Richard Petty Tag

History was made this weekend when Danica Patrick became the first woman to qualify on the pole position for the Daytona 500 or any other NASCAR Sprint Cup race.  Her first full Sprint Cup season could not be starting out any better.  Congrats to Danica and hopefully this serves as inspiration to women everywhere.  The racing world has been waiting for Danica to make her big splash and it might finally be here.  She has a realistic shot at winning the Daytona 500 and what a story that would be.  It seems her goal is to be good enough to challenge for a championship but her next hurdle is just to finish consistently in the Sprint and possibly win a race.  Thankfully Danica has a great team and owner  who has knowledge of what it takes to be successful in open and closed wheel racing.

Danica won't want to hear this but history tells us she won't win on Sunday.  Winning the pole is normally a nice accomplishment and comes with a nice paycheck but it is by no means a indicator of who will win the race.  The last Daytona 500 pole winner to win the race was current ESPN analyst Dale Jarrett in 2000.  That was DJ's third and he is one of just 5 drivers to win the 500 3 times (Petty, Gordon, Allison, Yarborough).  Since the opening race in 1959, the pole winner has only won the actual race on 8 occasions.