JR Motorsports’ Danica Patrick says that she was just getting comfortable in her Nationwide Series car as practice ended at Auto Club Speedway in California. Patrick obviously wasn’t as comfortable as others as she was 27th in final practice Friday for Saturday’s Stater Bros. 300.
While it will be Patrick’s second NASCAR race, it will be her first on a track that is not high-banked and requires much more braking and accelerating than her first race at Daytona International Speedway.
“There are things with it that I’m just not happy with,” Patrick said Friday following final practice. “I’m trying to not only to learn my way around this track in this car and get familiar with what I need and where to be on the track and improve the car, too.
“The tough thing for me is that I don’t know how it’s supposed to feel. Until the car is right, I can’t have an expectation level. It’s like, ‘Do I deal with this? Do I not? Should it feel like that? I don’t like this but maybe it has to be like that? Maybe I always have to drive around this issue?’ I really don’t have any of those answers at this point. It’s only going to come from, in my experience, having something good [that] I want again [in the car].”
Patrick competed in an IndyCar race at Auto Club Speedway in 2005. There was only one preferred line around the 2-mile track in an IndyCar, as opposed to multiple racing grooves in a stock car, and the IndyCar was full-throttle all the way around. FOXNews
“I’m still not totally happy, that’s for sure, I’m just not feeling really comfortable on entry into the corner,” she said of driving around the two-mile oval track 50 miles east of Los Angeles. “It’s much different in these cars.”
“There’s definitely a difference in running behind people here as opposed to Daytona,” she said. “You can really run up behind them pretty solidly at Daytona, but here you definitely get the air taken away from you.
“On the other hand, there’s plenty of room out there, there’s plenty of lanes and plenty of places to go.”
Two-time Cup champion Tony Stewart said it’s all part of the learning process for Patrick. “There is a lot of focus on her, and pressure,” Stewart said. “This week is another learning experience.”
And Earnhardt said Patrick and his team have realistic expectations.
“We are real patient,” and Patrick “has a lot of races to learn and understand,” he said. She plans to drive in a dozen Nationwide races this year in and around her IndyCar schedule. Los Angeles Times
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