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Danica Patrick's contract with Andretti Green expires after this season, and speculation about Patrick’s next career move is heating up.

Several observers suggest Patrick would be best served taking the best I.R.L. deal she can find.

“She’s exactly where she needs to be,” said Eddie Gossage, the president of Texas Motor Speedway, which hosts Nascar and I.R.L. events. “I would love to hand her the winner’s trophy at an I.R.L. race here. I think it would be a horrible mistake for her to go to Nascar,” adding that he thought Patrick was “arguably one of the two or three best-known female athletes in the world.”

Janet Guthrie, 71, was a trailblazer in American motor sports in the 1970s, when she became the first woman to compete at the highest level in open-wheel racing and in Nascar.

“She should stay where she is,” Guthrie said. “She is in the best possible situation in I.R.L., in the catbird seat with one of the few teams that is capable of winning.”

Patrick, however, made clear that she saw herself as a brand as well as a driver, and that business considerations would play a part in where drives in 2010.

“One of the things I think of is the exposure level that you get in Nascar with the ratings and viewership,” she said. “Their numbers are so much larger than ours, and with that comes a bigger following, comes more popularity, comes more demand for you to endorse other products. So I think it would be an exponential sort of growth.”

Guthrie said she never raced for the money and seemed disappointed that Patrick might be driven by a net-income imperative. “Like many people, I really regret seeing those soft-porn photos that will be around forever on the Web,” Guthrie said, referring to Patrick’s appearances in Sports Illustrated and other magazines. “But if that’s what she wants to do, it’s worked for her. She made, what, $7 million last year?”

Patrick said she saw Formula One as an unlikely place for her to land because she did not want to travel the world. And there are elements of the Nascar experience that concern her, including the length of the Sprint Cup schedule, 36 races, compared with the I.R.L.’s 18. She added that she would need to join one of Nascar’s elite teams to have a fair expectation of success.

But an I.R.L. season beckons before Patrick can answer the question of where she will she race in 2010.

“I’m excited to see what comes up and who shows interest,” she said.

This article, "The Risks and Rewards of a Danica Patrick-Nascar Merger" originally appeared at The New York Times.