Back when Danica Patrick raced in NASCAR, she wasn’t necessarily the most successful driver. But was she just a “marketing gimmick”, as ESPN analyst and former driver Kyle Petty called her?

“She’s not Juan Montoya sorry, and she’s not Dario Franchitti and she’s not Tony Stewart. So she’s not really shown over there and won races and done stuff over there numbers-wise. She’s just a marketing machine,” Petty said in an interview.

“So when you look at it like that, what she does on the racetrack I hope she is successful but let’s look at the facts and be blunt about it.”

Petty added that Patrick could help the sport, the publicity side of things.

But in the end, she’s gonna have to perform on the racetrack. And that will be on her shoulders.

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It should be noted that Petty was not necessarily criticizing her. In fact, he was very much in support of her being in the sport. His concern was over her on-track performance more than anything else.

Danica Patrick had a winless career in NASCAR

While it was certainly a fresh breath of air to see a woman compete in the Cup series. From a racing standpoint, she could never garner any wins throughout her stint in NASCAR.

After the end of her seven years in the IndyCar Series, where she grabbed one spectacular victory and seven podium finishes. Danica made the move into the NASCAR Cup Series in 2012 with Stewart-Haas Racing. She stayed there until she retired in 2017 altogether.

However, her race craft never yielded anything great, and she kept it that way without a single victory in all those years. She only scored 14 top-20 finishes and led a total of 30 laps in the NASCAR Cup Series.

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Regardless of her lackluster performance in the Cup Series, she is well regarded as one of the most popular figures in the sport.