Ok, as a Sim fan, ouch, but who are you comparing her to? It's all about the equipment in motorsport as you saw with Russell.

In Indy she drove for a single-entry team, so there's no-one to directly compare her to, but she was rookie-of-the-year in her first season, ahead of Takuma Sato (two-time Indy 500 winner) in his first season.

In 2011 she finished 4th in the opening race, with only some egregious blocking by Tony Kanaan to keep her off the podium in the last laps, then was injured similar to Grosjean in a fire at Indy affecting the rest of the season, with Pagenaud (Indy 500 winner) driving her car to a 15th.

In 2012 in the new cars she was stuck with the Lotus/Judd engine which turned out to be seriously underpowered, with both cars, the other driven by Jean Alesi being black-flagged at the Indy 500 for lack of pace.

In 2013 she drove for Tony Kanaan's (Indy 500 winner) team, finishing two spots behind him in the championship with a 2nd place finish at Houston.

Then she made the career move to test in F1, missing a few years out of racing until she got a drive in v8 supercars in 2017. I don't follow v8's closely though I live here but she was pretty well-regarded for the pace she had in making the switch to the very esoteric supercars after so many years out.