(By Reid Spencer NASCAR Wire Service)
Posted: Saturday,August 27th, 2011
BRISTOL, Tenn.—If Danica Patrick chooses to make her Sprint Cup debut in NASCAR’s biggest race, Jeff Gordon, for one, won’t have a problem with it.
In all likelihood—given her well-honed marketing instincts—Patrick will choose the 2012 Daytona 500 to launch her Cup career. Three of Patrick’s 20 Nationwide Series starts have come at Daytona. Most recently, on July 1 there, she ran up front and led 13 laps before finishing 10th.
Accordingly, Gordon says he won’t be a dissenting voice, should Patrick choose to enter the Daytona 500.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” Gordon said Friday. “She did pretty well in the Nationwide race. To me, that was a testament of what she is capable of doing. … I mean, she’s racing the Indianapolis 500, and, to me, that’s pretty challenging.
Danica Patrick, driver of the #7 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet (Photo by Jason Smith/Getty Images for NASCAR)
“So I think that, if that’s where they want to make her debut, I wouldn’t have any heartache against it because of the tracks that she’s raced at in the Nationwide Series. If you’ve never raced at a superspeedway, especially with the tandem drafting we have now—if you’d never done that before and never been on a superspeedway before, then I might question it.
“But that’s not the case for her.”
Patrick announced Thursday she will run a full Nationwide schedule next year, along with a limited number of Cup races. Her Cup schedule has not been set.
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