[FastCarFan]

Originally Posted by ZOANAS

Looking through her Wiki page, she seems to have paid her dues and earned her spot.....

Interesting that she was in front of him when she spun. How does Briscoe explain that?

And Ashley Judd is probably not the most unbiased observer of the IRL.

Actually, she is getting "credit" for far more than she deserves. For example, her Daytona 24 Hours finish is often mentioned, yet I have read that she was FAR slower than her teammates & that she was only in the car something like 10% of the time. Her teammates clearly were most responsible for her high finish.

And, as nota already said, she was being lapped when she spun in front of Briscoe.

Finally, Ashley Judd was only saying publicly what a lot of people have been saying privately.

Here is what Robin Miller had to say about Duno about 1 year ago:

Milka Duno Driving an Indy Car
Written by: Robin Miller
Indianapolis, IN – 3/26/2007

"Duno has three career wins in two Rolex Series seasons. (LAT Photo)

From the outside it looks like a nice surprise package for the Indy Racing League. New team, new driver and new sponsor....

However, to anybody familiar with her experience and talent level, the thought of Milka Duno driving an Indy car next month in Kansas City is frightening. Or should be....

But the real concern should be on a 34-year-old sports car 'specialist' who didn't start racing until 1999, has no high speed, open wheel experience and has never been on an oval track.

If you read Duno's the full page ad in Monday's USA Today, it's hard not to be dazzled. 'Milka Duno is brilliant, fearless, beautiful and Venezuelan. And she's demonstrated a woman can rule in a male-dominated sport.'

She's billed as the first woman to win a major sports car race and her credits include victories in Petite LeMans and Grand Am. Those aren't false claims because she was, indeed, on the winning team at Miami, Road Atlanta and Mt. Tremblant.

The fine print is that she didn't drive very many laps in any of them. Just like last Saturday's fourth place at Miami-Homestead in Grand Am, she logged 14 laps and teammate Patrick Carpentier did the other 77.

Or her second place at this year's Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona where Ryan Dalziel, Darren Manning and Carpentier drove 90 percent of the time.
Olivier Beretta and Marc Goessens replace Marino Franchitti as Milka Duno's teammate on the No.8 Pontiac Riley. (LAT Photo)

The perception is that Ms Milka is an accomplished racer. The reality is that she's not very good and not very well regarded by her sports car brethren. 'She has trouble running side-by-side in these cars and I shudder to think what she'll be like with open wheels,' said one veteran sports car racer. 'She's...got no business in an Indy car at 200 mph.'

For the woman who ran mid-pack in the celebrity category of the annual Toyota Celebrity Race at Long Beach a few years ago, she does have the backing of CITGO and SAMAX Racing owner Peter Baron, whose rationale for moving her up to Indy cars left most of us shaking our heads.

'I have a fair amount of driving history behind me and I firmly believe that if you're going to drive an Indy car, and that's what you want to do, figure out how to get it done,' replied Baron when asked why not try her in the Indy Pro Series first.

'Figure out how to do as much testing as you can. If you want to be an Indy car driver, if you can do it, the sooner you can do it, the more testing you can do behind it, the better off you will be. The best way to learn how to run 225 mph is to run 225 mph.'

The idea that a few days of testing will prepare anybody for the full-throttle madness of Texas, Kansas City, Chicago and Homestead is absurd and the overall tone of last Friday's press conference was that this is going to be so much fun.

But this isn't a fun little Daytona Prototype on a road course with a mix of slow corners thrown in. This is the fastest, most lethal form of motorsports in this country. Taking Dunno to St. Pete, Watkins Glen, Sonoma, Detroit and Mid-Ohio would have been a much wiser game plan....

Brian Barnhart, the IRL president of competition, went along with the feel good atmosphere and said by the time Milka gets to her first race: 'she'll have thousands of miles under her belt. We'll even consider putting other cars out there on the track with her to replicate traffic and give her the opportunity to run in dirty air.'

To which one IRL veteran responded: 'Good luck on finding somebody to volunteer for that.'

Barnhart also said she's going to have to pass a driving test under the critical eyes of Rick Mears or Johnny Rutherford or Al Unser. So, obviously, there's no guarantee she'll make the grade, although there was a dentist of similar ilk who became an IRL regular in the cars way too easy to drive on the huge high banked tracks.

Hopefully, Duno will scare herself so badly in her first test at Texas that she'll come to her senses, realize she's out of her depth and give the car to Carpentier.

Because Indy cars aren't fun and games and photo ops. They can be life and death. And having desire, a pretty smile, a good PR machine and a sponsor aren't good enough reasons to merit a ride.

This is one of those situations that the racing fraternity embraces publicly, but privately knows is a recipe for disaster."