Danica Patrick is winning the Silly Season. With news trickling out of the rest of the NASCAR world in dribs and drabs, Patrick has commanded our full attention since November. She has announced that she will race in the Nationwide Series with JR Motorsports and that she will make her debut at Auto Club Speedway on Feb. 20. No press conference has been planned for next week - as far as I know. It is still entirely possible she could upstage Christmas.

So how did we get here? How did we go from Patrick being someone you kind of sort of heard was racing in some open-wheel circuit somewhere to being the 2009 off-season face of NASCAR? USA Today - which does a super job covering NASCAR - answers that question with this very nifty career-spanning Danica Patrick photo spread.

Related link:
Danica Patrick Tissot photos