Last year when I first found out about Milka Duno, I wondered if she was on her way to becoming the next Danica Patrick. Well, judging by the cat fight between the two during practice at Ohio, Milka wants nothing to do with Danica, and the feeling’s mutual. Check out video of their delightful skirmish:

Video via Deadspin. One of my buddies said he thought the fight was staged when he first saw it. After piecing together a few details such as the fact that indycar.com created and distributed the video, and that the audio was crystal clear with nobody jumping in to break things up, I really have to wonder. Honestly, what sort of publicity had the IRL been getting recently? You think they’re going to make headlines with Ryan Briscoe winning races? Exactly. Something tells me they went Vince McMahon on this one.

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In case you haven’t heard of him until now, let me bring you up to speed. Joey Logano is an 18-year-old race car driver for Joe Gibbs Racing. He’s currently competing in the Nationwide Series and won his first race on the series Saturday night. It’s pretty impressive when you consider it was only his third time racing in the series and that he became the youngest person to win a race on the series at 18-years-old and 21 days. The achievement becomes slightly less impressive when you realize that JGR has won 10 times on the series this year, and seven times with the No. 20 car (with four different drivers). Translation: stick any driver in the No. 20 car for JGR, and he’s winning the race. Any coincidence Logano has taken two poles in the last two weeks? I think not.

Anyway, getting back to it, the kid seems like a prodigy. A young, stud racer, who’s won at every level he’s competed. Now it appears as if we’re going to be dealing with a guy who will be overhyped like a Danica Patrick. He hadn’t even yet competed on the Nationwide Series when I first saw him making the rounds, getting pimped for no appropriate reason on ESPNEWS. It’s pretty clear the JGR is trying to develop a product here and market this guy as one of their racing faces. So while Logano seems to have earned some attention because he’s young and already has won, I’m advising you to be leery and to brace yourself for the overload. It’s going to come fast and furious and just keep in mind when you’re sifting through all the hype and attention that Joe Gibbs Racing is setting this guy up for success. After all, if three other drivers can win in the same exact car in the same exact series, how special can he be?

Oh yeah, and is this kid even old enough to have a driver’s license???

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I was scratching my head trying to figure this one out on Friday afternoon. All of a sudden this story about Danica Patrick hitting an opposing pit crew member during Indy 500 practice started surging up the headline chart on all the major sports sites. ESPN, FOX, Sporting News, SI, pretty much all of them had this story way up at the top as being a “newsworthy” item. I really would like someone to explain to me why that is the case. I’ll give you my reasoning why it’s not.

First of all, it happened in practice, not a race — it has zero impact on her place in the standings or the actual race. Secondly, Danica herself didn’t get hurt. No disrespect to Mr. No-Name pit crew worker, but nobody gives a rats ass what happened to him, so long as he doesn’t keel over and kick the bucket. Lastly, this is by no means a representation of Danica’s lack of skill as a driver; she operates finely tuned automobiles at ridiculously high speeds for a living — she’s a better driver than any of us. She also proved that she can compete on this level winning her first race a few weeks ago. And to compound this fact, the crew member was where he wasn’t supposed to be, so it was on him.

Again, I’m still uncertain as to why this story has garnered any coverage, unless it’s the media’s way at trying to strike back at Danica Patrick and make her seem incompetent. Maybe that’s it. But let me ask you this: if Albert Pujols hit the Brewers bench coach with a ball in batting practice, would that make headlines? Exactly. Neither should this.

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For some reason there’s always been this stigma attached to Danica, Anna Kournikova, and a few other hot female athletes. Like people were always trying to bring them down for being good looking and world-class at what they did. As if just being hot weren’t enough — which it clearly is in my book — ugly chicks had to try and make us men feel bad about turning them into a big deal. If you think about it, what separates them from any other good looking girl is the fact that they are/were amongst the world best in their fields, and that’s how they gained notice. So to me, all this crap about “Danica needing to win a race to legitimize her publicity” was meaningless. But anyway, to satisfy the haters, Danica went out there and won an IRL race, but as luck would have it, it was in Japan.

So now you’re going to hear all this stuff about Danica being legitimate, and now we’re going to have all these new Danica-marketed products. Just think about how much you’ve already seen Danica in magazines, commercials, and hawking this or that product, and that was all without winning. You’ll certainly get your Danica fill whether or not you wanted it. And perhaps the biggest sign of this absurdity is AirTran Airways which has already declared Monday April 21st AirTranica Day and painted her picture on one of their planes. That’s right, if you’re flying from Orlando to Pittsburgh on flight 994 or from Pittsburgh to Atlanta on flight 993, you’ll be aboard AirTranica Won. Hopefully they can fly as well as she drives. You have been warned: brace yourself for Danica overload.

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Talk about an eye-catching headline. I didn’t even need to know who Aaron Fike was to be drawn to that story. ESPN the Magazine tells the tale of NASCAR truck series driver Aaron Fike — a dude I never had heard of — who is currently battling a drug problem. Really, all you need to know about this dude is that he raced extremely high speed automobiles while tripping on one of the more exotic drugs around. That in itself is insane, though not surprising for someone willing to put his life on the line each time he steps into a truck to race at those speeds. Check out some of the details:

On July 7, 2007, Fike and fiancée Cassandra Davidson were arrested in the parking lot of Kings Island amusement park outside of Cincinnati. Security guards knocked on the window of Fike’s Toyota SUV after realizing that a black sheet was preventing anyone from seeing into the back seat. At first the couple attempted to flee, but a search of the vehicle turned up a haul of drug paraphernalia, including a 100-count box of syringes, bloody napkins and black tar heroin.
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Only seven days earlier Fike had posted a career-best fifth-place finish in the O’Reilly 200 at the .75-mile Memphis Motorsports Park. The run boosted the rookie of the year favorite to eighth in the NCTS championship standings. He said he used heroin earlier that day.

Talk about some nice, quality, family bonding. But honestly, I’ve seen Pulp Fiction, I know what happened to Jules, how the heck did this dude handle that type of machinery on that type of drug? Was he just immune to it? Ordinarily this is the type of fella with whom I would never get into a vehicle. But on second thought, with that type of skill, I might have to reconsider my position. Oh yeah, and that’s one heck of a drug policy you’ve got going there, too.

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This is nothing new for Tony Stewart, driver of the No. 20 car. Despite finishing second in the Spring Cup race Sunday, the solid run did nothing to change his horrible opinion of the tires he was running on — Goodyears — the provider for NASCAR. Check out the comments made by the irritable Stewart following the race, and let’s just say he won’t be signing any Goodyear endorsement checks anytime soon:

It’s just a shame that the teams work so hard and spend so much money to compete and it’s all dictated by a tire company that’s building tires that aren’t not worthy of a street car. The first thing I’m doing when I go home is dismounting anything I got that’s got Goodyears on it.
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We don’t want to have to race on tires like we raced on today, every week. There wasn’t anything about today’s race that was fun — I don’t think for anybody.

Stewart wasn’t the only driver to complain about the tires after the race in Atlanta — Dale Jr. got into the act as well. He pleaded to NASCAR not to use the same tires again “at Darlington because that will definitely top how horrible [Sunday] was.” Man, I have to say, I just love Tony Stewart. Dude is such a loose cannon. Gotta love the guys who never say the right thing and have that “I don’t give a ****” attitude. Does he give a crap how much money Goodyear is paying to be the exclusive tire provider of NASCAR? Heck no. He’ll rip anyone, anytime, any place. Gotta love that.

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