Danica Patrick made her NASCAR Cup Series broadcasting debut on Sunday, calling the Pennzoil 400 in Las Vegas for FOX Sports. Reviews of her performance have been pretty positive, and former driver Kenny Wallace was especially impressed with her.
Patrick raced in the Cup Series from 2012–18, finishing with seven top 10s through her career. While groundbreaking, she wasn’t a prolific race winner, but as Wallace notes—comparing her to some NFL quarterbacks that have called football—it isn’t always the greatest athletes who become the best broadcasters.
Responding to racing writer Matthew Burroughs, who called Patrick a “soft target” due to her career record while complimenting her call, Wallace made his point.
“Great opinion and here is why,” he wrote. “There are stories all day long about Super Bowl winning quarterbacks that cannot perform on TV.”
It’s a fair point by Wallace. Tony Romo never won a Super Bowl, but he reset the market for game analysts just a few years into his broadcasting career. Meanwhile, Joe Montana, who is on the shortlist for greatest quarterbacks of all time, admitted in 2021 that he quit his broadcasting career at halftime of the Super Bowl, after just nine games as a studio analyst for NBC in 1995–96.
Patrick will be back on the mic in Phoenix at next weekend’s Ruoff Mortgage 500. Based on her experience in Las Vegas, it sounds like she has a long broadcast career ahead of her if she wants it.
