Patrick, Fisher will duel Sunday

Aug. 11--In leaving the Rahal Letterman team for Andretti Green Racing starting with the 2007 season, Danica Patrick reached a status like no woman before her, at least in turn-track racing.

She was a wanted woman.

She didn't have to go searching for her next opportunity, as Sarah Fisher did before her. Andretti Green came after Patrick, promising a more competitive car and a substantial pay raise, perhaps to $1.5 million or more per season.

But Patrick, 24, said she has not looked at that as a check-off moment for her or women, because "I think my deal with Rahal Letterman has been very good.

"I think more than anything, and this is what my goal was, I just feel like (the move) leads up to a check-off. I'm going to have a really, really good opportunity. Not that I don't have an opportunity to win now, but I think I have a better opportunity to win at Andretti Green. I think it's closer to checking off certain achievements."

The Meijer Indy 300 race at Kentucky Speedway on Sunday could be considered a check-itout moment. For the first time since the 2002 Indianapolis 500, two women -- Patrick and Fisher -- will be in the starting field of an Indy-car race, if both qualify Saturday.

For Fisher, 25, of Commerrcial Point, it will mark her return after close to a two-season absence from a series in which she was voted its most popular driver on an annual basis after her full-time debut at age 19. But she didn't wrangle her ride with the Dreyer and Reinbold team with the idea of hunting down Patrick.

"I think it's great what she's done for the league and for the sport," Fisher said. "She's drawn a lot of attention to it. It's made the league more popular. People are tuning in. That's awesome. ... (But) to me on track, she'll be just another car."

At the moment, Fisher has not been promised another race, though there is talk of the season finale at Chicagoland in four weeks. That's sort of been the story of her IRL career, which showed promise despite being with a team that was never fully funded. She was the first woman to win an Indy-car pole, at Kentucky in 2002; and she has the highest finish in an IRL race by a woman, second in Homestead, Fla., in 2001..

"But we worked our butts off, man," Fisher said. "We tried as hard as we possibly could and we ran up front when we could and we got the job done. Maybe if we had all those other things, we could have done that on a more consistent basis. But we got to do it more than a couple times, and that was great.

"You can't look back and say, 'Boy, I wish I could have done that, I wish I could have done that.' You can only look forward and say, 'I wish I could have done this because of that.' "

Patrick, who started on the pole at Kentucky last year -- her third pole in a rookie-of-theyear season -- is going to get to do "this because of that." The Andretti Green contract is a reward not only for what she has done on the track but for the attention she has drawn out of the car.

"I think she's done a tremendous job, and the pressures on her are pretty steep," Fisher said. "I'm just looking forward to this one race weekend myself."

But not because she wants to go head-to-head with Patrick. Fisher said that would be an unfair expectation considering her rust. And she will be on a team that hasn't exactly run up front this year while using a variety of drivers, including Buddy Lazier and Al Unser Jr.

"I just want to go get laps, get back on square one again and tell everybody, 'Hey, I still love Indy-car racing.' " Fisher said. "I always have. Always will."

tmay@dispatch.com

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio

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