Monday, July 18, 2005 | 9:25 a.m.
Ron Kantowski is a Las Vegas Sun sports writer. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4088.
There are two drivers named Patrick running around in circles in the Indy Racing League but this column is mostly about the one who doesn't wear a skirt away from the track.
Summerlin resident Patrick Carpentier flirted with his first career victory in an IRL car Saturday night at Nashville Superspeedway in Tennessee. He led for 25 laps and was out in front at the Firestone Indy 200 with just seven laps to go when race winner Dario Franchitti -- Mr. Ashley Judd -- passed him for the lead. Sam Hornish also made his way around Carpentier on the white flag lap, relegating the transplanted Las Vegan to third place.
Third place is normally nothing to sneeze at in an automobile race. But Carpentier should have brought a hankie to the postrace news conference where most of the questions were reserved for the other driver in the series named Patrick. That would be Danica, the female media sensation who finished four spots behind Carpentier in seventh place.
None of this seemed to bother Carpentier, who is more easygoing than a surfer on Prozac. In a sport where drivers are often perceived as self-absorbed, Carpentier is so not full of himself that several years ago, a day after he finished third in the Michigan 500, I spotted him having lunch at the In-N-Out Burger on Sahara Avenue, across from Palace Station.
Instead of ignoring me or wishing he had made reservations at Ruth's Chris, Carpentier told me to bring my Double-Double over to his table. We had a nice chat, during which he excitedly told me that and his wife Anick had recently bought a home in Summerlin, and how much he liked to pedal his bicycle around Red Rock Canyon.
Our paths didn't cross again until last year, when Carpentier was testing a Champ car at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.
"Hey, I remember you," he said, pumping my hand as if I was related to one of his sponsors. "You're the guy from the hamburger stand."
His fellow drivers must think the world of him, too, because when the media tried to turn the postrace news conference into another question-and-answer session with Ms. Patrick, Franchitti deigned to put the spotlight where he thought it belonged.
Somebody asked about Patrick's performance, and Franchitti said she was a good driver and yada, yada, yada. But he saved most of his praise for Carpentier and how he was able to steer a normally non-competitive car -- the No. 83 Red Bull Chevy fielded by former Indy 500 winner Eddie Cheever -- to the front of the pack.
"For me, that's probably one of the stories of the night," said Franchitti, who drives for the dominant Andretti-Green team, whose drivers have won six of the first nine IRL races. Runner-up Hornish also drives for a pedigreed team (Marlboro Team Penske), making Carpentier's podium finish in a motorized mutt ride even that more impressive.
Carpentier was a five-time winner in the rival Champ Car series but was better known for playing second fiddle at Forsythe Championship Racing to famous teammates such as fellow Las Vegan Paul Tracy and the late Greg Moore. But with his future in Champ car undecided and having yet to race in the Indy 500 at age 33, Carpentier decided to pursue an IRL opportunity.
The only open seat was at Cheever, a team with limited resources most noted for giving young chargers such as Tomas Scheckter and 2004 Indy 500 winner Buddy Rice their starts. Still, the Red Bull cars are more or less considered the Tijuana Taxis of the circuit, and most insiders thought Carpentier was making a career mistake by joining Cheever.
To wit, as well as Carpentier drove at Nashville, were it not for a late-race wheel-banging incident with another car that took him out of his pit stop sequence and later played into his fuel mileage strategy, he probably would have finished somewhere south of the border and the top 10.
"I was a bit disappointed to get the third place, but I was very happy because it was kind of mixed emotions," Carpentier said after matching his season-best finish. "It was kind of a bonus with the crash and what happened (that) we ended up there."
Still, instead of talking to the guy who started 17th and finished third, the press was more intrigued by the gal who started second and finished seventh.
Anybody who predicted that Danica Patrick's 15 minutes of fame would expire barring a victory had better bring their crystal balls in for a pit stop. She's qualifying near the front of the field at virtually every race and her consistent top-10 finishes have been more than enough to keep her in the media eye.
When you consider it has taken the average IRL rookie 33 races to post his first victory and Patrick has two fourth-place finishes in her first nine starts as a green 23-year-old rookie, she's way ahead of the learning curve.
That's on the track. As far as Madison Avenue goes, Patrick already has lapped the field.
It was announced before Saturday's race that a new marketing deal between Rahal-Letterman Racing and OldWorld Industries will soon have Patrick doing TV, radio, print and internet ads for products such as PEAK antifreeze and Mr. Clean.
As for Carpentier and the rest, they'll have to continue to settle for doing a Top Job in relative obscurity.
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