by CHRIS ESTRADA, Special to FOXSports.com

Updated: April 21, 2008, 3:36 PM EST 214 comments

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Danica Patrick's victory at Twin Ring Motegi represents a zenith that the sport has been unable to reach for quite some time. While the IRL had won over a loyal fan base abroad with their brand of wheel-to-wheel racing, it hadn't been able to make that all-important jump into the consciousness of mainstream America.

But now, the series is poised for a major boost in popularity and presence after their biggest star managed to take the checkered flag at the Twin Ring. However, she isn't the only one that deserves credit for putting the IRL in this position.

The act of unification didn't quite erase 12 years of bad blood in one stroke, but it showed that Tony George and Kevin Kalkhoven were truly serious about trying to get the sport back to health as one entity.

A bit of praise also goes to Graham Rahal, whose victory at St. Petersburg, Fla. earlier this month stuck his family's legendary name back into the spotlight. He is a talent that the IRL must utilize in all of its efforts to promote the sport, because once his Newman/Haas/Lanigan Racing team finds the key to going fast on the ovals, he appears set to become a true star.

And of course, we can't forget the IRL's other successes, such as attracting 39 cars for this year's Indy 500 and nailing down long-term deals with the two biggest street races in America — the St. Petersburg Grand Prix and the Grand Prix of Long Beach (Calif.). So with all of this post-unification success, that means that they'll be knocking on NASCAR's bumper pretty soon, right?

Wrong. Most fans who espouse this line of thinking miss the fact that NASCAR has done a masterful job of giving their fans an entertaining package that may not always be good on-track, but still carries plenty of stories surrounding their favorite drivers.

NASCAR knows that the sport is about entertainment — you can't rely solely on a great racing product to fill the seats and make the Nielsens tick up. Check the TV ratings — even though many fans gripe about how boring these Sprint Cup races may be, there are still many more that happily give up four hours of their Sunday afternoon to watch these guys.

But while they've been masters of publicity, NASCAR has never had their own Danica Patrick to trumpet. And since Patrick's finally put one in the win column, she and the IRL are already getting major buzz from across the media spectrum on a day where the Sprint Cup stars are having one of their rare off-weekends.

This is going to reverberate for a while and rest assured, the next two IndyCar events at Kansas (April 27) and the Indianapolis 500 on Memorial Day weekend are now going to get swamped with credential-packing reporters. This is what the IRL has been waiting for since Patrick exploded into the mainstream at Indy in 2005.

However, they can't rest easy now that Danica has won a race. The momentum must be kept up and while it's up to Danica, Graham, Marco Andretti, Helio Castroneves or any of the other top stars in IndyCar to win races, there's no reason the IRL can't hype them all. Note that I said all. "The racecar-driving chick" and "Twinkle Toes" can't be made into the only game in town.

The IRL needs to show the press that there's some really good drivers outside the big names and that they deserve to get a share of fans for themselves whenever the IndyCars roll into town.

Danica's victory allows the IRL to have the ability to think outside the box in terms of promotion. They can have her at the forefront, but now they can showcase all of their stars and what the newly unified series has done in recent weeks. This could turn into something bigger — if they make the effort.