It may not happen with Patrick, either, though we certainly hope differently — the same as we did with Mears.

My wife and I, taking a break in our new-but-still-cluttered living room, were talking about Patrick’s victory.

“I bet her sponsors are happy,” she said.

And that got me wondering: Did they?

Patrick, at right with Helio Castroneves, is the most recognizable — and, therefore, most marketable — person in the IRL. To your average fan, she’s probably more recognizable than many Cup drivers.
DanicaMania has certainly waned since her strong run in the Indianapolis 500 a few years ago. But she made an impression that day to the general population, an impression that largely remains, even if it’s not as strong as it once was.

I hoped to prove a point to my wife. She’s a converted racing fan and she tries hard to learn what’s going on; so I relate this story not to belittle her, but simply to prove the point. Plus she usually hangs around to watch the Cup races with me; open-wheel races are less prominent on our TV.

“Name me one other driver in the IRL,” I said.

“Can you give me a minute?” she replied. After a minute, she said, “Doesn’t one of the Andrettis run in the IRL?”

“Yeah,” I said, “Marco. But you knew who Danica was even before this weekend.”

She admitted that she did.

As such, my guess is that her sponsors were plenty happy with her as it was. That she won is wonderful for them, giving them a fresh round of DanicaMania exposure. She appeared on CNN this morning, which ignores all but the biggest sports stories. She was wearing, of course, a Motorola polo shirt.

But her story runs a few parallels with Mears: running for their circuit’s best organization, notable in equal parts for driving ability as for things entirely beyond their control — Patrick’s good looks and the Mears’ family’s history in auto racing.

Where Mears has fallen short — his average finish in the 32 races since the win at Lowe’s is 17.06, with four top fives (none higher than fourth) and nine top-10s — Patrick can succeed. Andretti Green still gives her the best equipment in the IRL; as such, her finishes have trended upward.

In the past calendar year, since just after the 2007 race at Motegi, she’s started outside of the top 10 just seven times and has 11 top-10 finishes. (A quick word of caution that a direct driver-to-driver comparison may not work; there are 43 cars at the start of every Cup race while no more than 26 drivers started the IRL’s first two events this season. This weekend, of course, the former Champ Car drivers competed in Long Beach while the IRL mainstays were in Japan. Instead, we use the numbers as shorthand for a more general comparison.)

Whether she does remains to be seen.

• TRYING TO WATCH SUNDAY’S Nationwide race in Mexico City was brutal. I figured it would go quickly and hunkered down on the aforementioned living-room couch.

But those two long red-flag periods were enough to test anyone’s patience. By the time the race finally ended, we had matriculated upstairs to put together a new dresser (man, am I domesticated). The TV sat on the floor. My wife was kind enough to relay the information that Kyle Busch had won.

• OUR NEW PLACE is still in a disastrous state: boxes everywhere, little sign of organization. Tomorrow, we have some people coming by to help us get set up — mainly one guy who will take a look at our ailing fridge — so I won’t be here.

I’ll be back on Wednesday, just in time to talk about one race that will surely be more exciting than Mexico City: Talladega.

(Photo by Katsumi Kasahara/Associated Press)