IndyCar Star Danica Patrick Returns to NASCAR This Week

While NASCAR has great hopes of improved television ratings and larger crowds for Danica Patrick's return to the circuit this summer, she insists she's just another race car driver seizing an opportunity. Propping up an entire race series isn't her intention.

"I don't feel responsibility (to draw crowds), I'm just going out there and getting experience and trying to do well at the end of the day,'' said Patrick, who returns to NASCAR Nationwide Series competition this Saturday at New Hampshire Motor Speedway after spending the last three months focusing on her full time job in the IZOD IndyCar Series.

"I am just really lucky as an athlete that people are curious how I'm doing and want to see. So I just do my best to put on a show and hopefully it's something that gives people a reason to smile and cheer. And if I do that, then I'm doing my job.''

Patrick also quickly deferred to realistic expectations on the track.

"I hope this weekend I finish in the top twenty or the top fifteen and kind of build myself up,'' Patrick said Tuesday.

"I think the best thing I can do for myself on the NASCAR weekends is really come up with some realistic expectation levels instead of having them be like IndyCar expectations levels where I'm hoping to win and I'm hoping to finish on the podium.''

A top-15 or even a top-20 finish would be a marked improvement over Patrick's first three starts. She's averaging a 34th place finish after 35th, 31st and 36th place efforts in a three-race Nationwide Series run in Dale Earnhardt Jr.'s No. 7 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet this Spring.

Busy with IndyCar obligations, Patrick has had only one stock car test (at Milwaukee) since her last NASCAR race Feb. 27 in Las Vegas. But, she expects the comfort level to be better right away for the remaining 10 Nationwide races she's scheduled for this season.

"Simple things like the car fits and the belts and the seat and the pedals ... you just get in and go,'' Patrick explained, saying that her recent test at the Milwaukee Mile gave her a "good head start" for this weekend's race at the notoriously tough one-mile New Hampshire oval.

"It's good to get familiar again and it also gives a direction to what kind of setup I like on the car at that kind of track.''

After a rough start in a road course-heavy early IndyCar season, Patrick comes to New Hampshire fresh off three consecutive top-10 finishes, including a sixth place showing in the Indianapolis 500 -- her fifth top-eight finish in six Indy starts.

And she answered the effort the next week by nearly winning at Texas Motor Speedway. Her runner-up finish there was her best showing since becoming the first woman to win a major open-wheel race two years ago in the Japan IndyCar race.

Predictably, critics blamed the slow start to her IndyCar season on her February NASCAR duties. She, however, dismissed the idea that her splitting time between the two series may have hurt her performance in both.

"I don't see how racing cars can make you a worse race car driver,'' Patrick said. "I put every ounce of effort into everything I do.

"I'm enjoying the two of them (race series) and I think it's good for any race car driver to be in the seat a lot and that's definitely what I'm doing.''

Conversely, she's not convinced that her resurgence in IndyCar will automatically translate into a NASCAR highlight reel either. But, she coyly acknowledged, the confidence doesn't hurt.

"Perhaps it does not carry over into another series with another group of guys, but then again, my confidence is there,'' Patrick said.

"Probably the best way that I can come away with momentum coming from Loudon (N.H.) would be to set a realistic expectation level and hopefully that happens.

"As one of my friends told me, you're one good race, one weekend away from turning it around because it just takes one.

"It just so happens I've had a couple of good runs in the last few weeks and I'm sure that helps my confidence a little bit. It's still a whole new weekend with expectation levels and people to impress and me not wanting to let myself down on what I think is possible.''