AGR Claims IRL "Loves Danica More than Us"

Note to the humorless: this is all made up.

Andretti Green Racing today filed a formal protest with the Indy Racing League alledging, among other things, that the league "loves Danica more."

The protest stemmed from an autograph session before the July 24 race at Milwaukee in which a separate line was created for those waiting to see rookie sensation Danica Patrick (5-foot-1, 100 pounds). Apparently having two lines, one for "Danica" and one for "Everyone Else" caused AGR to order its drivers to boycott and have a private session later.

"I mean, Christ almighty, you don't have to stick our faces in it," said one AGR driver. "Sure, everyone shows up to see Danica, but the league didn't have to make us feel like total wankers. If that's how it's going to be, we'll take our Sharpies and go home then."

A league insider reported that Dan Wheldon e-mailed Tony George a photo of him with the Borg Warner Trophy with the simple message, "Kiss my bum." Other rumors said Wheldon was willing to talk to officials with NASCAR and Formula One "as long as nobody says nothing to me about Danica."

AGR co-owner Kim Green also protested that Patrick's engineer, Ray Leto, was getting way, way too much air time from ABC/ESPN. "Rushing down to the pit box to talk to Ray Leto every time Patrick moves from 9th to 8th is simply unwarranted," said the complaint. "It clearly shows that the IRL and its broadcast partner have lost that loving feeling. That's time they could be talking to myself or Michael about just how damn great we are."

AGR claimed that if the league would "simply erect 10 to 14 huge billboard that say 'Dan Wheldon is the greatest ever' tracks will sell out immediately and fans will see that they should be attracted to Wheldon as opposed to Patrick."

League officials defended the action saying they couldn't control the fact that a trillion fans wanted to get Danica's autograph and not the AGR drivers. "It wasn't really fair to the 50 or so people who wanted to get an AGR driver's autograph to make them stand in line with 300 people waiting for Danica." The league also said if the AGR drivers wanted to take Danica's place in jumping through a series of media hoops and do "every screwy thing that pops into our mind to promote the league" every week then they might have "room to bitch."

AGR seemed unmoved, however, saying it expected extra Christmas presents, a series of Candygrams and perhaps "a lovely, candlelit dinner" before they would be convinced the IRL still considered them special.

"We see how they look at Danica and, frankly, it hurts," said one driver.

In other news, NASA shuttle commander Eileen Collins sent an e-mail to ABC/ESPN announcer Todd Harris saying, "When Danica goes from zero to 12,000 mph in 8 minutes and orbits the earth for 15 days, you let me know."

©2005 Bill Zahren