Media Tour Day 2: Danica Patrick has a year left on her contract
Danica Patrick's contract with Stewart-Haas Racing goes for just one more season. Is Stewart-Haas looking to move on at the end of 2015?
SHR co-owner Gene Haas said the team wants her back and Patrick said Tuesday she doesn't want to drive for anyone else.
"Absolutely, we would love to see Danica come back," Haas said via USA Today. "We want to see Danica succeed as much as anybody does. I think NASCAR wants to see her succeed. So there's an awful lot of vested interest to have Danica succeed in this man's sport.
"We're very fortunate to have someone like Danica here."
Even if Patrick struggles compared to the other three teams at Stewart-Haas, she's still a marketing dream. Because of her popularity, financing the No. 10 car isn't an issue. If Patrick didn't have the ability to attract and keep sponsorship, the decision to keep her after the season barring a Chase berth would be a much different one. We're going to be surprised if Patrick ends up anywhere else but Stewart-Haas in 2016.
• Speaking of Patrick, GoDaddy pulled an ad involving Patrick that was set to air during the Super Bowl. After its debut, the ad got a lot of negative reaction and even incited a Change.org petition that garnered over 40,000 signatures. Hey y'all, we have better things to petition than Super Bowl ads and did we really expect a deep and nuanced ad from GoDaddy? Let's re-evaluate our priorities here.
• Remember the RTA? It's the collaboration of most every Sprint Cup Series team in the garage. The goal of the arrangement is for teams to work together for the goal of increased efficiency and value. Michael Waltrip Racing co-owner Rob Kauffman is in charge of it and had an interesting comparison when asked about the RTA on Tuesday.
“I look at it more as talking about the plumbing in a house,” Kauffman said via NBC Sports. “It’s really the background. There’s not really much to talk about.
“I think the way I would say it is there’s a very active and constructive dialogue between the NASCAR folks and all the teams, through the RTA, really focusing on long-term issues that affect the sport. Healthy teams are in the interest of everybody, and that’s what we’re working on.”
Hopefully the RTA doesn't have any clogs. And if it does, who would play the role of plumber?
• We can't close the second day of the media tour without a trained assassin update. During a hearing regarding a request for protection order by his ex-girlfriend Patricia Driscoll, Busch said he believed that she was a trained assassin.
“My right hand was on the Bible, and I swore under oath to tell the truth,” Busch said via the Sporting News.
A decision from the hearing is still forthcoming.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
