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Danica Patrick touches on weighty issue

By Christopher Estrada | March 25th, 2008

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Patrick: Not happy about the IRL's new weight rule. Photo: Ron McQueeney/IRL

IndyCar star rips league on new minimum weight rule

We’ve known for some time that the Indy Racing League was going to start including the driver in the cars’ minimum weight.

This rule, which goes into effect this season, is an attempt to cut the advantage a lighter driver can have over a heavier driver in terms of speed. When this emerged from the IRL, everybody keyed on what the effect would be on the league’s top star, the 100-pound Danica Patrick.

But we hadn’t heard much from her about the new rule until now. Today’s USA Today has Patrick wondering aloud to writer Nick Ryan about getting “penalized” for being herself:

“[It’s] just your God-given stature is being penalized. What am I going to do, though? It’s not my decision. That’s the people higher up [who] made their bed, and they’ve got to lay in it.”

In response, the IRL’s John Griffin mentions breaking up the drivers into three weight classes — the heavier ones will get their cars’ weight reduced while the lighter ones will have ballast added to their machines.

Personally, I think this is a good idea. While I understand the root of Patrick’s complaints, she says herself in the article that she’s gotten a slight boost of speed thanks to her natural frame. If the IRL wants to truly equalize the competition, then they have to take steps like this to do it — especially if one of their drivers freely admits that they’ve had an edge, no matter how slight.

Besides, Patrick is armed with tremendous resources from Andretti Green Racing. Like the other teams, AGR has had the off-season to adapt to this rule. I think she and her team will be fine.

Meanwhile, check out the comments on this story at the bottom of the link…Looks like the “anti-Danica” brigade is out in force today.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 25th, 2008 at 9:23 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.