Danica Patrick's saying all the right things

For somebody who's supposed to be pounding the final nails into the coffin of NASCAR, Danica Patrick is awfully humble and funny.

JR Motorsports introduced Danica to the media as a new member of the team, and by all indications, she's getting off on exactly the right foot. (For the fact-checkers among you, that photo is from last week's event, not Thursday's.)

From a training perspective, she's already deep into it. She's already done testing at the Walt Disney World track and, come Friday, will be continuing testing at Daytona. She and crew chief Tony Eury Jr. noted the "language barrier" between them as they tried to figure out how to communicate about the car and determine how to push it farther.

And Danica is taking a humble, it's-not-about-me approach to all of this. Evidence: she's not yet ready to jump into the Nationwide Daytona race, for the simple reason that it's a de facto Cup race. At that particular race, roughly 30 drivers with Cup experience run, and Danica recognizes that running in such a race for her debut perhaps wouldn't be in her best long-term interests. That runs completely counter to the public criticism that she's doing this for the publicity or self-aggrandizement.

But as she reiterated on Thursday, she's still got her eyes on NASCAR's plum gig: running in Cup. The Nationwide opportunity is, as Danica said, "a perfect transition into Cup." Pending some testing and her team's sign-off, it wouldn't be a surprise at all to see Danica get the equivalent of a late-season baseball call-up to run in a Sprint Cup race or two. It probably won't happen this year, but it's a solid bet for 2011.

"There's no doubt we're going to be competitive," Danica said. "It's just going to take time."

Let's be honest, Danicamania is going to be forced down the throats of NASCAR fans for the next few months stretching into years. But judging from Thursday's press conference, she's well aware of what awaits her, and she's well prepared to give NASCAR the respect it deserves.

"She's got every opportunity in the world," Eury said. "It can be as big as she wants it to be."