DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. – There have been a lot of bumps in the road for Danica Patrick since she was last here at Daytona in February.
Back then, she was the pole winner for the biggest race of the year. She led the race, ran in the top five all day, and was sitting third when the white flag came out in the Daytona 500. She ended up eighth at the finish, but took home as many headlines as winner Jimmie Johnson.
Five months later Patrick returns to Daytona looking to repeat that success. She’s 27th in points entering the holiday weekend and that instant success she felt at the start of the season has faded. It’s been a tough learning curve for the high profile rookie, but being back in a familiar and comfortable place has her feeling at ease.
“We had the pole here in Daytona and started the year off that way. It would be nice to start the second half of the year off the same way,” said Patrick on Thursday at Daytona while speaking to the media.
“At the end of the day it’s not the most important thing, but it sure is nice to start up front. We don’t have our Daytona [500] car here, but we have our backup and that tested really well. We nearly ran that anyway. It should be good still.”
Since the very beginning, all the way back to her stock car debut running the ARCA Series race in 2010, Patrick has taken to the famed speedway. She finished sixth in that event and went on to her NASCAR career by running in the Nationwide Series in 2010 and 2011.
She picked up where she left off those two seasons. Drafting with restrictor plate aces like Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Tony Stewart didn’t hurt, as Patrick found herself comfortable running on the high-banked, high speed speedway. She earned a NNS pole, February of 2011, and was in contention for wins in each of the two DIS races.
This season she’s not running in the NNS race. While as a racer, Patrick would love to be behind the wheel, the right circumstances didn’t put here there this weekend.
“Not necessarily. I will always run it if I can. But if I don’t, it’s okay too,” she said when asked if she was disappointed she wasn’t on track when practice began.
“I think that’s about getting the right funding and getting it all together. To be honest, our focus as a team was put on running Watkins Glen, which comes after this one. So, that’s kind of where we put our efforts to get the funding to run. So, I understand that this one came second and it didn’t get done because Watkins Glen is not done. So, I’m okay.”
Saturday night Patrick will run just her third NSCS race at Daytona. But her past success as her marked as one of the favorites for an improbable, but what could become a popular, victory.
But as far as whether she has started to mark down Daytona as a place she could win because of her success, or a place that she’s developing a fondness for, Patrick’s not quite there yet.
“I would say that it came more in Nationwide because it was the best opportunities to win,” Patrick said about her hunger to win at DIS. “Tony Eury Jr. [former NNS crew chief], just like Tony Gibson builds very good speedway cars and I felt like we had a real chance to win on the speedways.”
Patrick admits she learned a lot from the way she ran and how she finished in the Daytona 500. Most importantly, what she needs to do differently this time around to put herself in position to win at Daytona.
“As a driver, if I’m going to pick a race to win, of course I want to win the Daytona 500,” she said.
“That’s a huge one. But as a driver, you want to win the challenging driver tracks. You want to win at places like Bristol or Darlington or places that are more known as driving tracks. So I wouldn’t say I’ve marked it [Daytona] down. No. But I haven’t marked any one of them off.
“So, I’ll take any one I can get.”
