It took 50 races, but Danica Patrick has finally taken the checkered flag on the Indy Racing League circuit. She won last month’s Indy Japan 300 and currently sits in fifth place in the drivers’ standings for Andretti Green Racing.

Good thing Patrick won that race, because her legacy was being driven by the media into the same ditch as Anna Kournikova’s. Patrick is a sexy woman. She’s in this year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. In 2004 and 2005, so was Kournikova, who still has it held against her for looking good in a bikini without winning a singles tennis tournament.

Now Patrick has a victory and the respect of her peers. But why did that respect take so long? She was the IRL 2005 Rookie of the Year, fourth at the 2005 Indy 500 and the first woman to ever lead a lap at the most prestigious race on the continent. It must have been the sexy woman thing.