DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. — All Danica Patrick needed to do was keep her car intact.
She didn’t exactly follow her team owner’s advice — start and then park after two laps, he joked — but she certainly saved an all-out push for Sunday’s Daytona 500.
Patrick started on the pole for the first 150-mile Budweiser Duel before she coasted and finished 17th out of 23 cars. She’ll keep the top spot for Sunday race.
She led the field to green, then quietly faded to the back, never giving herself a chance to race for the win.
“I suppose there’s a sense of relief” she kept the pole, Patrick said. “But at the same point in time, I’m a race car driver, and it’s not fun to have to protect and be careful and be cautious and drop back at times.”
Patrick was nowhere near the four-lap sprint to the finish that saw Kevin Harvick hold off Greg Biffle of Vancouver, Wash., for the win.
Patrick became the first woman in history to win a pole in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup series. Team owner Gene Haas even suggested — perhaps, jokingly — that Patrick call it a day after a couple of laps.
Not a chance.
“We really just wanted to run probably 10 or 15 laps and be in the pack, be in front,” crew chief Tony Gibson said. “Once we got into a stalemate, we fell back, the inside line wasn’t moving and it was just time to get out.”
No driver has won the Daytona 500 from the pole since Dale Jarrett in 2000.
She can’t rest easy yet, not with Cup practices today and Saturday, where any wreck could send her to the back of the field. But she passed the first major of Speedweeks since she thrust herself and NASCAR into the national spotlight with a history-making run at the pole for “The Great American Race.”
“My nerves will be calmed down a little bit Saturday afternoon when practice is over and our car’s in one piece,” Gibson said.
Patrick’s debrief was, well, brief. Her No. 10 Chevrolet had a tachometer issue and she enjoyed taking the outside lane.
Other than those tidbits, Patrick had little analysis.
She knows all about how miserable it can be driving in the back of the field, with no serious chance for the checkered flag. Her average start was 36th and her average finish was 28th in her 10 Cup races last season. She has never finished better than 17th in three NASCAR seasons.
Her chance to show what she could do racing up front from the start never got going.
“It’s not fun racing like that, I know it’s not a lot of fun for her,” Gibson said. “Our car’s in one piece for now.”
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