Following the STP 400 on Sunday, David Gilliland had some choice words for Danica Patrick: "Shut up and race."
The Sunday race at Kansas Speedway was plagued with bad luck for Danica Patrick when a piece of trash managed to land on the grille of her No. 10 Chevrolet. As water temperatures started to rise, Danica Patrick had no choice but to make an unscheduled pit stop that caused her to re-emerge two laps down.
Compounding the difficulty of Danica Patrick's race, she would later engage Marcos Ambrose and David Gilliland in some heart stopping pack racing. A number of contacts eventually caused her splitter to get knocked on the ground, seriously compromising her No. 10's aerodynamics.
Danica Patrick communicated her frustration on Gilliland with her crew via in-car radio. The Fox telecast decided to share her channel:
"He tries to take me out every time. Tell his spotter that I'm coming after him if he does it again. In fact I might just do it right now."
At race finish, Danica Patrick's crew chief Tony Gibson spokes with her via the team radio:
"Be proud of yourself. You drove a hell of a race today. You can't do nothing about the grille there, so be proud of yourself.
"You hung in there all day. You did a great job on restarts. You had a good car. We know we should have been about 15th. We made some gains, we'll learn and go on."
As a true racing driver, Danica Patrick responded: "The track tightened up. We could have kept up with it better."
Following the race, Danica did not speak with reporters. Instead, her spokesman released a comment instead:
It's disappointing because I think we could have had a much better finish with the Go Daddy car, but (trash on the grille) is one of those things that's out of our control," she said. "The pit crew was awesome.
As frustrated as Danica Patrick is with Sunday's STP 400, her fellow drivers expressed far less sympathy for her race results.
When David Gilliland of the No. 38 Ford Fusion learned about Danica's radio transmission that accused him of deliberately running her off the track, Gilliland asked his spokesman to forward a brief response:
"Shut up and race."
As a sport, racing is inherently competitive and unpredictable. What's more, as far as oval pack racing is concerned, rubbing is racing - contact is inevitable when the racing cars are fighting for position.
Danica Patrick finished 25th in the Nascar Sprint Cup Series STP 400. David Gilliland edged ahead to finish 23rd.
See Danica Patrick's radio transmission in the video below:
