NASCAR: Kevin Harvick says Danica Patrick started her career at a disadvantage

NASCAR Cup Series driver and former champion Kevin Harvick believes Danica Patrick started her NASCAR career at a disadvantage.

2014 NASCAR Cup Series champion Kevin Harvick, 42, believes that Danica Patrick, 35, started her career in NASCAR at a disadvantage. That disadvantage, he says, had a lot to do with her lack of experience in the sport and the fact that she was making the switch from IndyCar to NASCAR.

Patrick announced prior to the 2017 Cup Series finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway in Homestead, Florida that she would be retiring from full-time competition in the sport following the conclusion of the season.

However, she also announced that she would not officially retire until after driving in the 2018 Daytona 500 and after making her IndyCar return in the 2018 Indianapolis 500 in what is set to be her first IndyCar race since the 2011 season.

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Patrick drove full-time in IndyCar from the 2005 to the 2011 season before making the switch to NASCAR in 2012. In the 2012 season, she drove full-time in the Xfinity Series before taking the step up to the Cup Series in the 2013 season.

Prior to retiring from full-time competition in the Cup Series, Patrick had driven full-time for Stewart-Haas Racing in every season since the 2013 season as the driver of the #10 car. She did not have that much success in her time in the series. In the last four of those five seasons dating back to 2014, she and Harvick were teammates, with Harvick driving the #4 car.

Patrick was recently confirmed as the driver of the #7 Premium Motorsports Chevrolet for the Daytona 500. The team that for which she will drive in the Indianapolis 500 in May has not yet been revealed, but there are three legitimate candidates that have recently emerged.

Here is what Harvick had to say on the matter, according to NASCAR.

"“You know, this is a conversation that I had with her. I had 20 years on her when she started in a stock car. That is experience, and the things that come with that, you are never going to make up that ground. As long as I’m still racing, I’m going to be 20 years ahead regardless. I think it never is going to be easy to go from (IndyCars to NASCAR) if you are going to be at the top level of that sport for a long time…“I have never driven an IndyCar, but based on everything I’ve heard, the characteristics and how you drive them are 180-degrees different. It has been very hard for a lot of the open-wheel guys to come over here and drive these (3,300-pound) cars. It’s the total opposite of everything they have been taught their whole lives.“A lot of the kids we have coming up through our ranks now have been in stock cars since they were 12 or 13 years old. It’s much different. I think you have to pick a path. If you want to race open-wheel cars and do those things, it’s probably going to be carts and into an open wheel series. There are very few people that have been able to do them both. Tony Stewart and (Juan Pablo) Montoya have done it the best in my opinion. Might be somebody else I am missing. But there have been a lot that have tried.”"

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Is Kevin Harvick right? Did Danica Patrick start her NASCAR career at a disadvantage after driving in IndyCar for seven full seasons and then making the switch to stock cars? Given how many people have tried and failed to do so, Tony Stewart and Juan Pablo Montoya notwithstanding, he may very well have a point.

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