Danica Experiment meets reality

FONTANA, Calif. – Midway through Round 2 of the Danica Patrick Stock Car Experiment, crew chief Tony Eury Jr. radioed to his driver that "it's all a learning experience."

Patrick was running around 35th at the time – two laps down to the leaders.

"You ain't supposed to know it when you got here," Eury said. "We just want you to know it when you leave."

"If I can start running with people and keep up with the leaders, I'll be happy," she responded.

"We'll get you there," Eury said.

But after finishing 31st in Saturday's Stater Bros. 300 at Auto Club Speedway – three laps behind race winner Kyle Busch – the question isn't when Patrick will get "there" but if her patience will wear thin before she arrives.

Though Patrick's wasn't a stellar performance, it certainly was respectable. After dropping to the back of the field just two laps into Saturday's race, she settled in and began picking off a handful of cars. By the end of the race, she had cut the lap-time differential between herself and the leader by three quarters – from around four seconds at the start of the race to around one by the time the checkered flag flew.

Despite the apparent improvement from Lap 1 to Lap 150, Patrick was anything but satisfied. After getting out of her car, she stormed to her hauler in the Nationwide garage, clearly agitated with her result.

"She doesn't like finishing where she is," Eury Jr. said outside Patrick's hauler. "She feels like she should be better than she is right now, and I'm just trying to keep her pumped up and tell her it's all right.

"It's a tough sport. There's a lot of competition over here, and there's a lot of guys who came from the same series she did [who] tried to do it and some of them have been successful, some of them have not. But she's going to make it; it's just going to take time. She's just got to be willing to sacrifice that time."

After a 15-minute cool-down period, Patrick emerged from her hauler to give her take on the day.

"I'm a competitor and I'm used to running up front," she said. "So it's shocking when you're that far back. But you know what? This is a whole new ball of wax for me, and it's all different. And I have to disconnect from the results for quite some time, I think, because they're probably not going to be what I'm used to."

And so begins the waning portion of Danica-mania.

For the better part of two weeks, now, she has been the show. Saturday was no different, as after the race the vast majority of media in attendance at Auto Club Speedway stood outside her hauler waiting for her to speak. Meanwhile, a few hundred yards away Busch, the defending series champion, spoke to a mostly empty press room.

But as Part 1 of the Experiment comes to a close next week in Las Vegas – following that race she'll return to her day job racing in the IndyCar Series, taking a four-month sabbatical from NASCAR – it's becoming clear that the intensity of attention on Patrick will not last, not as long as she's using what amounts to a Triple-A series as her personal training school.

Keen interest in anyone running at the back of the pack normally is reserved for family, friends and Junior Nation – the latter only because Dale Earnhardt Jr. isn't supposed to be there, and abnormality combined with popularity always is a story worth following.

Patrick has the popularity thing on her side, but she doesn't have the abnormality, because running in the 30s is about what's expected from her in the early going of her stock car experiment.

What would be abnormal is her running in the top 15 and providing a glimmer of hope to those who want to see a female win a NASCAR race for the first time.

Between now and then – assuming then comes – she still will produce spikes in the TV ratings and ticket sales. But as everyone waits for the Danica Patrick Stock Car Experiment to mature into something more than just an experiment, the spikes will start spiking less and the attention will die down.

Patrick may enjoy this part – the softer spotlight. She just might not like why it's not as bright anymore.