IndyCar driver, spokesmodel and “GoDaddy Girl” Danica Patrick will drive in NASCAR this year, but not in the Sprint Cup.
Patrick is expected to compete in about a dozen Nationwide Series races, including Saturday’s at Daytona. It’s like the Triple-A level in baseball.
If NASCAR has a true crossover star — outside of GoDaddy.com ads, that is — it’s Jimmie Johnson.
The 34-year-old California native has won four straight Sprint Cup championships. That’s enough, it turns out, to get him on SportsCenter on a regular basis, as well as the gossip mags — and his own “reality” show on HBO.
But on the track, as a new season dawns, Johnson is simply this: The Absolute Favorite.
Still relatively young, he opens the 2010 campaign on the stacked Hendrick Motorsports team, along with Dale Earnhardt Jr., Mark Martin and Jeff Gordon. It’s the NASCAR equivalent of the Yankees ... if the Bronx Bombers had won every World Series since 2006.
Even so, Johnson has played down his title chances with the season-opening Daytona 500 just days away.
“I use fear to motivate myself,” he told reporters. “I’m entering this year saying I’m going to get beat — in my mind. That way I enter the year working as hard as I can.”
Johnson is one of just four drivers with four or more series championship. The others are Gordon, Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Richard Petty.
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