While Danica Patrick last raced at the 2018 Daytona 500she remained connected to NASCAR through her broadcast work, serving as a guest analyst for Fox several times over the past two years. Additionally, she held a similar position, covering F1 for ESPN through Sky Sports.
The 41-year-old was in Austin, Texas, for the United States Grand Prix on October 22 at Circuit of the Americas, working in this role and saw Max Verstappen dominate once again and record his 15th victory of the season. After the race, the former driver visited AwfulAnnouncing.com and was asked about the American motorsport landscape, and in particular the health of NASCAR.
Not surprisingly, she had an opinion.
“I actually sat down with a really important person within NASCAR…one of the things I said was ‘the races are way too long,’” Patrick said. “People’s consumption habits are changing… because they can’t sustain their attention long enough.
“So when you ask them to sit in front of a TV for five or six hours, with the pre-race and the race and everything, that’s a lot of time to expect someone to pay attention. ”
Kevin Harvick agrees with Danica Patrick
Danica Patrick has always had critics throughout her career. Many of those same fans will likely reject his idea. But she is not the first to suggest reducing the length of races. His former Stewart-Haas Racing teammate, Kevin Harvicksaid the same thing last year on journalist Davey Segal’s show Victory Lane Podcast.
“What people need to understand is there are going to be a lot more caveats,” Harvick said. “It’s not the race we’ve had in recent years, with a limited number of cautions. There’s going to be a ton of cautions, as we’ve seen in all these races. I don’t think, from a driver’s point of view, any of us want to compete in 500 mile races anyway.
“500 miles to Atlanta with a restrictor plate. It was a long day. It felt like we were there forever. I think the Daytona 500, obviously, has to go 500 miles, but the Coke 600 could be debated. But for the rest of these races, they shouldn’t even allow them to do 500 mile races. To me, that seems to be a thing of the past.
Patrick also offers thoughts on NASCAR’s lack of stars
Patrick, who has been involved in various business ventures since his retirement, including his own wine, a candle business and podcastalso shared his thoughts on the current hot topic of conversation in NASCAR circles: the sport’s current lack of star power.
“Formula 1 is booming, but NASCAR is struggling a little more,” she noted. “And there was a time when Formula 1 wasn’t really a blip on the radar here in the United States, and NASCAR drivers were everything. Much of this has to do, yes, with the product, but also with the market value of the drivers within it and the personalities.
“NASCAR has suffered a lot of loss personality-wise, with many big, famous names gone. There was Jeff GordonDale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart and myself and Carl Edwards.
Patrick is right about the loss of big names from NASCAR in recent years. But his comment about NASCAR’s struggles compared to F1, at least when it comes to TV ratings, isn’t accurate. Viewership for the COTA race fell for a third straight year to its lowest level since 2019, according to Sports media monitoring. It’s the Max Verstappen effect, and it doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon.
