When Danica Patrick started the Daytona 500 on pole, she made NASCAR history by being the first female to ever sit on the pole for the Daytona 500. However, the real question was whether she could hang up there all race long, or whether she’d fall to the middle of the field, or find trouble.
She answered that question loud and clear on Sunday as she kept herself within the top 10 all race long, running a lot in the top three. She failed to lead the first lap, however she made her way to the front under green flag conditions on lap 90. It allowed her to become the first female to lead the Daytona 500.
“Got off to a nice start,” she said of her day. “Wish I would have led at the very beginning. I thought I was going to. So it was nice to lead later on in the race, just to have done that, to lead laps.”
Another historic note from her leading at Daytona is that she became the 13th driver to lead at both Indianapolis Motor Speedway and Daytona. She led at Indianapolis in 2005 in her rookie year before finishing fourth.
“I’m honored,” she noted. “But, again, these are things that just happen along the way. I’m on the quest to be the best driver, run up front, get to Victory Lane. These things happen and I’m proud, but they’re not the ultimate goal.”
Coming to the white flag lap, she was running third, however ended up eighth in all the shuffle. She said she didn’t learn a lot throughout the day, due to her own fear of nobody working with her.
“I didn’t feel like it was a wise idea to drop low and try to figure out how to pass,” she said. “You were going to probably find yourself much further back. I suppose that’s the only downside to running in that front group all day is that I never got any practice passing, I never tried really anything. The only thing we really did was on those starts, the inside line had a lot of momentum for the first couple of laps. That was the most action that happened until the very end there.”
Dale Earnhardt Jr. was one of the drivers who worked with her near the end of the race, working from back end of the top 10 to the top five.
“Danica has done so good all week and her car has been great and she’s pretty tenacious out there, so I didn’t have any problem getting up there and drafting with her,” he said.
For Earnhardt Jr., ditching her at the end and working with Mark Martin, it was all about getting the best finish possible.
“I was just trying to get the best finish I could,” he said. “I wanted to get in the media center to thank my crew and everything. Was just trying to get on the podium.”
The finish for Patrick marks her highest Sprint Cup Series finish and the first top 10 by a female in the big race. While most would be happy finishing in the top 10, she says like any driver, she questions what she could have done in those final laps.
“I would imagine that pretty much anyone would kick themselves and say what could I have, should I have done to give myself that opportunity to win,” she said. “I think that’s what I was feeling today, was uncertainty as to how I was going to accomplish that. There was plenty of time while you were cruising along. I was talking to Tony and my spotter on the radio, What do you see people doing, what’s working, what is not. I was thinking in the car, How am I going to do this? I didn’t know what to do exactly.”
She says in watching Earnhardt Jr.’s run from sixth on the restart to second at the checkered taught her some lessons for the future.
“I think Dale did a nice job and shows what happens when you plan it out, you drop back, get that momentum and you’re able to go to the front,” she said. “I think he taught me something and I’m sure I’ll watch the race and there will be other scenarios out there that I’ll see that can teach me, too.”
Beyond Daytona, there are questions as to how well Patrick will do this season. Other drivers think she’ll have a good season, including Earnhardt Jr.
“She’s going to make a lot of history all year long,” he noted. “It’s going to be a lot of fun to watch her progress. I think she’s done her best work in the Cup car myself. I think for whatever reason she seems to get a lot more out of that car. Every time I’ve seen her in a pretty hectic situation, she always really remained calm. She’s got a great level head. She’s a racer. She knows what’s coming. She’s smart about her decisions. She knew what to do today as far as track position and not taking risks, like she said.
“I enjoy racing with her. Look forward to more all year long. It’s just going to be a lot of fun having her in the series.”
The goal going forward for Patrick is to finish in the top 20 each week, possibly top 15.
“The only thing we can go off of is at the end of last year and running solid inside that top 20, hopefully get inside that top 15,” she said. “That’s really all I can think right now. That’s all I can think. It might change after five races. It might be better. Who knows. It might be worse. We’re going to kind of pick up where we left off.”
Her next track to tackle is Phoenix International Raceway this weekend. Patrick ran the Sprint Cup Series race last year, finishing 17th for her best Sprint Cup of 2012. She has five Nationwide Series starts in the desert, with her best finish being 10th, which came last fall.
“It was nice to run like we did at the end of the year last year with Texas and especially with Phoenix,” she said. “I feel like it will give us a good baseline idea of how we need to set the car up. But it also is a new car, so we’ll have to adapt to that. Tony (Gibson) and I are still figuring out how we get the most out of me with new tires in a qualifying situation, things like that. We still have a lot of stuff to work on.
“But it was nice to have that race in Phoenix at the end of last year. While it might not be so much about Phoenix, I think it’s about Tony Gibson and everybody that works around him.”
provided by Grand National 2013
