Mike Celizic

I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I'm going to anyway. Danica Patrick is starting to annoy me.

That's not easy to say. I was thrilled when she got a good ride in an IndyCar and delighted when she led the Indy 500 three years ago and finished fourth at the brickyard as a rookie. And I celebrated in print when she won a race in Japan in March and made history as the first woman to win in any of the big circuits — IndyCars, Formula One or NASCAR.

Like everyone else, I cut her big breaks when she whined about other drivers or went after them in pit road. But what looked like isolated incidents are starting to become standard procedure for her. On Saturday, when she went after another female driver, Milka Duno, during a practice session, I realized her act is getting tired and thin.

She's not the only one. There are plenty of other drivers who are bad actors and are equally deserving of a reality check. The difference is, we're free to talk about them. It's only Patrick who keeps getting off scot-free in the mainstream media. (The blogosphere is another story entirely. Google Danica Patrick plus that word that rhymes with witch and you get 82,000 hits. It seems there is more than a little anger directed her way among fans.)

The incident Saturday could be seen as understandable, if not justifiable. Duno is a former fashion model with a string of masters degrees in the sciences who started racing 12 years ago at the advanced age of 24. To be blunt, she's not very good, but Patrick has shown that putting an attractive woman in the cockpit of a race car is good for business, so Duno has been able to get a ride.

As long as Duno has a car and sponsors, she's certainly welcome to race. There have been plenty of male drivers with as little chance of winning as she has who have also taken their turns around the track.

The fact remains that she does get in the way. All slow drivers tend to do that. And even Ashley Judd has gone public in telling her to get off the track. But it's just lousy form for anyone to go stomping down pit road to accost a fellow competitor.

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Patrick's been doing this for awhile. It seems that the less success she has, the more she does it. What was once seen as the sign of a feisty competitor is starting to look like the tired act of a chronic hothead.

Racing is full of hotheads, and the same things that send ordinary people into fits of road rage during their daily commutes can have the same effect on professional drivers especially when those things happen at 200 mph.

A.J. Foyt wasn't Mr. Congeniality and the sainted Dale Earnhardt Sr. would run his own grandmother into the wall if she got in his way at Daytona. And drivers famous and infamous have been trading paint samples on the track and insults and fists off it since the dawn of the sport.

So Patrick is hardly unique, and it's fair to say that she shouldn't be held to a different standard than a male driver. If they can act like spoiled brats, so can she.

That would be true, except we don't accept that sort of behavior from men, either. When they get out of line, we get all over them. When they cut off other drivers, we tell them about it. So why should she be off-limits? Why can't we tell her to shut up and win some races, the same as we have with male drivers?

She has won one race, and been celebrated for that. Good job, way to go, historic victory, goodbye stereotype, huzzah. She's also consistent, holding down sixth place in the IRL's season standings. And she made a ton of money by posing for cameras and selling products, which is nothing if not the American way. And if she made more money than a man because she's female and cute, that shouldn't be anyone's problem, either. There are enough men already earning more than women for doing the same job. Turnabout is more than fair play.

But Patrick shouldn't be untouchable. She already has one huge advantage men don't have when she decides to give someone a piece of her mind. If one male driver confronts another, the one who feels unfairly accused can take a swing at his tormentor. It's not approved behavior, and it will draw fines and heavy criticism, but it is an option.

It's not an option, though, when Patrick is the hothead going after a male driver. The guy has to either run away or stand there and take it. If he hits another guy, he gets fined by the sport. If he were to hit a woman, he'd be in jail. It's even considered bad form for an aggrieved male to stalk into her pit and start berating her. The guy who does that is going to be flayed alive in the media.

I happen to believe that no one should hit anyone, although if it should happen, I will be at YouTube watching the video maybe twice if it's a good fight. And heated shouting matches with flying flecks of spittle are always amusing, not to mention good for the ratings.

But the fights have to be fair, and its not fair when one party can do anything she pleases and the other party has to bite his tongue and take it lest he be cast out into the darkness and never see a paycheck again.

That's the thing about discrimination and double standards — they work both ways. Usually, it works against women. In Patrick's case, it works for her. That doesn't make it right.

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Nobody should be acting the way she sometimes does, and it's disingenuous of her to defend her tactics on the track by whining that that is what the boys do. It is what the boys do, but they can't react to her the same way they do to a guy.

Duno at least got to throw a towel at Patrick, and you could tell from the headlines that what everybody really wished was that she'd taken a swing at her rival, just to see if Patrick would have swung back. And how hard.

But that was a sideshow and a distraction from the fact that not everyone in the sport is happy with Patrick. Behind the scenes and sometimes in front of them, there has been grumbling about Patrick, and it's not about her fame, but her driving. Sports are the ultimate meritocracy. A race car doesn't care who is driving it. It doesn't go faster because a size 12 is on the accelerator instead of a size six. If she wants respect from her peers, the only place to get it is on the track.

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