Short of winning the 55thDaytona 500, Danica Patrick’s participation in February’s Speedweeks at Daytona (Fla.) International Speedway was nearly flawless.
She was the fastest during the first practice of the year Feb. 16, then backed that up by winning the pole for the Daytona 500 one day later to become the first woman ever to claim the top spot for a NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race. She stayed out of trouble for the remainder of Speedweeks and ran in the top-three for much of the Daytona 500 before dropping from third to eighth on the final lap.
She rewrote some of the NASCAR record books with her eighth-place finish, earning the highest finishing position ever earned by a woman in the “Great American Race.”
In addition to her history-making pole run and finish in the Daytona 500, Patrick also led five laps – 90 to 91 and 127 to 129 – becoming the first female to lead NASCAR’s most prestigious race and the first woman to lead Sprint Cup Series laps under green. Janet Guthrie led five laps under caution in 1977 at Ontario (Calif.) Motor Speedway.
By leading laps in the Daytona 500, Patrick joined an elite club of only 13 drivers to have led both the Daytona 500 and the Indianapolis 500. The other drivers to accomplish this feat are A.J. Foyt, Mario Andretti, Al Unser, Bobby Unser, Bobby Allison, Jim Hurtubise, Johnny Rutherford, Tim Richmond, John Andretti, Robby Gordon, Juan Pablo Montoya and Stewart. Of those 13 drivers, only Patrick, Foyt, Andretti, Gordon, Montoya and Stewart have led at least five laps in each race.
Patrick’s eighth-place finish in the Daytona 500, coupled with her six top-10 finishes in the Indianapolis 500, make her one of only 15 drivers to have top-10 results in each race. The other drivers are Foyt, Montoya, Gordon, Rutherford, Stewart, Mario Andretti, Al Unser, Bobby Johns, Cale Yarborough, Dan Gurney, Donnie Allison, Jerry Grant, Paul Goldsmith and Tom Sneva.
She returned to the 2.5-mile oval in April to take part in a Goodyear tire test and now returns for Saturday night’s Coke Zero 400 powered by Coca-Cola. She’ll do so with a bit of a different look on the No. 10 GoDaddy Chevrolet SS for Stewart-Haas Racing (SHR) as the car will be its traditional green, but with touches of red, white and blue, along with the logo of “Start with .US” on the hood and rear decklid.
The country code domain for the United States of America is .US and, since 2001, Neustar has been providing domain name registry services, critical infrastructure services and policy expertise for .US on behalf of the United States Department of Commerce. GoDaddy has partnered with Neustar for several years on offering domain names that end in .US.
Guided by her crew chief, Tony Gibson, a Daytona Beach native, Patrick is hoping she can continue to make history, this time by going all the way to victory lane.
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