TORONTO - Danica Patrick was asked about being famous.

"There's not a lot of downside," she said Friday. "I'm just a lucky athlete."

The 28-year-old star of the IZOD IndyCar Series had arrived in Toronto after making an appearance at the ESPY Awards in Los Angeles, where celebrities and athletes gather to honour other athletes. Patrick was on hand as a presenter.

All of her self-described good fortune has not led to much in the way of success on the track this year, with Patrick juggling her celebrity and IndyCar with a part-time job in NASCAR. Neither circuit has yielded a podium finish.

Patrick will enter the Honda Indy Toronto this weekend without an IndyCar victory in 40 starts, a drought that stretches all the way back to the first win of her career.

She has one top-five finish in nine starts this season, and has cracked the top-10 only four times.

It has been more difficult in NASCAR, where a 24th-place finish in the sport's second-tier Nationwide series last weekend stands as the best of her five results this season.

Patrick holds 61st spot in the drivers' standings, second-lowest for anyone with at least five starts.

"It's just something that I wanted to experience," Patrick said of NASCAR. "And I'm really enjoying it. There are a lot of really great people. The drivers are extremely generous with their advice and time."

Several open-wheel drivers have attempted the jump to NASCAR before, including Indy star Dario Franchitti, who returned to open-wheel after a season of similar struggles. The lure for someone such as Patrick, with the potential of broadening the sport's already substantial footprint in the U.S., is obvious.

But it is not easy.

"It's humbling, to say the least, at times," Patrick said. "But it's also really rewarding, too, when I finally get it. I'm figuring it out. And it gets fun -- there's a lot of passing, and passing is fun to do."

Everything is different, from the way the cars handle to the tactics on the track.

"I mean, I had to double-check last weekend in Chicago when I could actually start passing," she said. "Because I was like, 'Can I pass to the right before the start/finish line? Can I pass to the left? What do I have to do?"'

She admitted driving in NASCAR was like "starting over."

Patrick started in IndyCar five years ago, and quickly established herself as a capable and marketable star. She was named rookie of the year in her debut season, and became the first woman to claim a major closed-course race when she won at Twin Ring Motegi in Japan two years ago.

She posted five top-five finishes last season. She finished among the top 10 in 10 of 17 starts.

Her marketability is made obvious in the series media guide. On one side of her page, Patrick is in a racing suit, looking intensely off-camera. On the other, there is a picture of an appearance on late-night television, another in an evening dress and yet another of her straddling the tire of a race car.

"You have to be careful what you say," she said of her fame. "People can interpret it however they want. I try not to do so many things you can judge and criticize. I really try to stay as true to myself as possible without causing too much drama."

The attention in NASCAR, should she succeed, would likely increase.

"I think one of the biggest differences is when you come into the track and you see just how many people there are at a NASCAR race," she said. "It is culture. Those people come, and they have their trailers, campers and motor homes and buses, and it's a sea of camping."

She plans to continue straddling both series at least through next season, even as some wonder whether she might not be better served racing full-time in one circuit. Patrick posted the fifth-slowest time in Friday's morning practice session in Toronto, knowing the spotlight would find her if she stumbled again.

Patrick has learned to live with the spotlight, and pointed to that appearance at the ESPYs as one of the benefits.

"Those kinds of things are really fun," she said. "And when you sit in the front row, front-and-centre right next to (Brett) Favre and Reggie Bush, it's a pretty decent night. Those are some of the lucky things I get to do because I'm popular -- so there's not a lot of downside."