I had a dream last weekend that Robert Hight was driving a dirt late model.

So, maybe I need help. Or maybe it was just that I had seen an NHRA promo video about 12 times Friday and Saturday night while covering the Circle K Colossal 100 at The Dirt Track @ Lowe’s Motor Speedway. I’m voting for the latter.

GOING UP: The Dragway @ Lowe's Motor Speedway is being built just outside of The Dirt Track. (Joe Secka/JMS Pro Photo)

LMS officials played the video in a loop with others to promote upcoming events at the speedway and The Dirt Track. The NHRA video, though, was being used to generate interest in the under-construction dragway outside the clay oval’s turns three and four.

It’s been just three months since officials broke ground on the multi-million dollar “Bellagio of drag strips,” but the project is more than well under way. The skeleton of the strip’s 30,000-capacity grandstands is in place, the starting line tower appeared seemingly over night and two tunnels linking the grandstands to the pits are nearly completed. If work continues at this pace, construction should be completed 40 days prior to the facility’s first event, the NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series’ Carolinas Nationals Sept. 11-14.

Like a farmer watching his crops grow in anticipation of the fall’s harvest or a pregnant mother eyeing her ever-rounding stomach as she awaits the birth of her child, I’ve been noting the progress on the drag strip. With each new addition to the facility, the reality that there is going to be a drag race — an honest to God NHRA event — here in Concord hits me. I still may not believe it’s true until the haulers roll onto the LMS property in September.

But as I watched that promo video again and again last weekend, I wanted to jump out of my seat. I could’ve been mistaken for a 6 year old waiting for Christmas morning. Is it here yet? Is it here yet? Every time I heard Saliva’s “Ladies And Gentleman” — the song NHRA uses in the video and utilized during last season’s ESPN broadcasts — I wanted to scream, “I can’t wait for September.”

Luckily, I don’t have to wait that long for a little drag racing action. I’m heading to Commerce, Ga., this weekend for the Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Southern Nationals. I can’t wait. Just the thought of hearing a Top Fuel dragster taking off from the starting line gives me goosebumps.

So, if you’re at Atlanta Dragway or you happen to watch the NHRA coverage on TV this weekend and you see some crazy 20-something woman skipping through the pits, don’t be alarmed. It’s just me, and yes, I am that excited.

Here's why you should name The Dragway @ Lowe's Motor Speedway after, well, me!

April 11: Watch Out For The IRL!

According to Fox, television ratings for Sunday’s Samsung 500 from Texas Motor Speedway are down four percent from last year’s event. Despite the drop in ratings from 2007 to this season, the race was still the highest-rated event for the day on any broadcast network. Overall this season, Fox’s coverage of NASCAR is up three percent over a year ago.
 
So what caused the Texas ratings to drop? Fox says the primary factor was competition from the first full Sunday afternoon of Major League Baseball.

ON TRACK: IRL IndyCar Series rookie Graham Rahal navigates the St. Petersburg Street Circuit en route to his victory in Sunday's Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg. (Joe Secka/JMS Pro Photo)

Who could blame anyone for turning to another channel? Fox is lucky to have received as high of a rating as it did for what was a painfully boring and lackluster Samsung 500. I would have found more excitement in a three-hour nap on my futon.

The real excitement was in the Honda Grand Prix of St. Petersburg, the second race of the IRL IndyCar season and the first road- or street-course for the recently unified open-wheel series. Unlike the previous week at Homestead-Miami Speedway when the former Champ Car drivers were expected to perform below muster because of a lack of oval experience, those same drivers were expected to excel on the 1.8-mile circuit.
 
They didn’t disappoint. Six of the top 10 drivers represented former Champ Car teams. And Graham Rahal, son of open-wheel legend Bobby Rahal and a rookie in the series, held off IndyCar veteran Helio Castroneves to score his first victory in his first start in the unified series.

Did I mention the race started in the rain? You won’t see that in any NASCAR event.

Earlier this week, Lowe’s Motor Speedway President and General Manager Humpy Wheeler encouraged NASCAR to hold an open Sprint Cup test at the speedway before the May 17 NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race. Wheeler wants to “have the best racing possible [at Lowe’s] during the month of May.”

Wheeler should be concerned that both the Sprint Cup All-Star Race and the Coca-Cola 600 — one of NASCAR’s crown jewel events — are going to be dull and boring after the fiasco that was the Samsung 500. Texas Motor Speedway is almost a complete replica of Lowe’s, so what’s to suggest the racing at the Concord, N.C., facility would be any different than what we saw in Fort Worth, Texas?

If NASCAR has boring race after boring race, networks won’t be losing viewers to major league baseball. They’ll be losing them to the IRL IndyCar Series and the historic season the series continues to have, even only two races into its schedule.

April 4 Blog: Danica's Mixed Signals

I’ve had it. Finally. I can’t hold back any longer.

On Tuesday morning, copies of the 2008 IRL IndyCar Series Media Guide arrived at our office. Before shelving the heavy tomb with similar books from other series, I took a few minutes to flip through the glossy, colorful pages of driver profiles and candid photos. As my eyes glazed over with the seemingly endless amount of new statistics at my fingertips, my jaw dropped in disbelief — and disgust.

MIXED IDENTITY: Does Danica Patrick want to be an IndyCar Series driver or a model? (Shawn Payne/IRL Photo)

There on Danica Patrick’s page is her bikini-clad image from the recent Sport Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. Other more tasteful images surround the dominant show of skin.

I quickly flipped to the sections for the other female drivers in the IRL; believe it or not, Patrick is not the only IndyCar driver with double-X chromosomes. Sarah Fisher’s page of candid images is clean and wholesome. Even Milka Duno’s exotic beauty is tamely displayed compared to Patrick.

Granted, I’m sure Patrick didn’t have any say in what photos were used or how her page was designed. That still doesn’t mean that it has any place in a media guide — a professional tool designed to aid the media, not to inspire lustful or wanton thoughts about its drivers. Moreover, if such a shot of Patrick is going to be included, at least be fair and incorporate something of, say, Dan Wheldon in a Speedo.

The SI Swimsuit Issue image brings up a more important point, however. What message is Patrick trying to send to the racing world? Does she want to be a driver, or does she want to be a model?

There’s no question that Patrick should be proud of her physique. Most women would be grateful to have a body like hers. But, as a close friend pointed out, if she wants to be a driver, she’s going to need to wear a lot more than a skimpy bikini when she climbs behind the wheel of any race car. And even if that bikini is made of Nomex, I think that Patrick should take care of the business at hand before posing for any more photo shoots.

All of the Danica hype — the same hype that had her plastered all over USA Today and Yahoo! over a laughable weight issue last week — began in 2005 when, as a rookie of 23, Patrick became the first woman to lead the Indianapolis 500 and notched both the highest starting and finishing positions by a woman in the series’ most prestigious event. Now in her fourth full-time season of IndyCar competition, Patrick has 27 top 10s in 48 events and has three poles to her credit. Last season, she finished a career-high seventh in points and scored her best finish — a second at Belle Isle. But despite all these glowing statistics, there is still a large goose egg in her wins column.

Now in her second season with Andretti Green Racing, Patrick has all the resources she could possibly need to get her No. 7 Motorola Dallara-Honda to victory circle. Yet all the media attention she receives makes one believe that she deserves a pat on the head for doing as well as she has since she’s a woman.

If you’re going to play that card, though, Patrick should be held accountable for the type of image she’s projecting as the most recognizable woman race-car driver, though she’s not even the only female in the IndyCar Series, not to mention any other form of motorsports. Most of all, she needs to be responsible for the image she’s projecting to young girls who look up to her as a role model.

And just what type of message is Patrick sending to those girls? On one hand, she may give the impression of the glamorous life of a celebrity. She gets to race for a high-profile team and she’s featured in swimsuit spreads and racy — no pun intended — Super Bowl commercials. She’s beautiful and women want to be her and men fantasize about her (despite the wedding band on her left hand).

Yet the Danica hype seems to come more from her appearances off track than for any driving feat she may have done. Ten bucks says the average person could tell you what Patrick looks like and that she’s a race-car driver but couldn’t tell you one thing about her driving career.

Patrick admits “God gave me gifts.” She told The New York Times “some of [those gifts] have to do with beauty, some of them have to do with talent.” Which talent she’s talking about — driving an Indy car at more than 200 miles per hour or laying on a beach somewhere for a photo shoot — I’m not sure.

Regardless, I’d be disappointed if my daughter chose Patrick as a role model, just as I would be disappointed if she chose Britney Spears as an idol. And if Patrick continues to objectify herself the way she has been lately, you might as well put her on an MTV Video Music Awards stage and drape a seven-foot Albino python across her shoulders.

Instead, I would urge my daughter to look up to someone such as Ashley Force. Like Patrick, Force has gained recognition for being a woman — though far from the only female competing in the NHRA — and, of course, for being the daughter of 14-time Funny Car champion John Force.

Even so, Force is a racer who, well, races. She’s not out posing for Sports Illustrated or filming provocative Internet commercials for Super Bowl spots though she is just as beautiful — if not more so — than Patrick.

Better yet, I have never seen Force throw a temper tantrum, stomping around the pit area when something prevented her from completing a run. I have never seen her confronting another competitor when something didn’t go her way.  She simply races.

Perhaps that’s because Force really knows what she is — and what she wants to be — and isn’t letting the hype objectify her like other women in the racing spotlight.