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My two cents on Danica to NASCAR

SI.com's Mark Beech takes a spin around the racing world for the most intriguing stories in and out of the garage. What's my response to the news that Danica
Mark Beech|
My two cents on Danica to NASCAR
My two cents on Danica to NASCAR

SI.com's Mark Beech takes a spin around the racing world for the most intriguing stories in and out of the garage.

What's my response to the news that Danica Patrick is likely to race a limited schedule for Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s Nationwide team next year?

Exhibit A: Sam Hornish Jr., one of the finest IndyCar drivers in recent memory.

Jimmie Johnson's least favorite Cup driver (at least for this week) has slightly improved from last season's 35th-place finish, but he's hardly shown any potential for having the sort of monster third season that Juan Pablo Montoya put together after his arrival from IndyCar. Including Hornish's wreck-filled trip to Texas last Sunday (the sixth race he has failed to complete this year because of a crash) he now ranks 30th in the points standings. He's only completed 8,744 laps in 2009, the lowest total of all but two other drivers currently in the top-35, and hasn't finished better than 36th in a race in more than four weeks. Yes, Hornish has seven top-10 finishes in 2009 (the only seven of his career), but if he is improving, he's doing a heck of a job of hiding it.

Of course, even Montoya regressed a bit during his second season, dropping from 20th in the standings to 25th. But I don't see many signs that Hornish is ready, after two years behind the wheel, to compete for a spot in the Chase just yet. His troubles, and especially his car-control issues, indicate that he's not comfortable driving a bigger, heavier stock car -- especially one that handles poorly in the corners, as the new car does. So is Patrick's purported deal to drive Junior's Nationwide car just a publicity stunt?

Of course, as publicity stunts go, it would be a doozy, joining together the Most Popular Driver in NASCAR with someone who is not only an accomplished racer, but one of the more recognizable figures in American pop culture. No matter how much she might struggle, Patrick could cry herself to sleep at night on her piles of cash.

So really, there wouldn't be any losers here, in the long run. Just don't look for Patrick to make a full-time commitment to NASCAR if she runs poorly. Once she does, it's likely to take quite a while before she's competitive. Why rush things for that?

4: Average finish Jimmie Johnson needs over the last two races to secure his fourth straight Cup title

6: Number of races Johnson has competed in at Phoenix International Raceway since finishing worse than fourth (7th on April 22, 2006)

3: Number of victories for Johnson in those six races

I feel badly for this gentleman. I do. To most people, on-camera work seems to involve mostly talking, and everybody can talk. Right? Right?

Not everybody, unfortunately. I give this a 9.5 on the cringe-factor scale.

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Mark Beech
MARK BEECH

Staff writer Mark Beech, who has written extensively on college football, horse racing and NASCAR, among other subjects, cites his 2007 profile of Olympic gold medal-winning freestyle wrestler Henry Cejudo as his most memorable SI assignment. "I was at a NASCAR race in Charlotte on a Sunday afternoon and got a call from an editor asking me if I could fly straight to Colorado Springs to start work on a story about Cejudo for the next week's issue," says Beech. "I knew nothing about him at all but spent the next six days learning everything I could mostly through interviews, since there was no real record of him in the press at the time. The story was much bigger and more deeply affecting than I could have ever imagined, and I thought it came off very well considering the amount of time I had to write and report." During his tenure at SI Beech has also written on the NHL, soccer and college basketball. He writes a weekly auto racing column (Racing Fan) for SI.com, and also provides coverage of major horse racing stakes for the website. He says college football is his favorite sport to cover "for all the tradition and regional passions." Beech has been with Sports Illustrated since 1997. Before joining SI he spent five years in the U.S. Army, reaching the rank of captain, and serving primarily with the 84th Engineer Battalion (Combat) (Heavy) at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii. Beech received a B.S. in civil engineering from the United States Military Academy in 1991 and an M.S. in journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1997. He and his wife, Allison Keane, have an infant son, Nathaniel, and reside in Westchester County, NY.

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