of Danicamania came to an unceremonious end. No question, she's still learning, and has a very long way to go. If Patrick continues to show improvement, continues to say and do the right things, continues to try and prove that this is an earnest effort and not a sideshow to her IndyCar aspirations, then any doubters both inside and out of the garage area will eventually come around. Until that happens, though, things like the "Danica update" scrolling at the bottom of the television screen after she crashed out Saturday are sure to leave many people shaking their heads.

The opinions expressed are solely those of the writer.