NASCAR: Hailie Deegan is not the next Danica Patrick, and that’s a good thing

Hailie Deegan is not NASCAR’s next Danica Patrick. But with all things considered, this is far more of a good thing than it is a bad thing.

No matter who you are, you have heard the name Danica Patrick before, likely several times. If you are a NASCAR or an IndyCar fan, this is especially the case.

You know what the 36-year-old Beloit, Wisconsin native did over the course of her professional racing career, which spanned from 2005 through 2018. You know that her victory at Twin Ring Motegi in the 2008 IndyCar season was and is the lone victory by a female driver at the top level of motorsports.

As a result, Hailie Deegan’s victory in the 2019 NASCAR K&N Pro Series West season opener at the the Las Vegas Motor Speedway Dirt Track, which made her the first female leader of the championship standings in NASCAR history, has prompted many fans to label her as the “next Danica Patrick”.

The 17-year-old Temecula, California native and driver of the #19 Bill McAnally Racing Toyota is in her second season as a full-time driver in K&N Pro Series West. She spent the 2018 season driving the #19 Toyota for the team as well, and she finished in fifth place in the championship standings as the Rookie of the Year.

Throughout the 14-race 2018 season, Deegan earned one victory, which was the first victory in any NASCAR series by a woman since Shawna Robinson won a race in the now-defunct NASCAR Dash Series back in 1989. Deegan finished the 2018 season with five top five finishes and 12 top 10 finishes.

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But as far as Deegan being labeled the “next Danica Patrick” is concerned, not so fast.

Patrick is labeled a “pioneer” in racing for “paving the way” for female racers around the world. She has been given this label by many fans, drivers and even by many of her critics, and justifiably so when you consider what her career consisted of.

But this aspect of Patrick’s career as a professional race car driver, specifically her career as a NASCAR driver, is one of the very few positive aspects of it, and it is one that Deegan cannot replicate simply based on the definition of the word “pioneer”.

That said, Deegan not being the “next Danica Patrick” is actually a good thing with all things considered.

Patrick’s IndyCar victory at Twin Ring Motegi was her lone victory in 116 career starts in the series. She then attempted to make the switch to NASCAR, which did not go well for her by any stretch of the imagination aside of her pole position for the 2013 Daytona 500.

In 252 combined starts in the Cup Series and the Xfinity Series, Patrick recorded just one top five finish, which was her fourth place finish in the March race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in the 2011 Xfinity Series season.

This fourth place finish was one of Patrick’s seven top 10 finishes in her 61 career Xfinity Series starts. In 191 career Cup Series starts, she racked up just seven top 10 finishes as well.

Patrick’s career-high finish in a Cup Series was sixth place, which she recorded in the August race at Atlanta Motor Speedway in the 2014 season. Her career-high finishes in the Cup Series championship standings were 24th place finishes, which she recorded in the 2015 and 2016 seasons.

Why would anyone want Deegan to be the “next Danica Patrick”? Why would anyone want her to have literally no success in NASCAR?

At 17 years old, an age that is less than half of Patrick’s, Deegan has already had more success than Patrick in NASCAR with her two K&N Pro Series West victories, and she has the advantage of not attempting to compete in NASCAR after spending seven seasons as a full-time IndyCar driver, which Patrick did from 2005 to 2011.

Even the IndyCar-to-NASCAR switch that Dario Franchitti attempted to pull off resulted in disaster. He attempted to qualify for 12 races in the 2008 season, and he successfully qualified for 10 of them. His best finish was his 22nd place finish in the March race at Martinsville Speedway.

In IndyCar, however, Franchitti is a 31-time race winner, a three-time Indianapolis 500 winner and a four-time series champion. He is without a doubt one of the greatest drivers in the history of the sport. Only the legendary A.J. Foyt has statistics in all three of these categories that are better than those of Franchitti.

Unlike Patrick, Deegan is starting in NASCAR’s lower touring series with the goal of working her way up the ladder so that she can eventually compete in the Cup Series.

Patrick, meanwhile, jumped right to the Xfinity Series, and after a less than impressive first full season in the series during which she recorded just four top 10 finishes in 33 races driving for JR Motorsports, arguably the top team in the series, she was promoted to the Cup Series to the top-tier team of Stewart-Haas Racing, where she also had next to no success for five whole seasons.

She never truly “worked her way up” like Deegan looks poised to.

But like my colleague William Richard wrote in his recent article about Deegan, patience is a virtue with Deegan. She cannot afford to be rushed to NASCAR’s higher series, especially to the Cup Series.

Deegan and those around her, including teams and sponsors, need to make wise decisions so that they do not sink her career before she truly has the right opportunity to reach her full potential, because there is no doubt that she is loaded with it. After all, she is still 17 years old, and she is already making NASCAR history.

When Patrick left IndyCar after the 2011 season, she was 29 years old. At that age, even she didn’t need to be rushed to the Xfinity Series and the Cup Series, yet she was, and it ended up hurting her career to the point where the driver who could seemingly attract any sponsor endured sponsorship issues before retiring.

Hailie Deegan is not the next Danica Patrick. Hailie Deegan is the Hailie Deegan, and that is a good thing.

How successful will Hailie Deegan’s NASCAR career end up being? How high up the ladder will she climb, and when will she make jumps to higher series? Will she end up as the most successful female driver in the history of the sport?