Get ready, NASCAR world. After nearly a decade spent in the American open-wheel ranks, Danica Patrick will be headed to the Nationwide Series full-time in 2012, with her eye on a Sprint Cup ride at Stewart-Haas Racing for 2013. In Nationwide, she'll remain under the tutelage of Dale Earnhardt Jr., while Tony Stewart and Ryan Newman (themselves former open-wheel drivers) will aid Danica's transition to America's highest level.

But is Danica truly ready to successfully shift to stock cars full-time in 2012? Count me among the pessimists here, and I've got 10 good reasons why this plan isn't going to go as well as everyone hopes it will. (Or, if you want to be an optimist here—I'm looking at you, Ms. Patrick's public relations folks—I have 10 motivating statements to push your driver to the top. Ahem.)

This photo comes from Danica's only IndyCar win. That's right, I said "only." Since joining IndyCar full-time in 2005, the only win she ever scored came in 2008 at Twin Ring Motegi. That win, however, is a bit tainted by two things: first of all, a good chunk of the field was competing at Long Beach in the Champ Car World Series finale; second of all, she didn't win by outracing anybody, she won on fuel mileage. Sorry if I'm a bit put off by that. A win is a win, and the whole "first woman to win a major open-wheel race" is a fantastic title to hold, but why haven't there been more?

No, she's never driven for Roger Penske or Chip Ganassi. But Danica drove for Bobby Rahal when his cars were at the top of the ladder in IndyCar, and before everything fell apart at Andretti Green Racing. And right now, Andretti Autosport is a decent team; in fact, they're the only team in IndyCar this season to put three different cars in victory lane. They run four. Guess who drives the fourth?

Remember this guy? His name is Sam Hornish Jr., and he won IndyCar championships in 2001, 2002, and 2006. Then he decided to transition to NASCAR, eight seasons into what was one of the best IndyCar careers in recent memory. Hornish never scored a top five finish in three years of Sprint Cup competition, and in fact failed to qualify for his first six race attempts in an abbreviated 2007 schedule. There comes a point where it might just be too late to transition. (See also: Dario Franchitti, Jacques Villeneuve)

The last guy to pull off the IndyCar-NASCAR transition effectively was Tony Stewart. He basically set the model that Patrick is trying to follow - dual schedules, concentrating on IndyCar, before gradually moving up to Cup. But remember, Stewart was only three seasons into an IndyCar career, and more importantly, was the 1997 champion, so he knew how to handle his equipment. Smoke will be a huge aid to Danica in the transition, but if her career (compared to his) is any indication, it's unlikely to think that she can replicate his success.

This isn't a knock for the reasons you probably think it is. Rather, consider the difficulty of switching from one career path to another similar, yet very different, career path. Consider the struggles that are going to come along the way, and how many frustrating incidents will take place. Consider that everybody's going to lose it eventually. Now consider that you're a megastar and the media is going to blow up anything you say or do into a really, really big deal. Danica is going to either have to have every single thing go her way, or somehow never get angry over the course of the season, and neither of those are reasonable things to expect. So when the blowup comes, expect the media to turn it into a public relations disaster.

Both her Sprint Cup team (Stewart-Haas Racing) and Nationwide team (JR Motorsports) are top-tier in their respective series. But let's be honest: neither of them provide the sort of equipment that can take any driver to the top. In fact, both of those teams are strong mostly because they put all-world drivers in the cars that can win races. If you're a Formula 1 fan, compare it to Fernando Alonso's time spent at Renault after winning his championships. He was still good enough on his own merits to win a race or two, but as decent as those cars were, they weren't going to take him to the top. Now ask yourself if Patrick's raw driving talent could do the same.

Stewart is desperately playing to Bob Parsons, the man in charge at GoDaddy.com, to sponsor Patrick's Sprint Cup car for the entire 36-race schedule next season. He wants Parsons to fund Mark Martin, the current GoDaddy Cup driver, for the 24-plus races that Patrick is not scheduled to contest in 2012, so the car can remain in the top 35 in owners' points. Without that cushion, Patrick would have to qualify for races with no safety net all season, and as we saw with Hornish in 2007, that doesn't always go so well.

With Dale Earnhardt Jr., Tony Stewart, Ryan Newman, and possibly Mark Martin to help guide her, Danica will have no shortage of good veteran driving advice to follow in 2012. But if the right crew chief doesn't come along, that could all go for nothing. I absolutely hated Tony Eury Jr.'s strategy last year of allowing Danica to use IndyCar terms over NASCAR ones (e.g. "oversteer" vs. "loose") because it's simply speaking a different language. That definitely hinders her development. I'm not sure if she's still given that leeway, but if she tries to take those terms to Sprint Cup, do we trust her communication with even the best crew chief?

If you thought the media attention on Danica as an IndyCar driver was bad, imagine what's going to happen when she runs full-time in a series that garners more than 300,000 television viewers on an average race weekend. Worse, the Nationwide Series is broadcast entirely by ESPN, which has a recent history of sensationalizing only one star in each sport it covers (see Brett Favre, LeBron James). They're going to focus just about every spotlight on her for the duration of the 10-month season, and those spotlights are going to be much brighter than they've ever been.

GoDaddy wants its lead model to be a winner. So does every other Danica sponsor. Dale Jr. and Tony Stewart are going to have tons of money invested into this project. Let's be honest - with great wads of cash come great expectations. While these sponsors may say they're willing to be patient, in this economy, they're really not. They don't want to see Danica turn into racing's answer to Anna Kournikova, somebody who sells products briefly on sex appeal and burns out. Neither do I. But unless sponsors are willing to put their money where their mouth is and be patient with Danica's development as a stock car driver, the first year of this project is going to be the most stressful of her entire career.

That's nothing a couple of wins won't alleviate, though. Go get 'em, Danica.