“Has anybody ever actually claimed Danica Patrick is good?”
At the professional level, pretty much all race drivers are good. Only a handful are great.
Well they’re “good” in that they’re better than we are. But the grade is on a curve, they’re pros so we know they’re that good, but now within THAT subset has anybody actually declared her good? Not that I’ve seen, in general she’s lumped in talent wise with the dramatically less famous also rans, which matches her win level. If she wasn’t a hottie she’d be one of those faceless drivers people only mention when their accident takes out one of the contenders.