Danica Patrick's Nationwide Race at the Daytona International Speedway flashes right before her eyes as a disappointing engine failure at Turn 3 caused her to pull into the concrete stall as her crew quickly rushes to her aid. Thinking the damage to the engine was terminal, Patrick bypassed the pit road.
The incident occurred on lap 32 of the 120-lap nationwide race. While Danica suffered spikes in temperature and various performance problems, the crew did manage to re-fire the Turner Scott Motorsports car. Patrick's missed pit was a missed opportunity -- the car wasn't terminal after all.
"I was pissed," Patrick said. "I was mad because I thought all I needed to do was switch to ignition switch B, but just before I walked over, they said it's something maybe a little bit more with the whole ignition system. It ran on the B switch, but they say that it probably wouldn't have really run like it needed to anyway. So that was me feeling like that car was still able to be out there, so I felt pretty bad."
Crew chief Mike Greci confirmed that an ignition problem ended their race but a full investigation led by the Hendrick Motorsports engineers, the outfit that leases its engine to Turner, should get to the bottom of the problem.
While this is the end for Danica Patrick's Nationwide efforts at Daytona, the GoDaddy driver still has tomorrow's Daytona 500 to look forward to. Last week, Patrick historic pole position qualifying makes her the first woman to ever start the Daytona 500 at the front. Today's Nationwide could still be considered a good warm-up ahead of the Sunday main event.
"I was given some really fun advice before I went out, which was, 'You go out and do what you want to win this race,' and that's fun to hear as a driver," Patrick said. "I was working with a lot of guys out there and staying toward the front. It would have been nice -- would have been another really good day.
"There's a lot of Cup guys out there running around, and hopefully it showed my ability to work through traffic and my ability to get to the front. Hopefully that'll help for tomorrow."
Starting the Nationwide at 12th, Patrick took the lead from Sprint Cup teammate and owner Tony Stewart. Drafting in the lead pack for several laps, Patrick eventually had to lift off to cool the engine as it started to indicate 260 degrees.
After a couple more laps, Patrick had fallen to 29th as her lap times continued to slow. In another three laps, Danica would pull into the garage.
"Loss in RPM, loss in speed," said Patrick. "Into [Turn] 3 and it just died. Seemed very much like … I haven't blown an engine. I think that says a lot about Hendrick. But it sure seemed like that's exactly how it would go. So I hastily came down into the garage instead of going down pit lane. Not sure really if it would have made much of a difference in the end, but it's a good lesson."
See the end of Danica Patrick's Nationwide at Daytona here:
