Below are select quotes from IRL driver Danica Patrick from the Feb. 25 edition of Wind Tunnel with Dave Despain on SPEED: source: paddocktalk.com Despain: Was the performance difference (between Andretti Green Racing and Rahal Letterman Racing) the key reason for you changing teams or was there more to it than that? Patrick: (AGR) is a first-class operation all the way around, but the most important thing is that they are successful on the track ... everyone was dominated last year by Penske and Ganassi, but there were only two people to beat them all year, and that was Tony (Kanaan) at Milwaukee and Marco (Andretti) at Sonoma, so it's not the worst thing in the world. But (AGR) was fired up not to let that happen again. So, they are driven ... that's for sure. Despain: Leaving Rahal had to be tough. Bobby backed you when you were an unknown Formula racer trying to make it in Europe, brought you to what was then the Toyota Atlantics and then to the IRL ... we assume there was a bond there. The flipside to that is, again the team's performance ... all the rumors about Bobby's level of commitment to the IRL ... his son Graham in Champ Car. With all that background, when and why did you decide to leave Rahal Letterman? Patrick: It was a little bit of a long process. No matter what, the decision was difficult because sometimes the beast you know is better than the one you don't know. And I was definitely comfortable with my situation ... I liked my engineer ... I thought it worked well. But I needed to see a little more commitment as far as development goes. As far as doing whatever it took to go faster. I didn't really see all that ... it was a little bit tough, but that was the main reason. Despain: Was it your decision? Was it Bobby's decision? Did he offer you something that gave you a reason to stay or not? Patrick: Maybe one of the parts of it was that he didn't ask me earlier. The question came pretty late in the game and he probably could have made a move much earlier that would have secured a longer future for me with them and I might have done it. It definitely ran its course in the contracts and down to the very end is when the question came, so there were opportunities.
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