This whole Danica Patrick business

NASCAR management is a bunch of idiots, just for the record.   One man's opinion.

Everybody looks great when your industry is in a growth spurt.  Like stock pundits in a bull market.  Now that what is essentially a super-regional sport has stabilized, and, in fact, started to lose popularity (as measured by viewers), we shall see.

Me?  I think they're idiots.  If for no other reason than the piece of shit they introduced a number of years ago called the Car of Tomorrow.  Before they put the decals on, it looked like this ...

One of the ugliest race cars ever.  And making it even more annoying, every one of them was visually identical.  Fords, Chevys, Dodges, Toyotas -- all had identical, ugly bodywork.

Oh, by the way.  All those exotic paint schemes are decals.  Including the headlights.  Which doesn't bother me at all, but I'm just saying.

And okay, the CoT was safer.  But really, who'd want to get in one?  People stayed away in droves.

But this whole Danica Patrick getting the pole at Daytona is a marketing windfall.  And they did change the design of the CoT, getting rid of that aesthetically horrible rear wing.  And they've just introduced the newest iteration of cars in which Toyotas are physically different from Fords.

All of which is good.

But any organization that allows Darryl Waltrip to occupy a position of authority and influence (he is part of the team that calls the races) is crazy.