ShareThisWe all know Danica Patrick is an attractive woman.
She looks good in a swimsuit. She knows she looks good in a swimsuit. Sports Illustrated knows she looks good in a swimsuit, (even though the magazine thought she looked better with her tattoo airbrushed away) and both the Indy Racing League and Patrick are more than happy to take advantage of her appearance.
But let's forget all that for a moment.
Forget about the risque GoDaddy.com TV commercials that crop up every Super Bowl, and set aside all the cheesecake stuff.
Throw all that out, and ask yourself if you're still a fan. Because frankly I'm starting to think if Patrick wasn't pretty -- if she looked like, say, Jimmy Spencer in drag -- she would simply be considered a brat by a lot of folks who take open wheel racing seriously.
Oh, much has been made of the fact that she's a woman racing in the IRL, and the fact that she has actually won a race gives her credibility.
No doubt she has talent. Despite the looks of a model, she possesses skills behind the wheel and I applaud her for that. And with IRL racing at an all-time low in terms of popularity, she keeps the circuit in the news.
Still, her act is wearing thin.
You'll recall that she once gave Dan Wheldon a push and tried to chase down Ryan Briscoe following the Indianapolis 500.
She's so aggressive that Scott Dixon has called her a "menace" on the track.
She came dangerously close to getting into a good, old-fashioned catfight with Milka Duno last year.
And more recently, in the 2009 IRL season opener, she was running ninth in the 22-car field at St. Petersburg, Fla., when rookie Raphael Matos tried to pass her as the two went into a tight turn on the street circuit.
Both cars crashed, with Patrick's machine slamming into a tire barrier.
According to the Associated Press, Patrick "patted" Matos on the helmet as if to say, "Use your head," then got into a spirited discussion with the first-year wheelman.
It's these same kinds of antics that have turned Kyle Busch into one of the drivers some NASCAR fans love to hate.
Yet when Patrick does it, it makes her "feisty."
I don't doubt that she's committed her racing career, and if she's not worried about exploiting herself then it's certainly not my place to worry about it for her.
However, she has to realize that by marketing herself as a sex symbol, the cheers she's hearing probably aren't for her driving prowess. When fans talk about her body of work, it has nothing to do with driving.
The point is the novelty of seeing Patrick in a bathing suit is over.
There are lots of women who look good in bathing suits.
If Patrick really wants to make more history in the IRL, she should lead more laps, win more races and act like she belongs.
Throwing temper tantrums and slipping into a bikini will keep her in the news, but at some point it's going to be old news.
For me, it already is.
(Scott Adamson writes for the Anderson Independent-Mail in Anderson, S.C.)
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