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It's not her fault...really, it's not. Despite the grumblings I hear around town about people "sick of hearing about Danica!" It's not like she ASKS the media to cover her relentlessly. Quite honestly, I don't know of any racer who can perform their best under the microscope of the media like that. Case in point--Dale Earnhardt Jr., who just so happens to be Danica's team owner. Seriously...doesn't anyone recall how sickening it has been to hear race commentators falling all over themselves to stroke the seed of the late, great Dale Earnhardt? Especially when the offspring wasn't exactly scoring poles or wins? This is the same thing that we're experiencing now with Danica. Isn't it ironic that while the white-hot spotlight of attention churned stories out of Daytona focused on Danica--that Jr was finally able to flex some performance muscle and earn the outside pole for Sunday's Daytona 500? Now I know that the newly forged close working partnership between Mark Martin and his team with Jr's also helped to pave the way for this early success for him--but still...the glare of the spotlight has got to be exhausting and distracting. Unfortunately, many in the media take the easy way out and focus on the "hot topics" that the "masses" allegedly want to hear and see. And in reality, people seem to want to watch what happens with Danica. I know for a fact there were a ton more people watching this past weekend's ARCA race, where Danica made her stock car racing debut. So, whether you're sick of her or love her...if you watched that ARCA race--and you normally don't care about that series--you're feeding into the driving force behind the frenzy of Danica coverage. You have yourself to blame, if you hate it. Get ready for a slew of stories again, as she'll be running in Saturday's Nationwide race now too. Has she earned all of this coverage? Probably not. But then again, neither has Dale Jr. over the past several years. Overrated? You bet. But people still eat up anything about them. Either because they hope for a failure...or success. Danica and Jr are VERY polarizing. If it were me--I'd be covering Travis Kvapil...and the irony behind his current situation. He's secured a ride with Frontrow Motorsports for 2010. Last season, he drove his butt off, only to have his points "bought out" from under his sponsorship-short team by Paul Menard's team. That was the only way that Menard was able to secure the points to ensure entry into a string of races, when he was struggling to qualify for them. This off-season has been a strange jockeying of ownership of teams and points. But one transaction in particular has created a domino effect that ended up having Menard get the points placement for one of the Richard Petty Motorsports teams that he now drives for...and his points that he had with Yates Racing from 2009 being transferred to Frontrow Motorsports to...you guessed it--Travis Kvapil's team. Ironic, huh? So now both Wisconsin boys will have security for the first 5 races, even if their qualifying efforts aren't what they need to be, thanks to the transfer of those points. And people laugh at me for watching a weekly soap opera. Go figure!