There remains discusson in racing circles about "diversity," the attempt to force-feed female and minority competitors upon a sport that evolved from and to an all white-male sport. Periodically such discussions reach the fore of the motorsports press, and invariably the treatment of the issue is shallow with the pertinent question never being asked - what good is diversity?

It is worth asking because pro sports media, and to a lesser extent pro sports marketing, has made a strong and continuing effort at promoting non-white male athletes regardless of their effectiveness in competition. In racing circles it centers on Danica Patrick, who was promoted as "the great female hope" for motorsports when she was hired by Rahal-Letterman Racing for Indycar competition in 2005 - this despite having never won a race in lower levels of open wheel competition and despite the fact she promoted herself more with semi-nude photo spreads than through the actual grind of racing.

Patrick's press coverage was kid-gloves to an embarassing extent, with scant attention paid to her continuous failings in racing - in her first race, at Homestead in 2005, she plowed into a spinning car without making an attempt to avoid contact or slow down; a year later driver Paul Dana was killed in a similar crash and was all but crucified by the media in its attack on his driving judgement even before he was buried.

Patrick's clear lack of killer instint as a racer showed up in almost every race she ran, with a timidity in traffic coupled with frequent argument with her crew chief about the racecar during which productive feedback from her was never forthcoming. She also in her third and fourth seasons in racing, developed a bad habit of crashing on pit road or coming out of the pits; she crashed out of three late-season races in such fashion in 2007, and during the 2008 Indanapolis 500 month she hit a crewman on pit rod before qualifying, then crashed into another car (which won the subsequent race) on pit road late in the 500.

The over-engineering of modern racing has made weak drivers like Patrick and 1 star Lewis Hamilton (who is black) look better than they in fact are, especially when the cars drivers like Patrick and Hamilton race are at a substantial budget and technological edge over competitor cars - Hamilton's F1 circuit is a grotesque closed loop of two or three teams worth perhaps $1 billion combined racing against a handful of smaller teams priced out of any contention

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