For Danica Patrick, you might start to hear the “Anna Kournikova of racing” jokes again soon. After making history and starting the reason off strong, her last two races have been, well not so hot. She was out of the last week’s Phoenix race extremely early and Danica also got hit in the read with a rock. Luckily she wasn’t hurt too badly. It’s an emotional roller coaster as Danica won the pole and made some history at the Daytona 500 the week before.
Back to Danica Patrick and that rock which was floggin her noggin.
So how did Danica do at Las Vegas Motor Speedway yesterday? Well she started 37th and her car never came to life.
Despite a valiant effort by crew chief Tony Gibson, the No. 10 GoDaddy.com Chevrolet SS for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) never came to life, and Danica finished a disappointing 33rd, six laps behind the leaders.
“It was a real tough day, no doubt,” Danica said. “We knew we were going to have tough days, but this is not the kind of tough day we thought about. We need to figure out how and why it (the car) changes so much from practice to the race and really learn this new car. I was extremely loose the whole time. We made it a little bit better in the middle of the race, to the point where it would go for half the run, but by the end of every run I would find myself very, very loose again. Being behind traffic, the aerodynamics change a lot, and it’s a handful. I felt like I was about to spin on the frontstraight. We just have to figure out how to make it better and work our butts off to make sure that we never have this day again.”
“These are the days, and I said this on the radio, these are the days you earn your money, not the days like Daytona where you run up in the top-five all day,” said Danica, who finished eighth in the Daytona 500. “Those days are great, but you’re just marching forward. These are the days that you have to be strong and you have to work through it and not let it drag you down.”
Danica completed 261 of 267 laps, in points standing, she is 30th (53 points, 76 out of first). Matt Kenseth won the Vegas race by the way.
Paul M. Banks is CEO of The Sports Bank.net, a Google News site generating millions of visitors. He also contributes regularly to MSN, Fox Sports , Chicago Now, Walter Football.com and Yardbarker
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