Is Richard Childress Racing now the top landing spot for Danica Patrick?

It sounds like RCR could be the place Danica Patrick calls home in 2018, if she manages to stay in the NASCAR Cup Series.

There are a lot of moving pieces to this particular NASCAR Silly Season, perhaps the most in recent memory. With each one, Danica Patrick is a name that can’t help but be mentioned.

It’s not for her performance, though she’s fared pretty well in 2017 by her own standards. No, it’s absolutely because she’s the lone female competitor in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series, a status she’d like to maintain if at all possible.

Another seat opened up this week, as Landon Cassill was informed he would not return to the Front Row Motorsports No. 34 Ford he’s driven this season. All he knew about the reason why is that the team was making “radical changes,” and replacing him with Patrick would qualify — and also possibly be an upgrade, as Patrick is ahead of Cassill in the Cup Series standings, albeit with the benefit of better equipment.

But ESPN NASCAR reporter Bob Pockrass, who is as plugged in as anyone around stock car racing, still thinks one of the earliest rumored landing spots for Danica Patrick is the most likely.

The potential monkey wrench is “if Patrick has sponsorship,” as that seems to be one of the reasons Stewart-Haas Racing isn’t asking her back. Still, Childress has spoken highly of Patrick in the past, appreciating what she brings to NASCAR. If not a perfect match, it’s one that would certainly make sense.

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The No. 27 at RCR needs a driver since Paul Menard is departing, and Patrick isn’t doing that much worse than the fairly nondescript Menard this season. One big difference in their stats is that Patrick has eight DNFs to Menard’s three, so if she can shore up that part of her game and be running at the end more often, one imagines she could keep the 27 at roughly the same level it’s at right now.

Whether that’s enough for RCR remains to be seen. Despite the Childress bunch not quite being what it once was, it’s a team that would fulfill Patrick’s desire to stay in competitive cars, and she would liven up the driver mix with Austin Dillon and Ryan Newman. Her fate is very much still up in the air, but if she ends up switching from the 10 to the 27 and from Ford to Chevy, don’t be shocked.