Why Danica Patrick Will Win a Sprint Cup Race in 2015

How about this for a headline: "Danica Patrick Wins the Daytona 500."

Yes, I believe it could happen.

But before I get started with an explanation for such a bold statement, I have an admission to make.

I used to be a Danica hater.

That's not really news to those of you who have followed my work over the past two decades—from television to the Internet. When I was one of the motorsports writers at Yahoo Sports (along with Bleacher Report's Jerry Bonkowski), I covered Patrick when she was an IndyCar driver.

I was pretty tough on her. I didn't think she deserved all the media coverage she was getting, and I didn't appreciate the way she interacted with the media. During an interview, you felt like you were being granted an audience. The press gaggle scheduled outside the back of her transporter was staged, short and not too valuable. Not at all like working with drivers in the NASCAR garage.

Even when she was Rookie of the Year at the Indy 500 in 2005 and had a real shot at winning the race, I wrote that her performance was primarily due to having a good car and that if she had not spun under caution, which damaged the car, she might have even won the race—while everyone else was writing about what an amazing afternoon she had.

It was a contentious relationship to say the least, and eventually it led to Yahoo Sports (me) being banned from doing interviews with her.

When she won her only IndyCar race in Japan in 2008, I wrote that she won it as a fuel-mileage race and that her closest competitor in the race, points leader Helio Castroneves, forfeited the win by stopping for fuel while Patrick did not, allowing Patrick to win the race and Castroneves to maintain his points lead.

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I got threatening emails by the hundreds, including many from people who called me a misogynist, which is quite funny since I have three daughters, whom I love dearly.

With all of this as background, when Patrick decided to change her career path and move to NASCAR, I was convinced it wouldn't work and that it was being done solely as a publicity grab. After all, her entry into the sport would be in association with Dale Earnhardt Jr., someone very familiar with publicity.

I was there when she made her first big-time stock-car debut, in an ARCA car at Daytona in 2010. Those races are usually wreckfests, and I expected that Patrick would end up involved in one of them. But to my surprise, Patrick drove a clean and solid race, finishing sixth.

She ran the then-Nationwide Series race the following weekend, but she didn't have much luck, getting caught up in a big wreck and finishing well back in the field.

But I saw something during those races. It was the willingness to race with the pack. It was something she had obviously gotten used to racing in the IndyCar series. The engine and aero package in IndyCars at that time made all their high-speed races two hours of hold-your-breath, wheel-to-wheel racing done inches apart from one another at 200 miles per hour.

I suppose Patrick felt comfortable racing in such close quarters in a stock car and even more comfortable having all the extra sheet metal surrounding her small frame. 

Her Nationwide (now Xfinity) Series career wasn't anything special. She had a few moments, but success in that series isn't a harbinger of racing in the Cup series. Tony Stewart and Jimmie Johnson were not very good in the series. Both have gone on to successful Cup careers.

By the end of 2011, it was apparent during her interviews and by the way she was racing that Patrick had a genuine desire to not just learn the craft, but to be very good at it. She had gotten good driving IndyCars but not great. In NASCAR, it became obvious that she wanted to become great. That meant winning races and being a contender in the Chase.

Having Patrick on the roster would be both a blessing and a curse. Her huge fanbase meant a constant flow of dollars into her souvenir booth. But it also meant that she would have to be tutored on a very steep learning curve, one that would require her to do more than just show up at the race track. She was going to have to win races.

When she moved up to the Cup Series as a driver for Tony Stewart, it all came together. It was the right move.

For the past two years, Patrick has undergone the most demanding on-the-job training imaginable. She's also been given the very best of everything in the Sprint Cup garage—including engines from Hendrick Motorsports, which powered this year's champion Kevin Harvick's Chevrolet to the title.

So I find myself making a not-so-difficult journey from being a Danica hater to being a Danica fan. I'll admit, she's still not where a third-year Cup driver might be expected to be, but I also remember that even some of the best in the world—Juan Pablo Montoya comes to mind—had a difficult time making the change. The only driver in the past two decades who has is her team owner, Stewart.

Nick Wass/Associated Press

Admittedly, her best results to date have been on the restrictor-plate tracks. Daytona seems to be her best track with two top-10 finishes in five attempts. And there's also that pole.

When Patrick won the pole for the 2013 Daytona 500, the task almost seemed natural for her. She had been given the perfect car and the best engine, and she had learned the fastest route around the 2.5-mile high-banked superspeedway during practice. All it would take would be two nearly perfect laps.

Successful IndyCar drivers at the Speedway say that to go fast at Indy requires consistency. Consistency means speed, and if you're fast at Indy, you've got a chance to win. That's how Patrick did it in 2005, when she almost won the pole and finished fourth.

So when she needed to run just two laps, wide-open and as perfect as could be, and go faster than Jeff Gordon, a three-time (1997, 1999, 2005) Daytona 500 winner and four-time (1995, 1997, 1998, 2001) Cup champion, Patrick delivered. She used the discipline she had learned from running countless close-to-perfect laps on the Indianapolis Motor Speedway to make two solid laps at Daytona International Speedway.

Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Patrick has her best runs on restrictor-plate tracks, although this past season, finishes on the 1.5-mile tracks at Kansas (seventh) and Atlanta (sixth) have shown great promise on those all-important speedways. She'll be a favorite for the 2015 Daytona 500 pole again.

At Stewart-Haas Racing, she is surrounded by three of the best drivers in recent NASCAR history in Stewart, Harvick and Kurt Busch. Three sure resources for an answer to just about any question she may have whether about a plate track, a speedway or a short track. And for emotional support, she has another driver to help her, boyfriend Ricky Stenhouse Jr.

I'm not sure how the recent crew-chief swap, which sent her longtime crew chief Tony Gibson to work with Busch, will affect her future growth as a driver. It could be a good move. It's doubtful that team owner Stewart would be convinced of doing anything that might potentially harm her progression as a driver.

The Daytona 500. Patrick has shown that she may be one of the drivers who will be a master of the plate tracks. It will eventually give her the confidence she needs to win on the 1.5-mile tracks.

Over the past decade, the restrictor-plate package on the Sprint Cup cars has made this race a genuine wild card on the schedule where anyone still running when the white flag flies has a chance at winning.

Danica Patrick winning the Daytona 500. Imagine that, Richard Petty.