The Danika Patrick story is coming to an end, but the usual suspects are hoping to squeeze one more drop of juice from the story. Patrick was always a marketing ploy by NASCAR to draw in suburban viewers. The new people running stock car racing are ashamed of their fans, they want new and better fans, which is why they hired Patrick as a driver. Richard Petty had the gall to point out the obvious, thus causing the usual suspects to rush to the little waif’s aid.

When it comes to Danica Patrick, the Petty family just can’t seem to pass on the subject without causing a caution flag.

This time, however, it was “The King” — NASCAR Hall of Famer Richard Petty — who took some swipes at Patrick when asked Sunday whether she would ever win in the Sprint Cup Series.

“If everybody else stayed home,” Petty told reporters at the Canadian Motorsports Expo. “If she’d have been a male, nobody would ever know if she’d showed up at a racetrack.

“This is a female deal that’s driving her. There’s nothing wrong with that, because that’s good PR for me. More fans come out, people are more interested in it. She has helped to draw attention to the sport, which helps everybody in the sport.”

That’s being polite, Patrick is in NASCAR because she is a women, but not a gross looking lesbian. She is not very good at driving a race car. If she was male, she is somewhere in the lower ranks hoping to catch a break. Probably by now she would have had to quit, as the dream would be over. Admittedly, I’m not a fan of the sport, but I’m pretty sure the point is to win once in a while, something she has never done.

Patrick finished 27th in the Sprint Cup standings during her rookie season, driving the No. 10 Chevrolet for Stewart-Haas Racing. Her highlight came in the season-opening Daytona 500, where she finished eighth after becoming the first woman to win the pole for that event.

That is her only top-10 finish in 46 races at NASCAR’s highest level. Before that, she amassed seven top-10 finishes and one pole in 60 races over four seasons in the Nationwide Series.

However, Patrick is one of the most successful female auto racers in history. Patrick is the only woman to win a major open-wheel race, finishing first in a 2008 IndyCar Series race in Japan. She has six top-10s in the Indy 500 and was third in 2009, the best finish ever for a woman in that historic event.

I suppose that’s something. Somewhere there is a midget claiming to be the best midget basketball player in history.

Petty has commented on Patrick’s involvement in NASCAR before, saying in 2006 that “I just don’t think it’s a sport for women. And so far, it’s proven out. It’s really not. It’s good for them to come in. It gives us a lot of publicity, it gives them publicity.”

His son — former driver and TV analyst Kyle Petty — has been more outspoken through the years about Patrick’s involvement, calling her a “marketing machine” and “not a race car driver” as recently as this past June.

“Danica has been the perfect example of somebody who can qualify better than what she runs,” Petty said on Speed TV last year. “She can go fast, but she can’t race. I think she’s come a long way, but she’s still not a race car driver. And I don’t think she’s ever going to be a race car driver.”

There’s no reason why females can’t race competitively, but there have been few female race car drivers. The one exception is drag racing, where there are several top female drivers. The reason is drag racing is not personal competition. The drivers really compete against themselves and their machine. They are not outwitting one another or engaged in a test of wills. regular car racing is a test of people, so that’s why women have had so little success and why Patrick is just a public relations ploy.