Danica Patrick becomes first woman to win an Indy Car race

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As this site has been down for a couple of days due to a server move I’ve not had chance to write about a remarkable weekend for Indy Car racing in America (however I did write about it in my weekly column for Auto Trader).

It was always going to be strange with half the cars in Japan for the “IRL” race and the other half at Long Beach, back in the Panoz cars, to give Champ Car its last hurrah.

But it was Danica Patrick who made the headlines by snatching victory with two laps to go at Motegi, becoming the first female driver to win a race at this level.

Patrick has spoken about how glad she is that she won’t hear the “when will you win your first race?” questions any more. I remember Jenson Button saying something similar in 2006 when he scored his first win – and he’s not been on the top of the rostrum since (or anywhere near it last year).

The question here is, has Patrick cracked the art of winning Indy Races, and is she now going to be a regular front runner? That hasn’t happened for her team mate Marco Andretti since he won his first race.

The field will be back at full strength this weekend and with some of the ex-Champ Car guys looking strong when they raced at St. Petersburg it will be interesting to see if they’ve narrowed the deficit on the ovals.

Assuming Sky are showing it live, that it.

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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