Well, for starters, she's been in pro racing for 13 years, and in 13 years she's managed to win a whopping one race. Would you hire a lawyer who had only won one case in 13 years? Would you hire a quarterback who had won one game in 13 years? Would you hire a pilot who landed safely once in 13 years? Probably "no" would be the answer to all three. In her 39 NASCAR races she's been in, guess how many laps she's held the lead in? 41! Out of 10,036 laps she's run in NASCAR (yes, I looked it up), she's led only 41 of them, which in racing terms translates to pathetic.
Yet, despite this crappy record of professional racing success, Patrick gets added to the Baldwin Racing team so she can run as a rookie in the 2012 Daytona 500, where she starts 29th and finishes 38th. And yet despite this horrid finish, she gets lots of great publicity and gets selected to join the JR Motorsports team for the 2012 season! She lasts a mediocre year with JR, and what happens? Out of the blue, Stewart-Haas Racing says we want her, and brings her over to one of the premiere teams, just in time for her to run in the 2013 Daytona 500, where suddenly the gal who finished near the mid-bottom of the stack in 2012, and is a top 20 driver at best throughout 2012, suddenly captures the pole in 2013, which, strictly as a coincidence I'm sure, NASCAR had already initiated a huge marketing and exposure campaign for Patrick months before the race was run in order to elevate the sport amongst women.
So you have a driver who has a very poor track record of success who gets put into a Daytona 500 as to test the waters, and does very poorly race wise, but garners a HUGE amount of attention on a personal level, who then gets picked up by not one but two of the top racing teams and has a storied finish at a race that's been made all about her for months. And from what I heard from a long time friend at NASCAR, the squeeze was put on Stewart-Haas to ensure Patrick received the best equipment and the pit crews were shuffled around to make sure she had the best members at every position.
So you tell me... a driver has a mediocre, lack-luster career before a race. Then a race that's marketed primarily on her, and in an effort to attract women to the sport, is run and she makes a spectacular showing for herself. Then after said is over, and the hype is over, things return to normal at JR Motorsports and she's back to being her top 20 self again and gets herself sent to a different team. What's all that tell you? It tells me a mediocre driver got a LOT of help during that 2013 500 to make sure the results were what NASCAR wanted, and after the race was over that support was pulled and she went back to being mediocre.
